Re: the "unsubscrive" meme keeps on going.

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 1:28 PM 4/4/96, bryce@digicash.com wrote:
>> unsubscrive * Peter.Posch@koeln.netsurf.de
>
>
>I suspect that this meme propagates (especially among
>non-native-English-speakers) via the list itself.  Peter
>Posch probably saw one of the previous "unsubscrives" and is
>hoping it will work for him.  Perhaps the
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

A good insight. Reminds me of the "cargo cults."

(If you don't know the story, here's a brief version: Pacific Islanders saw
Americans bringing riches and technological gew-gaws to their islands in
WWII. Then they left, leaving cargo crates and whatnot behind. The
Islanders believed if they fashioned radio headsets out of coconuts and
radios out of old logs that they could bring the Great Birds from the Sky
back. (*) This has since gotten currency--through anthropologists, Ayn
Rand, Richard Feynman, and others--as a short-hand description for people
engaging in magical thinking that the _trappings_ of something will
sympathetically bring on the real thing. Some might say Java is a cargo
cult...hmmmhhh, Java is a Pacific island....hmmmhhh.)

(* Note: In this age of hypersensitivity, sometimes called political
correctness, there are likely to be lurkers who suddenly jump up at this
characterization of "native peoples" and decry my characterization of them
as "savages" (even though I have not used this word nor this attitude
toward them). And some will claim that if more American learned Bahasa
Indonesia there would not be this cultural imperialism that is repressing
all people of color. Hey, I don't repress no coloreds!)

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
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