I also thought that comment #30 in that thread (if you disregard the first and last paragraph) was a particularly good analysis of why flame wars seem so common on the Internet.

I don’t agree with the last bit of this comment in the least, but the analysis seems like it might be right.

The really weird thing I’ve been made aware of lately is someone in my friend’s hierarchy at work, her “grand-boss”, if you will, who just is incredibly uncivil and practically screaming at everyone in e-mail, and in person, she’s gentle and soft-spoken. (I would be a lot more careful in my work e-mail; the rule of thumb for that would be, never put in an e-mail anything you wouldn’t want read aloud in a court of law. Then again, not enough people have had their e-mails subpoenaed to really grok that one.)

Yup.

Decreasing anonymity only helps remedy the problem of the “asshole” indirectly. The important variable is whether a conversant’s identity is salient. For example, if the people involved know each others’ sexes, this will help decrease the tendency of individuals to self-stereotype. Of course, there are a lot of parts of a person’s identity, and an identity is never completely transparent. This is why there are still indications of self-stereotyping in many more immediate forms of communication, such as face-to-face conversations or written correspondences where the conversants know the names of the people they are communicating with. When I speak with a person, there are many things that I do not know about him/her, besides his/her name and location, which affects what I think about that person.

I truly do respect Larry, and I value his input in this community. To paraphrase something Amanda said, my saying something indicates that I care.

And I know he’s been through some dark times, recently in fact. And I know it can’t be easy. I just wish he would stop alienating the people who can help him the most.

What should have been an enlightening discussion about the Hub has become a clash of egos; what should have been about the issue is now about personalities.

This is due, in no small part, to Larry’s apparent carelessness. I don’t hold him solely responsible for this; others have joined in with careless inflammatory remarks. The difference is that on Larry’s part, the carelessness is characteristic. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, and I don’t mean it as a condemnation.

I just wish he’d drop the damn defense, and let in something good, because this community has a lot of good to offer.

And I don’t want this comment to be construed as evidence of my taking a position on this controversy. (I do have an opinion; hopefully I can blog on it if I can get over whatever seems to have been blocking me for the past couple of months).

Part of advocacy is to be steadfast in the face of opposition. But wisdom like this becomes a platitude when applied carelessly or to an extreme.

True wisdom is in learning how to balance the extremes. And sometimes, it’s wise to listen to what others are saying.

Larry, you don’t need to learn the lesson of “not caring what people call you.” It’s a skill you’ve appeared to have mastered.

You need to listen to what A LOT of people are saying about you. Try to learn something from it.

Get over yourself, Larry. Just get over yourself.

Online communication is like a combination of the pre internet methods of the diary and the letter. People kept diaries in which they expressed their inner assholeness, but usually these were seen only by the writer themselves. Very few have survived and been published, and assholeness is regarded as the diary writer being their own waspish and bitchy self, which is all the more interesting if the targets of their comments have acquired at least some degree of fame.

There is always a time interval, which may be several hours or more, between a letter being written, put in an envelope and posted, which gives plenty of time for the writer to reconsider what they have written.

Makoto –> Dangerous to believe in the idea of “model minorities”? Yeah, in fact, the danger inherent in being thought of as a model minority and the whole concept of one is why I find “activism” like Temple Grandin’s to be abhorrent, and in general any other kind of autistic “activism” which starts from the premise of “high-functioning aspies good, low-functioning auties bad.” It defines your worth as a member of a certain group to consist in how you can serve the the dominant class and the existing system. Us high-functioning aspies are good because we’re all highly logical scientific geniuses, and XYZ famous scientists/historical figures were aspies too and all the great scientific achievements of civilization wouldn’t exist if not for aspies– so don’t get rid of us, really, we’re serving you non-autistics! Our existence is good because it gives things to you. But it’s okay to get rid of the low-functioning ones because they’re not giving anything back to you as payment for your letting them exist in this your society. Don’t worry, this has nothing to do with our having the right to exist for ourselves as ourselves or anything silly or wasteful like that. It’s all about what we can give you.

…and that in a nutshell is my problem with that whole approach. (And the whole “you achieve great things that help the dominant society!” thing can also be applied to Asians or Jews or any other group that’s been defined as a model minority too; and in every case it also requires that group to only be given a pretense of having any power.) And it is scary to me how many people call themselves autistic self-advocates while trying to sell themselves with the “aspie model minority” myth.