psychoceramics: Mutually Assured Neurosis

[Bruce Ediger <bediger @ csn.net>]

Over the last 2 or 3 months, John "DrG" Grubor and Steve Boursy have
encouraged each other's neuroses to the point where they've created a new
netiquette.  I believe this construct to be unworkable, but it includes tenets
like:

1. Topicality is censorship
2. Removing newsgroups from "Newsgroups:" lines is immoral
3. Always cross-post articles relevant to X to X's "home newsgroup"
4. You can make Good Money by spamming usenet
5. Only Old Men who have been in the Army should be in Charge
6. "Vladimir Fomin" has 3 doctorates and 17 boyscout merit badges
 ...and so on...

It's kind of weird seeing the two of them build up this internally
contradictory and wholely unworkable structure of rules.  All the
while they're building their own peculiar system of rules of etiquette
they're denouncing the entire concept of rules and manners.

Is there a term for this in Abnormal Psychology?  This can't be the
only instance of such a thing.  Now that I've written all the above down,
I must say, DrG and Boursy's behavior reminds me of John Birch Society
types I've met in the past.