Manifesto on Wank
Mar. 5th, 2005 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootSo, the discovery that Frienditto is run by the same people who run ljdrama and Encyclopedia Dramatica, and the accusations currently being tossed back and forth over the fd service, have finally crystalized some thoughts I've been turning over for a while. I want to try to get them down in a moderately coherent form, despite my own outrage.
*wishes self luck*
There is no excuse for wank comms.
I'm not going to phrase this in "I believe" terms, because I'm laying out an ethical judgement, here, and while that is invariably a personal endeavor, it is one that, by its nature, extends beyond just myself. I apply this to everyone, and not just as an opinion. There is no excuse.
The people who participate in wank comms, such as Fandom Wank, insist that they merely display a healthy sense of humor. That they are perfectly happy to have their own wanking mocked just as they mock others. And that anyone who posts on the internet should only expect to be targeted, because the internet is a public place.
The sense of humor argument is the one I find hardest to refute, actually, because it has a grain of truth. If, in the middle of some wank explosion, someone were to speak up and say "you know, we're all getting kind of shrill and behaving foolishly, and blowing the original disagreement out of proportion to the point where I'm laughing; congratulations, everyone", that might indeed have some beneficial effect on the wank in question. But only if it comes from the inside--from a participant in the forum affected. Because it isn't the business of anyone who is not affected. For a participant to go outside that forum to another, one which is not affected or involved, to say such a thing is not 'having a good healthy laugh at ourselves'. "Ourselves" does not apply when the participant has removed herself from that context. Instead, this is making fun of other people.
And that's a cruel thing to do. No matter how great or small, it is an immature activity and a cruel one.
That people like the FW members understand this perfectly well is demonstrated by their use of counter-wank as a disciplinary measure. Someone who posts something considered unacceptable is, in turn, mocked. For them to do this, and then say that they are happy to take what they dish out, is extremely disingenuous. To say that they can laugh at themselves, and why can't the people they mock just do the same, is verbal slight of hand that turns attention away from the manifest hurtfulness of what they are doing. That they all seek to avoid being mocked, and use mockery as an internal punishment for their own, shows very clearly that they know it hurts to be the target.
So why do they do it?
I have, by the way, no sympathy for the suggestion that FW is not as bad as it was two years ago, and that it's mostly a social comm now, where people compliment each other's icons. That's a load of bullshit, and the merest skim through the latest posts will show it.
Likewise, any statement that they confine themselves to mocking people who make public fools of themselves is, if not a technical lie, certainly just as disingenuous as the second argument. There is, for example, mockery posted, fairly recently, of some extremely personal matters that one of the members found on a couple of personal journals. When the embroiled parties protested, they were told they had invited this treatment by posting publically and unlocked, as if posting unlocked in an obscure individual journal were equivalent to posting in a community forum. It was implied that the insults levelled at their romantic lives and psychological stability, and the links back to the personal journals, posted in such a high-traffic community as FW, were exactly the same as those same comments and links would have been if made in the FW members' own personal journals.
I am reminded of this argument by the statements now being made that anyone who posts anything on the net, even locked, has no right to protest if the information becomes public. Because the net is a public place, and anyone who posts anything there, no matter how secured, is just asking for it to be publicized.
I am reminded of other arguments about victims "asking for it".
Nor do I consider this an unreasonable analogy to make. There is a voilation of personal integrity invovled. And the perpetrators are denying their responsibility by insisting that it is the victim's job to be aware of all risks and guard against them with such vigor that even the most aggressive perpetrator has no opening. That it is only the utterly, inhumanly blameless who have the right to respect.
And you know what pisses me off even more? If I posted this publicly, I have little doubt it would be pounced upon as Wank! and Drama! and promptly linked and reposted for mockery by people who would say "My God, she's so serious about it, can't she take a joke?" As if to make light of the pain they have caused. As if to say that, because it is "humor", they cannot be held culpable for the cruelty of it. As if to say the cruelty is deserved, because the target didn't behave with irreprochable reserve and purity.
Anyone who works with sexual assault issues or with women's rights issues should recognize this pattern. The fact that it is applied, here, to emotional rather than physical assault, and, usually, assault on a lesser scale, does nothing to alleviate my disgust with anyone who would employ the pattern to excuse themselves.
There is no excuse, and I'm sick of hearing people who have indulged their own pettiness and cruelty claim that they have done nothing wrong, and that it is the victim's fault.
*wishes self luck*
There is no excuse for wank comms.
I'm not going to phrase this in "I believe" terms, because I'm laying out an ethical judgement, here, and while that is invariably a personal endeavor, it is one that, by its nature, extends beyond just myself. I apply this to everyone, and not just as an opinion. There is no excuse.
The people who participate in wank comms, such as Fandom Wank, insist that they merely display a healthy sense of humor. That they are perfectly happy to have their own wanking mocked just as they mock others. And that anyone who posts on the internet should only expect to be targeted, because the internet is a public place.
The sense of humor argument is the one I find hardest to refute, actually, because it has a grain of truth. If, in the middle of some wank explosion, someone were to speak up and say "you know, we're all getting kind of shrill and behaving foolishly, and blowing the original disagreement out of proportion to the point where I'm laughing; congratulations, everyone", that might indeed have some beneficial effect on the wank in question. But only if it comes from the inside--from a participant in the forum affected. Because it isn't the business of anyone who is not affected. For a participant to go outside that forum to another, one which is not affected or involved, to say such a thing is not 'having a good healthy laugh at ourselves'. "Ourselves" does not apply when the participant has removed herself from that context. Instead, this is making fun of other people.
And that's a cruel thing to do. No matter how great or small, it is an immature activity and a cruel one.
That people like the FW members understand this perfectly well is demonstrated by their use of counter-wank as a disciplinary measure. Someone who posts something considered unacceptable is, in turn, mocked. For them to do this, and then say that they are happy to take what they dish out, is extremely disingenuous. To say that they can laugh at themselves, and why can't the people they mock just do the same, is verbal slight of hand that turns attention away from the manifest hurtfulness of what they are doing. That they all seek to avoid being mocked, and use mockery as an internal punishment for their own, shows very clearly that they know it hurts to be the target.
So why do they do it?
I have, by the way, no sympathy for the suggestion that FW is not as bad as it was two years ago, and that it's mostly a social comm now, where people compliment each other's icons. That's a load of bullshit, and the merest skim through the latest posts will show it.
Likewise, any statement that they confine themselves to mocking people who make public fools of themselves is, if not a technical lie, certainly just as disingenuous as the second argument. There is, for example, mockery posted, fairly recently, of some extremely personal matters that one of the members found on a couple of personal journals. When the embroiled parties protested, they were told they had invited this treatment by posting publically and unlocked, as if posting unlocked in an obscure individual journal were equivalent to posting in a community forum. It was implied that the insults levelled at their romantic lives and psychological stability, and the links back to the personal journals, posted in such a high-traffic community as FW, were exactly the same as those same comments and links would have been if made in the FW members' own personal journals.
I am reminded of this argument by the statements now being made that anyone who posts anything on the net, even locked, has no right to protest if the information becomes public. Because the net is a public place, and anyone who posts anything there, no matter how secured, is just asking for it to be publicized.
I am reminded of other arguments about victims "asking for it".
Nor do I consider this an unreasonable analogy to make. There is a voilation of personal integrity invovled. And the perpetrators are denying their responsibility by insisting that it is the victim's job to be aware of all risks and guard against them with such vigor that even the most aggressive perpetrator has no opening. That it is only the utterly, inhumanly blameless who have the right to respect.
And you know what pisses me off even more? If I posted this publicly, I have little doubt it would be pounced upon as Wank! and Drama! and promptly linked and reposted for mockery by people who would say "My God, she's so serious about it, can't she take a joke?" As if to make light of the pain they have caused. As if to say that, because it is "humor", they cannot be held culpable for the cruelty of it. As if to say the cruelty is deserved, because the target didn't behave with irreprochable reserve and purity.
Anyone who works with sexual assault issues or with women's rights issues should recognize this pattern. The fact that it is applied, here, to emotional rather than physical assault, and, usually, assault on a lesser scale, does nothing to alleviate my disgust with anyone who would employ the pattern to excuse themselves.
There is no excuse, and I'm sick of hearing people who have indulged their own pettiness and cruelty claim that they have done nothing wrong, and that it is the victim's fault.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-03-05 11:53 am (UTC)I am reminded of other arguments about victims "asking for it".
Nail. Hammer. BANG.
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Date: 2005-03-05 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-05 02:58 pm (UTC)And the idea that because something is posted on the 'net--even if locked, and held behind passwords and security--that it should still be made accessible to the unwashed masses... that pisses me OFF. I have friends who complain about work in private journals; they could lose their jobs, and their careers could be ruined if those posts were made public. I could lose all first rights to my novel if the chapters were archived in a public location, and that's two frickin' years of my life and a lot of emotional investment to go down the drain because some twit has a crazy notion that 'information wants to be free.' Not my information, you asshat!
To have someone use my distress--and a very real distress, considering what could be at stake--as a source of amusement... that's just insult to injury. As far as I'm concerned, if they're willing to cough up the potential of about $30K that I'd lose via internet publication, then and only then would they be free to laugh all they want. Hell, they would've paid for the pleasure.
*grumpy and mercenary, damn it*
no subject
Date: 2005-03-05 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-05 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-05 02:49 pm (UTC)...if enough people seem to think I should, I might post this in the essay journal. With all comments disabled for a while. But only if other people don't seem to be saying it. I don't like the thought of increasing my own target-quotient.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-05 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-05 02:01 pm (UTC)There is something about these comms that is deeply hurtful because you are mocking people, but sometimes ... I dont know. I can't help it. Have you ever read
I think I have a problem with the maliciousness that so often accompanies wank communities and the superior attitudes. But sometimes, dude, 300+ comments flaming each other about suggesting that the smurfs weren't, you know, 100% straight is a little nuts.
[shrugs] I'm conflicted. Mostly because I've been on both sides of the debate and I really do get a kick out of trolling comms that drive me batty. Like
.... though it is unlikely to make me stop trolling conservative comms because I am just not that mature. ^^;;
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Date: 2005-03-05 02:05 pm (UTC)blargh.
[not mature in the slightest when it comes to teh el jay]
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Date: 2005-03-05 02:59 pm (UTC)But an organized, high profile, community for doing it? A comm designed for outsiders to pour oil on the fire and laugh? That's... really pretty twisted. Or else deeply malicious. Probably both. Especially once the mob mentality is activated.
And when it goes beyond what people do in public comms, when it involves organizing and supporting the deliberate breach of personal trust in publicizing what amounts to private correspondance, that's just plain despicable.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-06 04:50 am (UTC)I understand the impulse to troll, because god knows I do it. sorry, can't help it. But I think you're right and that when you have a huge community that gives people identification & ego boosts through mocking other people in a malicious way, well, there's something very junior high school in that and not in the good way. If there ever was anything good that came out of junior high.
And sometimes trolling can be malicious. My periodic mocking of Belt is definitely not motivated by my deep love of the human race, but rather a deep seated belief that the boy is a grade A wanker. But sometimes, well, it just has to be said otherwise the comm spins out of control into the idioucy that is
enh.
I think the thing that gets creepy about coms like F_W, or
no subject
Date: 2005-03-05 03:34 pm (UTC)(On a complete tangent, I was amused to find out that fm_alchemist both has a sister community that counts the days they've avoided being on FW for a record of 27 days, and that there are several FMA fans who are on both lists, who are invariably the ones that post about the kerfuffles there.)
I don't like when people bring up personal issues on people's journals; just the stuff like people arguing over whether X in a series is sleeping with Y or A, but even so I feel guilty when I think about it. I always get the feeling that I technically avoid the issue. Eh.
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Date: 2005-03-05 03:48 pm (UTC)As for combing through personal journals to find this stuff, I think that's both bad manners and indicative of a seriously unhealthy interest in promoting conflict. But, over that, to take the purely personal things on a personal journal and publicize explicitly to be mocked them is disgusting.
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Date: 2005-03-05 03:55 pm (UTC)*nod* My general thought on that is that if I'm not going to wander into your personal journal on my own simply for random amusement, a community doing it is...well, a violation, really.
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Date: 2005-03-05 05:27 pm (UTC)The example I used today was the whole sports mascot issue, since a few years of teaching freshman comp left me painfully familiar with that argument. But one of the trends that kept coming up was the way these young, white, male students would write so passionately about what these oversensitive Indians should and shouldn't be offended by.
Guess what - you don't get to make that call. You don't get to tell someone else whether or not they have the right to be offended or take something personally. Just because you don't feel hurt or threatened or offended by something doesn't mean that another person, with a very different background and set of experiences, shouldn't feel threatened either.
You make a choice. That choice has consequences. Those consequences may include someone expressing and feeling disgust, anger, or any number of things. Regardless of whether you think those things are justified, those feelings are a consequence of your choice and your actions. Try taking some God damned responsibility, people.
I may be overly sensitive on this issue right now... We just got a lawyer bill for $4000 because a certain person feels that the court should have forced him to take a lawyer, even though he didn't request one and chose to try to argue his case without one. Now he's appealing because, as a result of that choice, he got his ass royally kicked by our own (expensive as hell) attorney. Naturally, it's our fault and the fault of the court. In no way could he have any responsibility for his own stupid-ass choice.
Yup. Definitely getting off on a tangent. I'll stop now :-)
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Date: 2005-03-05 08:20 pm (UTC)And Butthead sucks. I mean, there's someone who's just begging to be naturally selected.
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Date: 2005-03-05 05:53 pm (UTC)But what I sometimes wonder, when I hear about it, is what makes me so different from them. I can't say I've never mocked someone I don't know. What makes what I do with a group of friends so different from what they do as a community? Is it really so different or less cruel just because I'm doing it on a smaller scale?
I know there *is* a difference. Generally, if I'm going to mock something I see as stupid, I'm not going to do it to a person's face because I don't want to hurt that person's feelings. If I talk about it, it's usually to a group of people I actually know, as opposed to a community at large, where anyone can just stumble in and see. And I'm not going to go looking for things to mock. But how much does not wanting to hurt someone's feeling really take out of the fact that it's still mean? Where does the line get drawn between acceptable whinging or complaint and... and wank?
I do agree, the idea of a public community just for making fun of people makes my skin itch. And maybe that's where the line really gets drawn. Because if you join a community like that, it's feels like people are *looking* for something to mock, rather than having a place to do so should something just happen to come up. Town square stocks where anyone can be thrown in without any sense of privacy or moderation.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-05 08:18 pm (UTC)So, yes, it's still mean to say such things in any public place, but a wank comm is organized and irresponsible cruelty on a scale that makes me twitch.
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Date: 2005-03-05 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-05 10:40 pm (UTC)Hi. My $.02 (AM)
Date: 2005-03-07 10:07 pm (UTC)I saw your comment and that you'd privileged me with friending, so I hope you don't mind if I chime in with my experiences...
Two summers ago I learned of the existence of FW quite by accident, when someone who lurked on my site for no reason that made any sense went and made fun of a private, intense, ethical-theological-mythological argument among us regulars, which caused a long FW thread which then got back to us, nyah nyah style. The details aren't relevant, particularly - it was extremely serious stuff, on the ethical side, and we were also using references from works that we were all extremely serious about, and some of it was pretty intensive technical metaphysics, and when you talk about religion or philosophy or fiction, there's a lot of emotion involved. But this was my tiny, obscure, no-hit backwater board, not GAFF or any other high traffic community.
I pretty much blew it off - I have enemies, from fandom, because being a defiant canonista on ffnet will do that, and also so will being opinionated and cocky, if they're not popular opinions, oh well, I'm not impressed with you guys either. And forgot about them. But I had at that time a requirement that was pretty important: let me know if you link to something on my site, because at that time I had very small site, and had to be careful about bandwidth. Even if you're just going to tear it apart, let me know so I can monitor.
And they did it again, and they didn't. So I was pretty ticked, but again, it was just personal, I could afford to overlook it. But then I found a little more about FW - that they bragged about making people cry, and take down their sites. And there wasn't any point to it - they weren't *critics*, they didn't get in fights about style or plot or canon or anything like that - they just found people they thought uncool, and pointed and jeered.
So I set up a trap, to put their claims of having a sense of humor and not taking selves so seriously, to the test. (There must be some kitsune in my family tree, somewhere.)
I wrote a pompous, mock-anthropological "dissertation" examining them. I tore into the pieces that the first and repeat offender had written on her own site, line by line, by her own standards. I used as many polysyllabic words as I could pack into it without the FTP breaking down! checked my monthly bandwidth, posted it on my little site, - and then I waited.
Sure enough, they went crazy. They were besides themselves. It was downloaded hundreds of times in a few hours. They couldn't stay away. How they howled and mocked me! And then I put up the second half, - showing how I'd suckered them, saying why I had done it, that they were vicious losers, posting the numbers for how many times they had downloaded it in how few hours showing that they *did* care very much what I thought of them, that I had the power, and I thought they were pathetic, and I would happily make them dance to my tune if they didn't learn from this. And I took down the link to the "tar-baby" posts, but not the posts themselves. (I warned them that if they tried to troll-flood my boards I would make *another* example of them, too.)
And then I forgot about them, until someone reminded me later. I keep forgetting about them, except sometimes when I check my site stats, I see that those files keep getting downloaded... I got a couple thank-you emails for standing up to them, but except when something like this happens, I forget they exist, because they're boring. So much more fun to fight about real issues.
But you can't just ignore bullies - they *don't* go away. If it had only been me, I would not have punished them, but I'm older and don't care so much. It was them ganging up on the weak and then celebrating it - blaiming the victims as you say - not a fair fight - and I *knew* they wouldn't be able to take what they dished out.
Re: Hi. My $.02 (AM)
Date: 2005-03-07 10:31 pm (UTC)Not at all, welcome!
Besides, I think I may be in love. That's brilliant; what a way to turn it around on them.
And there wasn't any point to it - they weren't *critics*, they didn't get in fights about style or plot or canon or anything like that
Yes, I think that's one of the things that annoys me the most about wank comms and Sue hunting comms and at least half the badfic comms. And even several of the meta comms, which are allegedly havens for analysis. There's nothing productive about what they do, not even in the tooth-and-claw academic manner. It's just so uselessly petty.
*grins* I can just imagine the screams. *wicked laugh*
Well,
Date: 2005-03-07 11:34 pm (UTC)SnarkSue business at the beginning! The difference between the very-appropriately named "Wank" communities - because that is what they are doing, far more than what they are mocking - and canon-debating ones, is that the former don't care about what they're fighting over, and that is an uncrossable gulf. In fact, what attracts their mockery-antennae, like blood in the water, is passion: people caring so much about something that they don't care how they look to outsiders any more, who make themselves Wild Men by the fierceness of their love. This is intolerable to the mavens of society: there is nothing a society hostess of the Gilded Age hated more, than people talking politics or religion at a dinner party. Fandom is both. (And both are fandoms, to sound paradoxical.)They have to tear those who care to pieces, because they are a reproach to them. How dare they have such passion, such heat, such delight in something that they care if someone hurts it, in their eyes? And so, like vampires, like sharks, they must crush and drain all the life out of those who do - and they usually succeed, because few of us, particularly younger fen, are able to truly not care about being mocked by the normals. I'm lucky - I'm older, and I've always been insane, so it isn't a temptation. (I tried being a mundane for a year, in college. I nearly killed myself with boredom and the stress of pretending.)
When we fight over canon vs fanon, it's ultimately a Platonic clash: two contending versions of the Ideal, both defended because each side believes in their own Form of the original. But I have *infinitely* more in common with the rankest Suvian offender, than with any of the ravening FW horde. We joust in deadly earnest: they would destroy the tournament from spite.
Why bother? It's just fanfic--no, it's always never "just" anything. All kinds of things are going on, primarily applied critical theory:
Coming from an academic background, where literary criticism is as vicious and cutthroat and often as pointlessly-personal as FW, but even when it isn't tends to get wrapped up in lofty technical terms, and *rarely* does it have any real-world impact, it is rather wonderful (in all archaic and modern senses of the word) to me to see how a rough-and-ready critical theory can take shape with the rapidity and vigour of a soccer match. Something is happening on all sides - the offense, the defense, the onlookers - when canon battles are waged in realtime in public forae. It's almost like the ancients with their drama contests and a dash of Celtic bards' "flyting" thrown in.
It also serves as a beginning critical thinking and ethical socialization training: forcing people who have not likely ever been obliged to it nor will be in school, to think about the implications of what they say and do, that even a Secondary Reality exists apart and has its rules, that they are not entitled to admiration, but must earn it, that art is work, and if you want just the praises but none of the tomatoes then you don't - imo - belong publishing your stuff. The fact that most Sue-Hunters are ex-Sue-Writers is a dead giveaway that this is something different from FW: instead of getting bored with the fandom and then going away and sneering at it (embittered ex-fen, when professional, go and write snotty reviews of LOTR for the London Review of Books - it's the same thing), reborn canonistas want to understand, to appreciate what they were too self-caught-up-in as "Lady Greenleaf" or "UltimateSeiyuQueen" to notice, and to be able to appreciate other stories and work towards improving their own.)
One is a regression, the other is a crude, uncouth, yet vigorous school of art. --But then, there's a reason why I always despite being highly verbal, identified with uncouth, direct characters like Chewie as a kid (as well as with old wizards like Gandalf and Ben) - Some of us are destined to have Monkey as our avatar, whether we realize it or not.
Think of it as Wookie Soccer
Date: 2005-03-07 11:38 pm (UTC)Re: Think of it as Wookie Soccer
Date: 2005-03-08 08:08 am (UTC)This is a discussion I was just having with some other fen--about Sues and the hunting thereof. Our conclusion was that there are, loosely, two kinds of Sue writers. One quickly becomes a reformed Sue writer, who, as you say, has seen the light of canon and wishes to spread it with evangelical fervor. That one wrote Sues out of inexperience, generally, starting with what she knew as any writer tends to. I find that tiresome, because they're as rigid and doctrinaire as any other convert and I have yet to meet any who are capable of holding any kind of dialogue on the subject. They're much more the walking-billboard types. But, I suppose, I can always hope they grow up to be articulate disputants at some point.
The other kind, though, is the one who writes what I call Stories That Are Not Stories. That's the one who doesn't give a flying fig about the art and craft of writing or, really, about canon--those things have no bearing on her goals. She writes something that looks, superficially, like a story but is, in fact, much closer to a personals ad. It's there as a gesture of contact and community, using the form which has become so highly valued in fandom. And I honestly think it's unreasonable to demand that they conform to the same standards as people who write Stories That Are Stories.
I'm a big believer in the influence of utility. If someone wants to write good stories about the world and characters of Fandom Whatever, then, yes, I think the combat of canon v fanon is entirely justified and appropriate, and I'll just be over here getting my cleats on. But if the point is socialization, or the heart-comfort-food of folding the story around oneself, or a wish fulfillment lark... I think trying to deny the validity of those projects is just as much a denial of the passion that goes into this thing of ours as the naysayers at FW.
I probably wont read them. But I'm not about to say that they have no right to exist. And that is precisely what the vast majority of Sue hunting comms and individual members thereof are saying.
*blinks* And I wrote all that before coffee. I must go remedy this...
Wow...
Date: 2005-03-08 11:33 am (UTC)What struck me was the whole "but you posted in PUBLIC!" which seems viable to me (and being a part of a bbs, I understand and agree) turned into "you posted anywhere so you deserve it!" Which is, of course, not the same thing. And, as Mrs. Manners would surely say, someone being an idiot or rude or whatever gives NO reason for a person to respond in kind. (Hey, she can be a hard-assed bitch sometimes, that Mrs. Manners, but sometimes she's got it right...)
Anyway, I'd just like to jump on the "any info is usable and the responsibility of the person putting it on the internet" and request the credit card information of all the people that hold this view. I mean, their using credit cards online to buy stuff (Perhaps copies of "How to bully the weak and mock the fragile" or something.) Since *they* used the credit cards, it is *their* fault if I get them and, say, use them to pay off all my debts???
So, should you find any of their info, kindly send it my way. :)
And beautiful post, btw... I agree 100% with the ethics (or ill-ethics, I suppose) of such behavior.
Re: Wow...
Date: 2005-03-08 11:43 am (UTC)*evil laugh* Oh, yes.
Fandom Wank exists to point out the stupidity of people. Which, of course, is fun to do in private. But really sucks in public. You know, now I think about it, I believe I got that distinction between public and private behavior from reading Miss Manners. Or, at least, I got it greatly strengthened by her.
God knows I've certainly wanted to use the Guide to Extruciatingly Correct Behavior to bludgeon fans with, often enough. It's nice and thick, and should do the job.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-09 02:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-09 09:16 am (UTC)