I'd like to begin by thanking Sam for the well-thought out post to which I am replying. Seeing his version of events last night has helped to clear up a lot of things for me, and I am grateful for that.

Nevertheless, there can be no denying the fact that I found the events which occurred in chat last night to be extremely offensive. We can argue all we like about the relative merits of the "humor" that went on there, or the effectiveness of swear word "filters"; none of this will change the fact that watching the chat last night made me so angry that I signed onto Rinkchat solely for the purpose of saying that what happened was not acceptable as humor. (That, of course, is what I meant when I said that it was not funny.) Furthermore, as their comments showed, c0bra and Morris found this "humor" to be even less acceptable than I did.

So the question asked of me is, why did I not find the events in chat last night funny? Why, instead, did I find them offensive? To answer that question, I have to talk a little bit about what /makes/ jokes funny, or not funny; and what /makes/ pranks offensive, or not. The problem is, I don't have any really good answers to those questions; even the best philosophers and psychiatrists in our society are still working on them!

In short, I'm not being asked to do anything /easy/.

The way I've decided to tackle this problem today is by example. I hope to show, using examples, that certain types of behavior are offensive; and I hope to draw parallels between that sort of behavior and what /appeared/ to have occurred in Rinkchat last night. I am aware that this sort of argument is not completely logical; but please bear with me: I am not trying to create a logical argument. Instead, I am trying to convey ideas. And while it is not completely logical, I believe that the format that I have chosen is the one that will best expedite the conveyance of those ideas to those who are willing to consider them.

In his post, Sam listed five reasons why he thought people might have been offended by the events of last night. He thought it might have been because the joke went on for too long, or was too old, or wasn't funny, or morally offensive, or in poor taste. All of these things are true to some degree; or in some fashion. However, none of them truly capture the reason that these events were offensive. As Sam pointed out in his post, none of these things are /important/ enough for me to have actually logged onto Chat just to say that the joke was not acceptable. Certainly, they were not important enough to have caused Morris or c0bra to have left.

In brief, I believe that the real reason the "joke" was offensive was this: "The events in chat last night conveyed the impression that Sam and Dave do not have any respect or consideration for the feelings of other Rinkchatters. Instead, Sam and Dave feel that it is /funny/ to manipulate the feelings of other Rinkchatters by making them uncomfortable or angry. Furthermore, Rinkchat condones and encourages chatters to insult and scandalize each other. If you want to be on Rinkchat, then you /must/ find these scandals and insults funny -- otherwise we don't want to talk to you."

I think it is quite obvious that if people recieved the impressions that I stated above, then it is no wonder that they would want to leave Rinkchat. One of the most valuable aspects of Rinkchat, in my opinion, is that the people there are respectful and considerate of others. If this is no longer true, then -- to be blunt -- Rinkchat is not superior in any way to, for example, AOL chat; and Rinkchatters must keep looking for a place on the internet where they can hold intelligent conversation. Furthermore, if the impression was conveyed that Sam and Dave do not respect anyone, is it any wonder that Rinkchatters would lose respect for Sam and Dave?

Exaclty /how/ this impression was conveyed will be the subject of the remainder of this post.

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I'd like to clear something up quickly. I do not know either Sam or Dave in real life. I have read their posts on this forum, a lot; however, I have seldom had a chance to talk to them. I have been on this forum -- irregularily -- for something like two years; I have been on Rinkchat only since Semptember of this year. In that time, not counting last night, I think I've said approximately three sentences to Sam, and he said approximately two sentences to me (not counting greetings). Furthermore, I don't think Dave and I have ever exchanged anything more substantial than "Hello."

It's not that outrageous to suggest that I might form an opinion of them based on one prank last night.

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From the "Rinkchat Policy" page:

"1. Keep it clean. RinkChat is a public forum. Please keep all discussions suitable for mixed company. Offensive user names and posting profanity, vulgarity, pornography, or links to pornography (for example) are strictly prohibited.

"2. Respect other participants. Disagreements are acceptable. Debates are acceptable. Flame wars are not. Please do not harass or flame other participants in this forum."

So, here's an example of a "joke": "I am in a coastal city, by an ocean. So I'll go rent a boat, and drive it way out into the ocean at night, far away from shore. Then, I'll send a distress call: 'man overboard'. I'll scoot my boat away, and watch as all of the rescue vehicles come and try to find this 'man overboard'. Of course, they'll never be able to find him; I made him up. But they'll get really angry and frustrated looking for him. The angrier and more frustrated they get, the funnier it'll be!"

Even ignoring the fact that this "joke" costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to launch the rescue operation, and the fact that it puts people's lives at risk, it's pretty easy to see that it isn't funny. This is true even though it often /is/ funny when people are confused. For example, I think that the electoral battle in Florida is hilarious. But it would /not/ be hilarious if Bush and Gore got together before the election and said "Let's plan to have a big legal battle over the ballots in Florida and then laugh at all the fuss the newspapers make about it." In short, /manipulating/ people with the intent to annoy and frustrate them is /never/ funny. It's just mean.

Here's another example of a "joke", to prove my point: "I own a compact but powerful and high-quality CD player that is loud enough to crack plaster and that can run for about twelve hours off of a dozen D-sized batteries [this much is true]. The CD player is compact enough to fit in my backpack. So I'll get a CD of loud 90s dance music, and crank the volume to maximum (but leave the player off, of course). Then, I'll put the player in my backpack and walk into the basement of the Science and Technology library at the University, where many people study. I'll set the alarm on the CD player to go off in ten minutes. There are lots of boxes in the basement of that library; I'll stuff the backpack into the bottom of one of those. Then, I'll walk out of the library and watch as the music annoys and frustrates the people trying to study. They'll never find the backpack; there are too many boxes in the basement of the library. The angrier and more frustrated they get, the funnier it'll be!"

This "joke" is just as tiresome and offensive as the phony distress call, even though it does not cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and nobody's life is at risk. The reason, too, is the same: it is mean, not funny, to manipulate or provoke people to be angry or frustrated.

If the person who hid the backpack was caught afterwards, he might say, "Can't you people take a joke?" But the response would be that what he did was no joke. Instead, it was a prank that showed a lack of respect and consideration for the people studying in the library; instead, it presumed that provoking those people to be angry or frustrated was funny. Such a prank is inherently destructive, and therefore /not/ okay.

Here, therefore, is another "joke": "I know of a chat room on the Internet where people have humorous and insightful conversations. I will log onto that chat room pretending to be a drunken frat boy. I will make rude comments to all of the other people in the chat room. I will used misspelled swear words so that they can't /actually/ accuse me of swearing if I am found out. I will not allow any coherent chatting to go on by interjecting my rude comments throughout the chat. I know that people can kick or ban me from the chat room; if they kick me then I'll just come back and if they ban me then I'll come back with a new but similar screen name. I will thereby be able to prevent any intelligent conversation. People will be angry with me and frustrated that they can do nothing to stop me. Furthermore, they will be angry with the language that I use, but no one will be able to do anything about it. The angrier and more frustrated they get, the funnier it will be!"

Regardless of whether this sort of humor was the /intent/ of last night's events, it was the /result/. However, comments were made that indicated to me, at least at the time, that the /intent/ of the events of last night was to annoy and frustrate Rinkchatters and to derive humor from the extent to which they became annoyed and frustrated.

If Sam and Dave intentionally pulled the gag described above, then as with the kid who put the backpack into the basement of the library, it was no joke. Indeed, to copy what I said about that kid: "It was a prank that showed a lack of respect and consideration for the people [there]...it presumed that provoking those people to be angry or frustrated was funny. Such a prank is inherently destructive, and therefore /not/ okay."

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Sam claims that his object in last night's prank was to make fun of drunken frat boys. I believe that if this was the object then it backfired; a brief comparison with the Sting should illustrate this.

For this comparison, I will only discuss the "story" of the two incidents.

Radebur obviously made fun of the sort of "cool" chatters that one finds throughout the rest of the internet. He's used to being "cool"; and a member of a sort of elite group of internet people. Now he finds himself in a chatroom which values such simple things as respect and proper English; and he cannot comprehend it and cannot adjust. Instead of being "cool", Radebur is an outsider in Rinkchat. His struggles are inherently funny; they make fun of the fact that much of Internet culture has forgotten about such things as respect and proper English. Without going into depth, I will say that if you read the Sting again with this interpretation in mind, you will see how the irony of Radebur's transition creates much of the humor in this archive.

BEER and BUTT, on the other hand, do not act out of place in Rinkchat. Instead, they proceed to prevent Rinkchatters from having any conversation. They ignore us if we ask them to stop it; they ignore the admins if they are kicked and banned. Furthermore, they make /fun/ of us when we ask them to stop being so annoying. For example, when Sam asks them to tone it down in "red text", BUTT says that using red text makes Sam a fag. Remember, we didn't know that BEER and BUTT were Sam and Dave at that point. At no point do BEER and BUTT's actions make BEER and BUTT (and therefore any drunken frat boys) look silly. Instead, BEER and BUTT make Sam and Dave and the rest of the Rinkchatters -- especially those who ask them to tone it down -- look silly and ineffective.

With respect to swear words -- you should know, I am /never/ offended by swear words themselves. I am offended by what they /mean/, and what people mean when they use them. I believe that the swear word filters in Rinkchat are effective because they send the message that using bad language will not be tolerated. Their effectiveness comes from the fact that if the filters are in place, people won't /bother/ using swear words at /all/. The effectiveness does not come from changing the /look/ of the swear words -- I know the filter is in place when BEER tells someone to "fork off", and I know what he meant, so the filter doesn't make any difference. The fact that BEER and BUTT appear to completely ignore the swear word filters simply adds to the effect that was created -- and that effect was to show that Rinkchatters were silly and ineffective.

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Did I believe that Sam and Dave really set out to get a laugh by angering other Rinkchatters? Well, I found it very hard to believe. At the same time, however, I found it very hard to believe anything /else/. Consider:

- People said /throughout/ that they found BEER and BUTT to be offensive and thanked Sam and Dave each time they kicked them. Yet, Sam and Dave continued to bring BEER and BUTT back. Why?

- After it was over, Dave said (to the best of my memory): "You mean we actually PISSED YOU OFF? YES!!"

- Either Sam or Dave (I can't remember) said: "Yes! We actually RUINED THE CHAT!"

- Stephen said something to the effect of "Sam has been PMing me throughout the evening. He's making a funny joke by ruining Rinkchat."

- As I have shown above, BEER and BUTT do not make fun of drunken frat boys. They make fun of Rinkchatters, and the ineffective response of Rinkchatters to those frat boys.

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This sort of joke, where people get a laugh by angering and frustrating others, is not acceptable. Yet it is only /half/ of what went on last night.

There's a soldier named Iago who plays a major role in Shakespeare's play "Othello". Iago is a highly trusted officer in Othello's army. One day, as a prank, he convinces Othello that another officer, Cassio, is sleeping with Othello's wife. The result is that Othello flies into a rage and kills both Cassio and his wife. Then, when it's too late, Othello discovers that his wife wasn't actually cheating on him; it was just a prank made up by Iago. Grieved, Othello takes his own life.

Iago is known as one of the most dastardly villians that Shakespeare ever created. Nobody thinks that his prank was "funny".

So here's an example of a "joke": "I am a highly respected executive at a company. I will call a company meeting. In that meeting, I will announce that I have discovered that one of my junior accountants is cheating on his wife. I will say that I used my powers as executive to look at his corporate e-mail and discovered highly sexual e-mails to another woman, which indicate that they have been sleeping together for some time. I will read those e-mails (which of course I fabricated myself). For the next few hours, I will watch as my employees shun this junior accountant, and I will laugh as he becomes more and more bewildered. After those hours, of course, I will call another meeting and announce that I had actually made the whole thing up. In the meanwhile, though, it will be funny to see how angry and confused people get!"

I think it's obvious that this sort of prank is offensive, even evil, even though, unlike in Iago's prank, nobody actually gets killed. The executive is perpetrating a scandal about the junior accounant, even if only for a short time. He manipulates the emotions of the people who work for him so that they detest the junior accountant. Then he expects them all to think it's funny! Imagine being the junior accountant.

Here's another "prank": "I am a member of a closely-knit group of 'cool' friends at junior high school. Tomorrow, I will steal all of my friends' lunches and blame it on another friend, John. I'll laugh as my friends get angry and shun John, telling him that they never want anything more to do with him. After a while, of course, I'll reveal that it was me after all, and I'll return everyone else's lunch. They'll understand -- it was just a joke!"

If you were one of John's friends, how would you deal with being manipulated so that you were so angry with John that you told him you hated him and never wanted to speak with him again? What if you were John? Could you forgive the speaker in the above prank for causing so many mean things to be said about you?

I think it's obvious that this sort of prank is not funny.

Here, then, is another "prank". "I am the administrator of a chat room where intelligent and humorous conversations take place. I will log into the chat room as a drunken frat boy and I will use loud, rude language to annoy everyone. Then, when everyone is annoyed and frustrated by their inability to stop me, I will tell everyone that as the administrator of the chat room, I have discovered that the drunken frat boy is actually a prank. I will go on to say that I have discovered the purpetrator of the prank: it is (let us say) 'Wormwood'. I will laugh as everyone becomes angry at Wormwood and as Wormwood grows confused and hurt. After a while, of course, I'll admit it was all just me playing a prank, so no harm done."

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As is often the case, Kaz! was in both Mountain Stream /and/ Forest Glade last night. During this 'prank', Wormwood logged into Forest Glade. At about this time, Sam was saying that Wormwood and BEER had the same IP address, and he was telling Wormwood to stop it. It appeared in Mountain Stream as though Wormwood was blithely ignoring Sam, however, since after Wormwood was kicked BEER just said something insulting and continued to disrupt the chat.

I was angry with Wormwood because it appeared that he had played the "joke" that I described earlier: he was trying to get a laugh by annoying and frustrating Rinkchatters and by making Rinkchatters look silly and ineffective. In short, he was being disrespectful to all of us. If he was standing in front of me, I would have punched him. I'm serious.

Wormwood said to Kaz! (while I was watching) that he was not, in fact, BEER and that there must be some other explanation for the IP address thing. At the same time, some stuff with Wes was going on in Mountain Stream; it was wierd enough that I was inclined to believe Wormwood.

I know that Wormwood said that he did not feel good about the fact that he was being scandalized (although not in those words). He said as much in his post to this thread.

How do I deal with the fact that I was so angry at him that I wanted to physically hurt him, when in fact he had done nothing?

If in fact Sam and Dave's /intent/ was to make me that angry at Wormwood in order to provide themselves with a laugh, what should I say to them?

My decision, I'm sure you realize, was to tell them that, "That was NOT funny."

And now you know.

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I'm going to sum up by asking a number of rhetorical questions about what happened last night. Most of these questions are mostly to prove my point: Sam's post clears up many of them. Nevertheless, answers to these questions wouldn't hurt.

1. Wormwood asked, last night in chat, after the whole thing was over, "Was it funny?" Dave replied, to the best of my memory, "It was more funny than it was something to be so outraged about that I would want to leave Rinkworks forever." That, to me is a non-answer. I will ask Wormwood's question again: "Was it funny that Rinkchatters were so annoyed and frustrated and ineffectual when faced with BEER and BUTT?" Furthermore, "Was it funny that Rinkchatters were angry with Wormwood and Morris, who had done nothing?"

2. Dave said, "You mean we actually PISSED YOU OFF? YES!!" Were you really happy that you managed to piss us off? Furthermore, was it your goal?

3. Sam said, "Does anyone else want to leave? I'm serious. If anyone here finds this sort of thing offensive, I don't want anything to do with you." (The quotations, of course, are to the best of my memory but probably not exact.) Do you really not want anything to do with people who don't find it funny to scandalize and insult people? How about people who don't find it funny to be manipulated into being annoyed, angry, and frustrated?

4. Dave said, "I have come into this chatroom many times, and have seen idiots having much stupider conversations than this one." Actually, the language he used was more rude than this, but I don't remember it exactly. My question is, who are you talking about when you are referring to these "idiots"? Wormwood? Flyingcats? Me?

5. My last question, is, I suppose, the major one. By creating a "prank" that in effect, at least, derived its humor from the fact that Rinkchatters were annoyed and frustrated, and then by blaming this prank on Wormwood and Morris, Sam and Dave "conveyed the impression that [they] do not have any respect or consideration for the feelings of other Rinkchatters. Instead, Sam and Dave feel that it is /funny/ to manipulate the feelings of other Rinkchatters by making them uncomfortable or angry. Furthermore, Rinkchat condones and encourages chatters to insult and scandalize each other. If you want to be on Rinkchat, then you /must/ find these scandals and insults funny -- otherwise we don't want to talk to you." I have shown now how this impression was created. The question is, to what extent is this impression accurate?

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