ins_amap@jhunix.UUCP (Mark ) (02/13/86)
> > I'm another one of those people to whom Gene Wolf is like unto a god, but > > I have to agree with Mr. desJardins on some of his points. Others are a > > little less cut and dried. > > . > > . > > . > > As to who's the best SF author ever, that remains to be seen, doesn't it? > > Mark! > Flame on. > > You total bozos. I really cannot understand such gross stupidity in > people who would otherwise strike me as bright: readers of SF/Fantasy > stories. You amaze me. > You can swallow spiders on Mars. You can read the future > history of the Earth a million hears hence without blinking. You can > handle the twisting and writhing of every physical law of the universe. > And then, then you fall flat on your collective faces when someone uses > strong rhetoric. This is too much. . . > (the following is) > only exaggeration. It's just a rhetorical device. Now brace yourselves. > > Not one of you is worthy of posting to sf-lovers, you > narrow-minded, gullible GITS! How literal-minded and > dense can a human being be?!? You are not worthy of > even READING this newsgroup! I banish you all forth- > with to the purgatory of net.philosophy, net.religion. > christian, net.women, and net.cooks! Begone! The reason I don't read any of the groups listed above is that I'm no great fan of any of those dogmas. I am a great fan of the printed word. And as such I feel obligated to tell Tom Cox what an idiot he just made of himself. Sure, people exagerate every day. I'm known for it. But I'm very careful of what I say in print, because exageration goes away and the printed word does not. I read SF & F for the different perspectives it gives on the world. I read net.sf-lovers for different people's interpretations of those perspectives. I do not read it to be offended, either in the general or the specific. This is a better group than that, or at least has been in the past. But all things are subject to change. The original poster went too far, in my opinion. Nothing was said then of Gene Wolf that hasn't been said by every fourteen year old girl of Michael Jackson (or whoever is today's idol and goat; I don't read net.music either). What I was trying to do was shed a little light on why some people feel that way about Wolf (and some do), and why it was hard to explain in specific terms. My message was a missive urging tolerence. Now, let's take a what Tom Cox has done. What began as a discussion on the merits of a story has now become an assault on the intelligence of the people in the discussion. What Tom's posting boiled down to was "Don't be so f****** serious, you morons!" All in mock humor. I presume this is a good way to tell people to take things less seriously. Read the below closely. I mean every last word. In all the postings on Wolf, serious and non, none of them were as useless as the one above. None were as mean spirited, none were as childish, none demonstrated the sheer level of intolerence that the above did. And instead of mouthing off to his roommates about what idiots reside on the net, Tom Cox goes out and posts his own excretions and calls them good. I call him a hypocrite in the face of his own ideals. Strong rhetoric is meant to be taken seriously, you dolt, or it isn't rhetoric. Then it's just mouthing off. Mark!