In article <hcno63$kb6$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
 Tony <tony@darkstorm.invalid> writes:
>{R}'s usenet persona could be embarrassing, rude and upsetting, but dealing
>with him on a professional level meant I got to see a different side, and
>it really drilled home that usenet is as much about avatars as any online
>game or virtual environment.  The avatars here are built by words, rather
>than by picking hair colour and chest size, but they're still avatars.

I've never really understood why nice people should want to appear
"nasty" on Usenet, but it does seem to be quite common. In can remember
{R} being very helpful to me when I had some computer problem or other.
-- 
John Hall  "[It was] so steep that at intervals the street broke into steps,
            like a person breaking into giggles or hiccups, and then resumed
            its sober climb, until it had another fit of steps."
                                      Ursula K Le Guin "The Beginning Place"

In article <hcp5ic$mj4$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
Tony   wrote:
>Maybe the hordes of people who spend their offline lives being nice, due to
>social convention rather than natural inclination, find the 'freedom' of
>the 'net too enticing.

I dunno.  Are there really that many people who spend their offline lives
being nice because of social convention?  I mean, yes, in the past; but
these days I'm lucky if I manage to walk down the street without someone
swearing at me for nothing (well, usually they're just having a bad day, and
have been beaten up or something), or overhearing one bloke comment to another
about how they want to kill a mutual acquaintance.

It would help if I didn't live on the route to one of the largest homeless
refuges in Cambridge, I guess.

>I dunno.  Maybe people like the idea of pretending to be nasty, I've played
>a lot of tabletop roleplaying games where seemingly nice people want to
>play evil characters so they can kill with impunity.  Perhaps it's just
>'finding out how the other side works'.

Perhaps a similar impulse to enjoying crime novels and/or TV programmes.

>Hard to know really why anyone does anything, I sometimes don't even know
>why I do what I do, and you'd think I should be the first to know.

Yeah, I've long said that I don't understand myself properly, so why on
earth should anyone else?
-- 
+  Cris Galletly   +