Re: detweiling

[Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>]

On Sat, 23 Mar 1996, Anonymous wrote:

> imho the lesson of detweiler has nothing to do with
> detweiler, but in fact more to do with his
> targets. effective "detweiling" would be impossible if it
> were not for the large egos of his quarry. he

This is true. Without realizing it (until I took a look a the alleged
Detweiler web pages), I've been Detweiling on a number of Neo-Nazi lists
for a while. This type of psychological warfare is pretty interesting.

> detweiler took a lot of pride in how much reaction
> he could get with just a few posts or barbs. he is not
> really apparently responsible for ever actually
> mailbombing the cpunk list from what I can tell.
> he believed he was perfecting the art of playing
> with people's egos. a sort of depraved cyberspatial
> psychology experiment.

It's not an art. It's just being an asshole, and there's nothing new 
about it. the alleged Detweiler had a few interesting observations, but 
most of them were cypherpunk-specific.

I do see a real tension between the norms of anonymity and full
disclosure, though, which I'll have to think about a bit more before
committing it to Tim May's eternal data haven with my name atached. 

> the amusing thing about "detweiling" is the way
> that it is something like a bad, self-perpetuating
> virus among those with big egos.

I should have a good example of this on the Stormfront list shortly.

> there is nothing new about detweiler's approach.
> there was a classic greek who was put to death
> for the same reason: not provoking people by calling
> them names, so much as asking them questions that
> embarrassly exposed all their ego problems.
> his name was called "socrates" and he was put to
> death for refining his art beyond that which was
> tolerated by a power structure largely populated
> by those with the ego problems (power structures
> are always dominated by these types, it is like
> flies and dead meat, or moths and flames).

I'm not so sure. I'd say that these types are more concentrated in
political activism (where I would place many political cypherpunks) nad
in mid-level politics and bureaucracies, not in high-level power
structures. The people who come to power, and stay in power, have learned
to transcend ego and paranoia. Nixon, who had been very good at this,
lost it. Clinton seems to be holding up quite well. (This is not to say
anything about their politics or characters, just their temperaments.)

> the joke of course may be that detweiler could have
> been dead for a long time, and people here would
> still be blaming him for their problems.

Read Milan Kundera's _The Joke_ for an interesting twist on this. Or 
maybe _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_.

-rich