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From: cindy@nvg.unit.no (Cindy Kandolf)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.culture.ny-upstate
Subject: Re: Strange High School Nicknames
Date: 05 Feb 1995 16:05:53 GMT

Scott Boostrom writes:
>Oddly enough, though Ms. Kandolf has repeated 30-odd
>times that this thread has no relevance to AFU,
>she has responded to every post IN this thread.
>Civic duty, perhaps?

Do me a favor and learn to count, okay?

There have been, by now, several DOZEN posts in this thread. I have responded to exactly TWO of those posts, this will be the third.

So why do i do it? YES, civic duty of a sort. "Only you can save a.f.u." and all that.

Ever used Internet Relay Chat (IRC)? Once upon a time, around four years ago, we used to sit around on IRC and discuss what would happen if we ever got above 500 users - if the system could handle that. On a typical evening there would be one to two hundred. We hit 300 one evening during the Gulf War, that was HUGE. The biggest channel that night, by far, was one where people were swapping information, rumors, and various thoughts about the war. The second biggest was a group of users, primarily from Norway, talking about King Olav who had died a few days before. (Everyone in Norway seemed to have a King Olav story and a desperate need to tell it to someone, that time.) I was on the Norskie channel; every once in a while someone would come along who didn't know what we were talking about, but generally they would leave quietly when they figured out this was nothing they were interested in. That was four years ago, almost exactly - late January 1991.

Now, when i have time i will still get on to IRC. On a typical evening there are now two _thousand_ users. There is almost always at least one Norwegian channel. I can't remember the last time that it DIDN'T happen that someone burst in and demand that we start speaking English because he didn't understand Norwegian. Sometimes the newcomer will even claim that since IRC was "invented in the US" (which it wasn't, by the way), people who don't want to speak English have no business being there. Often i will start receiving messages asking for sexual favors, and if i ignore them i hear what a "bitch" i am. Though i still get on because there are people i enjoy "talking" to, IRC is not what it used to be - and i can hardly imagine anyone thinks it's better not, as chaotic and mean-spirited as much of it has become.

I don't want that to happen to a.f.u., too. But if we let stupid threads like "Strange High School Nicknames", "Unfortunate Names", "Songs about X" et al take over, then a.f.u. is going to just become a place for posting stupid "facts" that someone thinks are amusing. I don't enjoy coming across as such a grouch, but dammit this is important to me!

Those of you who want a newsgroup for quasi-amusing "facts", go set it up yourselves. That kind of crap doesn't belong here.

-Cindy Kandolf, certified language mechanic, mamma flodnak


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