north@down.FUN (Stephen C North) (10/26/84)
Here is a story for net-people. Once upon a time, we made a mailing list for our friends called unity-rockers. (The meaning of this name is so juvenile we won't reveal it in public.) We later renamed unity-rockers the fun-people mailing list, a more consonant moniker. Soon, famous albeit acerbic network stars from near and far were asking to join. How could we refuse? One day, after consuming too much coffee, we pondered the implications of fun-people. What about its dual, the boring-people? Are there such people? If so, they should have a list of their own. But who are the boring-people? Certainly not our enemies. That would be tacky and immature. And not unix-like. No, the boring-people were chosen in a scientific and objective manner: we used the Usenet Top 25 Contributor's list. With the sole exceptions of ourselves and a certain Famous Former Theoretician (who prefers to revel anonymously in pain and madness), no one else was added. Nor was anyone excused, not even our friends, not even rlgvax!guy, nor umcp-cs!chris, nor oddjob!garett, nor even amd!phil (wherever he is now). The first boring-people note, informing the members of their common bond, was posted three months ago and sank with nary a whimper into the oblivion of discarded electronic mail. But, we dutifully kept the list current as new data appeared (thanks Rick!). We even obtained data smoothed over an entire year (thanks Rick!). (Incidentally, at least one person had posted enough netnews to have written a lengthy tome.) A week ago, we saw an article by dec-amber!chabot (herself in the Top 25), who said that alice!mvs was boring. We nodded in agreement. Although his first net.singles article was singularly inspirational, so much so that a paper copy appeared in the mailbox of every Princeton CS grad student, Mark's pathology quickly began to wear thin. After all, how long can a LISP program that mangles netnews continue to entertain? A special dispensation was granted to give Mark a place on the boring-people mailing list. Our second and final message to the boring-people was a brief explanation. Mark, full of artificial joy, immediately sent the boring-people several pages of wandering thoughts about chlorophyll. The boring-people, an amplification of Usenet, reacted predictably: they set about mailing flames to us and the boring-people, flames about the boring flames, etc. How could we have been so blind? There was a Lord Byron quote about boringness, there was pride in being put in the boring-people, there were attacks on north/honey for dragging people down to their level, there was squabbling about who couldn't recognize a developed intellect when s/he saw one, there were deep insights and denials about how the boring-people were really fun and the fun-people were really boring, there were notes intended to bore and notes reflecting sheer boredom, with Mark recycling and regurgitating them in his distinctive manner. We sat idly on the sidelines, loss-of-innocence bystanders. Within 48 hours the boring-people, now at critical mass, exploded. Princeton's load average grew exponentially. Despite the flames, only three people actually asked to be removed. (Of course, we immediately complied.) Dick Dunn sent the boring-people a friendly note, reminding his cohort that we had simply pinged the boring-people list and allowed it justify itself. (Thanks, Dick.) Nonetheless, the boring-people were getting rude and intolerant of us and one another and otherwise bent out of shape, which was sincerely never our intent, so the experiment was terminated. In retrospect we realize that we contaminated our experiment by calling it boring-people. Instead, we should have given it a neutral name, like top-25 or lambda-x.x-writes-a-lot-of-netnews. We interpret this in the clear light of the north/honey thesis. Here, the slow-moving parody was accelerated to light speed by cramming the Top 25 (cum 42) netnews posters into close proximity with one another and priming them. We apologize to those caught unaware or unamused. We offer a special apology to those who have been pleading for the reconstitution of the list. We know how you feel. Stephen C North Peter Honeyman
gino@voder.UUCP (Gino Bloch) (10/30/84)
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The article should have been posted in net.roomer.
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Gene E. Bloch (...!nsc!voder!gino)