"Utterly Horrible Corrosive People"? It's Like "The Princess and the Pea"

The increasingly hysterical and absurd terms used by a subset of the
"cyclists' club" to describe people who are obviously supposed to be
the likes of Judith and me beggar belief. I can only suppose that
those who use such expressions have led *incredibly* sheltered lives
if they haven't come across much, much worse, both online and offline.

I mean, come ON. I'm not trying to speak for Judith here, but
generally all we do is put our opinions forward, sometimes quite
forcefully (but no more so than many others on usenet), and yes, we
can be hostile towards a small set of posters, like you-know-who, but
they tend to give as good as they get, and anyway it's Usenet. Hell,
we're really not *anywhere near* as bad as the hypersensitive drama
queens keep making out. We address people's points properly and
sincerely, never trying to duck difficult questions, which is more
than can be said for some. We use coherent, readable language which
is up to the general (remarkably high) standard around here. Despite
what some like to say we do *not* simply repeat exactly the same
things endlessly; almost always, with the possible exception of the
Lou Knee topic (a special case), a post which one of us has written
will contain at least something which is new, relevant to what is
being discussed and interesting to some (interesting enough that we
get plenty of non-belligerent replies from some of the more reasonable
posters).

Anyone would think from some of the descriptions given that we were
constantly flooding the group with the likes of "**** U U PEACE OF
**** I'm gONNA KIC+K YOUE ASS LOL" and the like, in reply to pretty
much every post, nymshifting every time, and only ever posting
extremely abrasive generic stuff with zero relevant and useful content
time after time. While some may like to make out that we are, it's
self-evident that that's not the case. We can and do contribute to
discussions and we make perfectly valid points.

I still think that what actually gets these people's backs up so much
about the likes of Judith and me is that we dare to post opposing
opinions on "hot button" issues which actually make a lot of sense and
are difficult to counter. Certainly, a similar bitter "bad loser"
attitude has been displayed towards Matt B a number of times, but
generally he is described simply as "annoying" or "off-topic" rather
than the sorts of ridiculous accusations levelled at Judith and me,
presumably because he has the patience of a saint and somehow manages
never to counter the considerable nastiness displayed towards him with
anything but politeness.

I really and truly don't understand how anyone can describe Judith or
me as "utterly horrible corrosive people". Even if you believe that
we goad people, even if you believe that we "destroyed URC" (funny, it
seems fine to me, better in fact), even if you don't like our opinions
or think we're somehow "here for the wrong reasons", surely none of
that is anywhere near enough to justify such incredibly melodramatic
language. What have we done that's supposed to be so awful? I mean
really done, not one person's false allegations about phone calls or
similar. If we're so corrosive then why have we both stated that
we're quite happy (generally) with the moderation on ULM and UKRC,
it's just URCM's "moderation" that we, like many others, have a
problem with? Maybe there's actually something in what we're saying,
and we're saying it because we want a fairly moderated cycling
group...ever thought of that? Occam's razor anyone?

We don't do anything that an "utterly horrible corrosive person" would
do. We're not threatening violence against other posters, we're not
criminals, we're invariably nice to posters at least until they're
genuinely unpleasant to us in some way, we don't post weird or
disturbing or perverted stuff, we don't try to sabotage discussions
for no reason, etc, etc...I'd hate to see how Simon Brooke would react
if a genuinely "utterly horrible corrosive person" started posting,
and what he'd call them. I'm actually quite sad to see him go in a
way, as he was probably less intolerant than most of the URCM
"moderators", and was sometimes even prepared to (!) stoop to engaging
in meaningful discussion and answering questions about "moderation"
decisions. But his description of (obviously) us is actually pretty
offensive and just way, way off. No-one who I know in real life would
even begin to describe me in that way. I don't know whether Mr Brooke
and others who use equally ludicrous descriptions of Judith and me
sincerely believe what they're saying (in which case they're
stunningly deluded), or whether it's just part of the bloody-minded
sour grapes tactics to discredit our awkwardly difficult-to-counter
arguments. It even sounds like his description may have been aimed at
Tom Crispin as well: it couldn't really be any wider of the mark.

I think those who like to complain so much about us should wake up and
realise that if we're really the worse, they're remarkably fortunate,
and they should be grateful that these newsgroups aren't frequented by
anyone who's really bad or who makes threads genuinely unreadable/
unusable. They need to stop acting like spoilt brats, and above all,
they need to learn to tolerate the eloquent expression of opposing
opinions without throwing their toys out of the pram and desiring to
"take revenge" on that person. It's not the messenger's fault. If
they're really wrong then you should easily be able to show them how;
if you realise they're right then the way to show that you're a big
person is not to use unpleasant phrases about them and refuse to
engage with them, it's to admit you've been wrong all this time and
thank them for showing you. I would have hoped that was obvious.

In summary, some people don't seem to know they're born, and really
need to get a sense of proportion and keep their gunpowder dry for if
and when someone really bad comes along. Scapegoating a small number
of people for everything and using ludicrously overblown language to
describe them isn't going to solve anything.

To those who have made it this far, sorry for the long post.

On Wed, 09 Feb 2011 10:24:20 -0800, Nuxx Bar wrote:

The increasingly hysterical and absurd terms used by a subset of the
"cyclists' club" to describe people who are obviously supposed to be the
likes of Judith and me beggar belief.

I don't lump you with Judith.

etc

To those who have made it this far, sorry for the long post.





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