Message-ID: <0098F38E8743E8E0.00000228@tmar.com> Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 16:36:33 EST From: "Chuck B. at Ext. 214" <mailto:chuckb@TMAR.COM> Subject: Thrashing on the 'net (recognition and avoidance) To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L
April 20, 1995, the San Francisco Chronicle:PEOPLE CAN'T HELP THRASHING THINGS OUT -- Online by Robert Rossney
The verb "thrash" is a hacker jargon that describes the behavior of certain overloaded computer systems. The Jargon File, a massive and often very funny compendium of such terms available on the Net, defines it: "To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything useful." To thrash is to expend an enormous amount of effort and get absolutely nowhere.
If you spend time online, you'll see that it's not just computers that thrash. So do people: They get trapped in disagreements that go on and on without ever reaching any kind of conclusion. This kind of argument is peculiar to the online world, and it's called thrash.
Nowhere in Sartre's observation that hell is other people more apparent than in a thrash. Thrashes are poisonous and hypnotic. They're a tremendous waste of effort. And yet they inexorably draw people into participating.
[An example follows ....]
Most people tend to believe that their opinion is correct. If you get a message in your e-mail that you disagree with, you'll probably reply to it and say, "Oh, no, you're quite wrong."
With several dozen people doing this, and every reply getting forwarded to every subscriber on the list, a horrid feedback loop started. People disagreed carelessly, and the temperature level went up. People got angry and stopped communicating clearly. This caused others to misunderstand them and get angry themselves. Factions formed. Differences of opinion turned into personal attacks.
Worst of all, people who couldn't care less about the argument were finding 50 angry mail messages in their in-box every morning. They implored the powers that be (in this case, the mailing list administrator) to do something about it. And of course, they used the mailing list to do this, which meant that soon people were arguing about whether the administrator was a fascist for presuming to infringe on their God-given right to yell at one another.
The last I heard, the administrator of this list was on the verge of simply shutting the list down.
Bad conversation drives out good. The only way to stop a thrash is to prevent it from starting, and this requires a discipline that most of us haven't heard. We have to be careful what we say, learn to disagree amicably and respect the feelings of people who would rather converse than fight.