Who will join me?

[herveus]

Howdy!

In the most recent Festival of Insufficient Heat (it wasn't a full up flame fest in my view) on the Rialto, Dennis O'Connor took to speaking of the SCA Internet Whitewash Squad. He meant this, of course, as pejorative, but I've updated my .sig to include "Proud member of the SCA Internet Whitewash Squad". After all, when someone goes about waving a brush-o-tar with glee and abandon, there is a need to clean up afterwards. Broken windows, and all that, you know.

He, playing the role of Phil, ran out of things to say, but not out of words to type, resorting to addressing me as "Mikey". I guess it was supposed to inflame me to intemperance. I think I resisted successfully. Of course, mentioning "skitakeldur" (from Geirr Bassi, meaning "one who shits in a keldur (well)", as allegorical for one who "poisons the well", rhetorically, seemed to evince a new paroxysm of elementary school playground name-calling. *sigh*

It's sad to see someone who used to be so skilled with words lose it like this.

yours,
Herveus

Proud member of the SCA Internet Whitewash Squad.

Comments

[martelvonc.livejournal.com]

"skitakeldur"

well, if nothing else you gotta give points for not resorting to the over used but ever amusing "you, you,..... poopy-head!" ;-)

[mrw372435.livejournal.com]

How does one get to the Rialto, exactly? I've been hearing about it for years, but I don't actually know what or where it is.

[luscious-purple.livejournal.com]

I believe it's accessible at http://groups.google.com/group/rec.org.sca .

Before the Web and blogging, that Usenet newsgroup was where the online SCA action was. (Well, I guess it still is....)

[herveus.livejournal.com]

If you have a newsreader, you can peruse rec.org.sca, a Usenet newsgroup. Many web browsers offer some sort of news reader functionality, not to mention the excellent plain text news clients available if you have a shell account.

[kellan_the_tabby]

Okay, so I'll probably regret asking this, but.

What on earth was he on about _this_ time?

[herveus.livejournal.com]

The usual. Peers are evil. The system is rigged. Nothing novel.

The initial start was a comment on the BoD minutes, specifically where they spanked the recently departed crowns of the Outlands (I think) for (reading between the lines) either not consulting with one or more peerage orders or for flouting "custom" in some egregious manner. They got banned from crown/office for five years.

Dennis got exercised because some people got exercised, whinging about proportion and "why is it a bad thing to flout custom when violent assault is condoned". The latter is a reference to an incident at Atenveldt Twelfth Night (2005) where a Duke (allegedly the husband of the kingdom seneschal) is said to have grabbed and twisted the chain then about the neck of an old pelican with a leg in a cast. Dennis alleges that the seneschal put the lean on people to "cover it up".

He, naturally, got called on all sorts of things, including "always with the negative waves, Moriarity", reading comprehension, lame flammage, and the usual stuff.

[heatermcca.livejournal.com]

"...Nothing novel...."

Like I said at Pennsic, and agreed with you about at Pennsic, Dennis's earlier (like, mid-90's or so) posts were much saner/better - a mix of really good, informative and/or fun posts, and flames on stupidity which were entertaining. Behind it all was a cutting wit I can appreciate. In recent years he's lost all of that quality and yet insists that he remains the best man on the Rialto when resorting to the same tactics he says he despises. I haven't heard a good, informative post from him in overlong (such as the one he made on combat archery), much less a polite one or one not top-full of spite and bitterness.

If I didn't think better of it, I'd think he'd gone bonkers-Scientologist.

Of late, he posts in what could be considered a rather diarrhetic manner - nothing for a while interspersed with unsightly spoutings. I maintain that he continues to post flames on the Rialto when his life is going badly, in whatever aspect. I also maintain that he has some very serious mental imbalances, afflicting an otherwise brilliant mind. The mind is excellent, but the personality is highly flawed.

[heatermcca.livejournal.com]

"Dennis alleges that the seneschal put the lean on people to "cover it up"."

(My computer froze on the last reply.)

Dennis alleges a great deal, seems especially fond of this sort of accusation, and rarely backs it up, apart from "I said it, so it really happened" (hence the bonkers-Scientologist comment, a la Koos Trenite). Everyone who disagrees with him is involved in whitewashing a situation, and his knee-jerk-reaction to anyone not him in authority (you should see some of his posts in the gun rights fora - and that's on an issue that I basically agree with him about) automatically places those "higher up on the pole" who disagree with him in cahoots with those obviously covering up the $crime.

The pitiful irony here is his evident behavior outside textual fora. He's supposed to be a nice, polite guy. I find that deeply, deeply disturbing. Combined with the thought patterns he has exhibited online, his evident high intelligence, my admittedly amateur psychological knowledge, and my studies and observations of human behavior, I think that when he called himself a sociopath he hit the nail on the head.

[kellan_the_tabby]

Ahh. The normal stupidity, then.

I admire your patience

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

I've run away from the Rialto, my kingdom's email list, and a bunch of other things because I just don't have the tolerance for people's antics that I should. :)

Re: I admire your patience

[herveus.livejournal.com]

I guess I just can't help myself sometimes. I do try to behave while I offer gentle (or not) correction and a countervailing viewpoint that avoids the vulgarity and screeching.

From a less noble perspective, it's just too easy to set the troll off with plainly spoken disagreement. Dennis used to be a skilled debater and a formidible adversary with a low tolerance for lame reasoning and the like. Unfortunately, over the last few years, he's lost it, and acts like the people he'd tear to shreds in the past.

[ealdthryth.livejournal.com]

Wow! Is he still around? I remember his antics on newsgroups in the mid-80s before I ever heard of the SCA.