Re: psychoceramics: Wild, sweeping generalizations

["Andrew C. Bul+hac?k" <a--@z--.net>]

[Nathan Shumate]
> Just a couple of comments...  I was off the list for about six months
> (having returned in the last couple of weeks), and it seems to me that the
> volume on the list, both of original postings and commentary, is greatly
> decreased.  Has the number of subscribers gone down? (Reverend?)  As I
> recall, I was involved in a long thread right when I left in which I
> offended several people by suggesting that we inform kooks that we're
> laughing at them.  Did I offend people right out of the list?
> 
> Or have we plumbed most of the net already?  Having already exhausted the
> foundation of our admittedly-reactive field, are we all just puttering
> until new lunacies are periodically discovered?
> 
> (It's sad when Psychoceramicists are reduced to turning their practiced eye
> on themselves in this way...)

I don't think Psychoceramics has been laying off the kooks too reverently.  If
you have a look at the archives (http://dev.null.org/psychoceramics/archives/)
you will find a varied corpus of posts, on a wide range of psychoceramic
subject matter.

In my opinion as a kook-watcher, the occasional rare gem of truly
original psychoceramica is more interesting than a large volume of 
variations of gray aliens/Elders of Zion/creationism/mind-control 
rays or any established genre.  Of course, such themes can (and do)
appear in fine, original psychoceramic material.  (Witness Francis
E. Dec, Esq., for example; he took the old Jewish/Communist Conspiracy
theme and twisted it beyond recognition, with brain bank cities on
the moon and Computer God Frankenstein Controls and such.  Thus a Dec
rant is more interesting than typical USENET white-supremacist ravings 
or whatever.)

Anyway, IMHO, few posts isn't necessarily bad;  if there aren't many
incidents of original kookdom to be found, padding the list out with
filler would merely decrease the signal/noise ratio.

Just my $0.02,

 -- acb

-- 
 acb(at)dev.null.org    "I was on the verge... the verge of a great discovery."
 www.zikzak.net/~acb/                -- Graham, _The Young Poisoner's Handbook_

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