That was massive. Space, I've been waiting all day for a follow-up to your post last night, and I think the reason that you didn't post this last night was because you've been writing this one NONSTOP since then :P

Anyway, I'm going to just snip huge portions out of the original, so I may very well miss a few points. But I do feel compelled to respond to what I think are the most important subjects brought up.

> 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."

Despite the fact that Spacebar started with a lengthy disclaimer on why he couldn't accurately sum up his reasoning for his feelings, I think the above paragraph does it well.

Anyway, the point was missed. I don't want to speak for Sam and Dave, but I seriously doubt it was either's intent to manipulate the feelings of chatters. Were they trying to fool people? Sure. But there's a difference between that and maliciously trying to hurt someone.

Consider the whole thing as a practical joke. Have you ever told a friend something that wasn't true just to mess with them? Howard makes posts every now and then telling stories and ends with "Did I get you?" These certainly could be construed as manipulating people (he almost always fools me). Yet I see no complaints about that.

Creating confusion and doing unexpected things are the heart of practical jokes. Of course, those not in on a joke may not find it nearly as funny as those perpetrating it do, but so long as no harm was done there's usually not much to complain about. Heck, in The Sting II I was the victim of an elaborate prank, which I find hilarious.

Furthermore, I don't remember Sam or Dave saying "If you didn't think it's funny than leave!" Their sentiment was more like "if you're offended by this, leave." That seems harsh, but is it really? It's Sam's website. He has ALWAYS maintained that he runs it for his own personal amusement; the fact that others enjoy it as well is a happy coincidence.

This place isn't a democracy. While Sam has always been open to suggestions, nobody really has the right to get too upset about anything that happens on HIS OWN website. Nobody's forcing you to read it or come to chat. That's not to say that Sam would necessarily want people who don't like things to leave, but that he's not willing to tailor his content around what the audience likes. This goes against the traditional wisdom of "give the people what they want" but it makes sense if your prime goal isn't to accumulate a huge audience, but rather to do something for your own amusement.

> 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.

There was an intent to "manipulate" people. Was it to annoy and frustrate them? I don't think so. The rest of the analogy is way too loaded for me to touch (and this is disclaimed; no real harm or loss of money/resources occured).

>
> 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!"

Nobody was studying in RinkChat. Heck, nobody was really having much of a conversation. The entire time I'd been in there basically the driving force of the night had been Sam and Dave doing weird things. Having BEER/BUTT didn't disrupt much. Furthermore, the intent (at least at first) wasn't to frustrate and annoy. Sam and Dave were making fun of frat boys, but I think this is discussed a bit further down.
> 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."

No. No no no no. Don't you see? This is RINKCHAT. This stuff happens ALL THE TIME. People come in and ACT WEIRD. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's stupid, sometimes it's annoying. It's usually disruptive, but once more nothing really important was happening.

This is not a SERIOUS place. It can be serious, but the majority of the time it's people talking about their day, making small talk or just being weird. Of course, Spacebar's argument implies that being accused of being BEER/BUTT (which was the main source of confusion) was harmful. More on that later.

> 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.

I know for a fact Space wasn't around for either episode of The Sting. I was :) I remember Morris messaging me "Now is the time for the kick!" because he was pissed at Rad during the first. During the second, it totally disrupted the conversation, and Rad made fun of everybody there (while multiple people called for kicks). To say that BEER/BUTT are different because they are disrupting the chat and making fun of other chatters is nonsense. I thought BEER/BUTT were funny, personally. Even funnier once I knew who they were... Much like Rad, they're funnier once you get the joke.

>
> 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.

I could see how this might be offensive. That's about it.

> - 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?

Because they were SUPPOSED to be offensive. It's part of the prank. It's deeply inherent in any form of satire, and doubly so in a practical joke like this. Nobody in there at the time seemed REALLY offended. Mildly annoyed, but I've been around when far worse people were in chat (who WERE offensive morons... *cough*Finch and his friends*cough*), and that's the same general reaction. Nobody was saying much more than "Kick those idiots."

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

See above.

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

I don't remember this off-hand.

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

I was being sarcastic. Everyone was saying how "Sam, you've ruined RinkChat!" so my remark was in the vein of "Yeah right, that was his intent all along, to RUIN his own chat."

>
> - 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.

Not true. Look, why would Sam possibly want to make fun of how ineffective the RinkChatters are at kicking people? That's not remotely funny or interesting. If you're not an admin you can't kick people (unless you're an op in an adminless room of course). This wouldn't be funny. Nobody meant to that the joke was "ha, ha, you can't stop these guys!"

In order to make fun of drunken frat boys, you HAVE TO BE ANNOYING if you're going to satirize them. BECAUSE THEY ARE ANNOYING. That's the idea.

> 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!"

Nobody got killed (the Othello example I snipped). That's horribly out of line.... continuing:

> 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!"

Theft is FAR different than accusing somebody of being annoying. These are complete and total fals analogies, and they're not remotely fair.

>
> 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."
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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.

YOU ARE OVERREACTING. Well, maybe not. I punch people if they bother me. It's a fairly natural response among my friends, but I get the feeling it's not the norm for you (Spacebar). I can't stress how dumb-struck I am by your strong reactions. Yes, they were trying to make RinkChatters look silly. SILLY IS NOT A BAD WORD AROUND HERE. WE ARE SILLY ALL THE TIME.

>
> 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.

Wormwood really should get a handle then. Like I said in response to his post, I've been possessed and worse in chat (read Sting II, which makes me look silly and "ineffective"). This wasn't that bad of a thing. People should lighten the hell up. If this website was some sort of medical forum where we discussed things in seriousness all the time, I could see why this would be upsetting. BUT THIS IS PAR FOR COURSE. THIS IS NOT THE FIRST JOKE OF ITS KIND. I HOPE IT WON'T BE THE LAST.

Furthermore, most people in chat seemed to be playing along. Morris was making jokes, and WW never seemed very upset. If I'd been accused, I would have just played along. Come on.

>
> 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?

I suggest you think on why you could get worked up over something so freaking trivial.

> 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?"

Open question: Was anyone angry with WW and Morris?? Besides Spacebar I mean? Hell, Morris was "fessing up" to the whole thing! He certainly wasn't pissed during the *course* of the joke. Nobody else seemed really upset.

>
> 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?
>

I've probably overstepped by bounds by answering this already, since it's not a question I can answer. I apologize if I've written anything about Sam/Dave's POV that isn't true.

> 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?

It's not my site, but I won't miss anyone who's going to get their undies in a twist over something as silly as last night. "Scandalize and insult people"?? WE DO THIS ALL THE TIME!!!

>
> 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?

If you've never seen stupid people having stupid conversations in RinkChat, you've obviously not been around enough.

>
> 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?
>
> -Spacebar

No one said you had to find it funny. I find "The Dialectizer," "Things People Said," and "Slapdash City" all to be not funny. I've told Sam this before. I've never told him that those features make me "lose respect for them" or that their inclusions on the site make me want to leave. I JUST DON'T READ THEM. There's a difference between not finding something funny and getting all pissy about something, which is what happened last night.

This is a humorous website with a heavy emphasis on satire and parody. Nothing that happened (except for some people getting way too upset for a minor incident) was out of the ordinary last night.

Stephen