Re: I'm back too -- important issue

January 12, 2000

At 14:00 12/08/99 -0700, you wrote:

>Twelve steps are not the problem? Twelve steps are a major problem.

>However, my point is, sure he probably angered a lot of people but from

>this post I see _absolutely_ no cause for censoring the man. The list

>is " 12 Step Free Zone, " not " Nobody Says Anything that Pisses Me Off

>Zone. " Censoring unpopular speech, from what little I've seen at this

>point, _would_ make this list like a step group meeting.

>

>Ken Ragge

Maybe it would be useful to read several of his messages. If you do, I

think you'll see that he isn't really here to discuss anything, and you'll

also see that he does not respond to reasoned responses. Speaking for

myself, I have no problem with unpopular views- this list is full of them.

But I do have a problem with being attacked on this list simply for

discussing 12 step programs.

Part of the reason for this list's existence, if I recall correctly, was to

provide a forum where people could discuss their experiences in, and the

effects of the 12 step programs and debrief themselves from those

experiences without being attacked online for doing so. This guy is

attacking us for doing exactly that.

Joe B.

January 12, 2000

nice to see you back ken. i was wondering what you were up to. you

deserve alot of credit for the excelent books you have written. thanks!

havent seen chaz bufe on any fourms as of late. any idea what he is up

too?

dave

January 12, 2000

I agree with Ken. If the guy wants to rave, let him. I can skip over

his posts easily if I don't want to read them.

Two other points: He got kicked off the about.com alcoholism forum,

which is dominated by 12-steppers, because he made so many posts there

that, basically, express his alienation from AA/NA etc. The same sorts

of things we talk about here. Then he comes over here and berates us

for saying almost the same things he's posting to antagonize the

steppers. He claims to be mad at both sides of the debate and wants us

to " get a life, " but something tells me he's got less of a life than

any of us. A sad thought indeed.

Also, his postings on About.com were not only annoying (to the

steppers) they were also pretty numerous. That could get to be a

problem over here, more than it was on the about.com site, because of

this site's format. Not to mention loading our mailboxes with stuff

we'd rather not read.

So, as long as he doesn't go overboard in the QUANTITY of messages I

don't particularly care what he puts in them.

Anyway, guys, I think the best way to deal with someone who thrives on

negative attention is to ignore them. Or maybe start " agreeing " with

him. He wants an argument, but we don't have to give him one.

January 13, 2000

It might be a waste of time to respond to 's obnoxious posts. If

he's true to the form he displayed on about.com, he won't read them or

reply. His receiver must be broken.

By the way, I suspect he's snuck (sneaked?) back on to the about.com

forum under the alias DrBob4apples. The overall tone and quality of the

posts is identical but now he seems to be adding a few punctuation

marks and capital letters.

January 13, 2000

Mike May wrote:

>

I personally feel that is here for a reason. He is a totally

abusive I say be as creative as you like with this man in learning how

to deal with this species of human scum.

Anyone have a computer virus handy?

See ya.

Bob Warner

January 13, 2000

I personally feel that is here for a reason. He is a totally abusive

in all aspects of the word. Since most of us here have been through this

kind of abuse most of our lives, gives us the opportunity to vent our

anger at the very type of person that we have avoided all our lives. I say

be as creative as you like with this man in learning how to deal with this

species of human scum. If avoidance is best for you, then delete all his

messages. If you wish to learn how to deal with his kind in a productive no

violent manner without having to face the abuser, then this is a rare

opportunity indeed. As they say, Practice makes perfect and this is a

valuable life skill to learn if you have lived with this form of abuse. I

personally have 3 abusive foremen that I have to deal with on a daily basis

and I intend to use as a creative outlet. I may be wrong with this

form of thinking and I stand open to criticism. I welcome any the list may

have.

Mike M

At 05:57 PM 01/12/2000 -0800, you wrote:

>I agree with Ken. If the guy wants to rave, let him. I can skip over

>his posts easily if I don't want to read them.

>

>Two other points: He got kicked off the about.com alcoholism forum,

>which is dominated by 12-steppers, because he made so many posts there

>that, basically, express his alienation from AA/NA etc. The same sorts

>of things we talk about here. Then he comes over here and berates us

>for saying almost the same things he's posting to antagonize the

>steppers. He claims to be mad at both sides of the debate and wants us

>to " get a life, " but something tells me he's got less of a life than

>any of us. A sad thought indeed.

>

>Also, his postings on About.com were not only annoying (to the

>steppers) they were also pretty numerous. That could get to be a

>problem over here, more than it was on the about.com site, because of

>this site's format. Not to mention loading our mailboxes with stuff

>we'd rather not read.

>

>So, as long as he doesn't go overboard in the QUANTITY of messages I

>don't particularly care what he puts in them.

>

>Anyway, guys, I think the best way to deal with someone who thrives on

>negative attention is to ignore them. Or maybe start " agreeing " with

>him. He wants an argument, but we don't have to give him one.

January 13, 2000

At 02:00 PM 8/12/99 -0700, Ken R wrote:

>Hello everyone,

>

>First let me apologize for not being here to forward the " moderated "

>messages on to the list and to take care of the day-to-day list upkeep.

>I thought I'd be able to check in on the list on a regular basis and

>handle things that way. When I realized I couldn't keep up, my mailbox

>was overflowing with 4,000 messages, most of which I never will see. In

>any case, if you've got any problems getting messages or changing your

>status or whatever, just let me know. I'll be here now.

>

>The following was brought to my attention by several people who want a

>writer banned from the list. The same writer () also posted an MPEG

>file of 500k or so. On the posting of the file, I have to say that that

Oh, the monkey video. Yes, the only truly obscene part was a breech

of etiquette to send an attachment that large.

>is totally inappropriate for a list of this type -- not because of

>content (I have no idea what is in it) but because many people around

I can compress the 387,000 byte video into less than 80 bytes:

A monkey scratches his ass, sniffs his fingers, falls off a limb.

>the world pay per byte, many people have equipment that have difficulty

>handling such files, and many people are _forced_ to download a

>humongous file in order to get the rest of their mail.

Furthermore, if someone already has a large amount of email waiting to

be downloaded, such a large message may exceed their quota and subsequent

messages will bounce until the recipient retrieves waiting email. This

means losing wanted email because of an unexpected and perhaps unwanted

large attachment

Some of you are

>probably much more familiar with what e-groups offers. Isn't there

>somewhere that would be appropriate for larger files, where only those

>who take explicit action to get them would have to deal with them?

There should be (I'm not sure that there is, but there certainly SHOULD

be) an egroups option settable by the egroups list moderator to disable

attachments to the list. I strongly feel this should be done. The vault

works well for distributing files to the group, and is a much better

alternative than email attachments anyway.

>

>I am assuming that (and the rest of the list) now know of this so I

>won't say any more on the matter. As far of the content of 's

>following post which was presented as evidence for why I should take

>action against him:

>Twelve steps are not the problem? Twelve steps are a major problem.

>However, my point is, sure he probably angered a lot of people but from

>this post I see _absolutely_ no cause for censoring the man. The list

>is " 12 Step Free Zone, " not " Nobody Says Anything that Pisses Me Off

>Zone. " Censoring unpopular speech, from what little I've seen at this

>point, _would_ make this list like a step group meeting.

>

>Ken Ragge

Ken, you were very quick to kick the infamous arf12 troll Glenn off the

list in the interest of the group, so quick that some people complained -

have you changed your feelings, or do you view this as a substantially

different situation?

-----

http://listen.to/benbradley

January 13, 2000

-----Original Message-----

>I personally feel that is here for a reason. He is a totally abusive

>in all aspects of the word. Since most of us here have been through this

>kind of abuse most of our lives, gives us the opportunity to vent our

>anger at the very type of person that we have avoided all our lives. I say

>be as creative as you like with this man in learning how to deal with this

>species of human scum. If avoidance is best for you, then delete all his

>messages. If you wish to learn how to deal with his kind in a productive no

>violent manner without having to face the abuser, then this is a rare

>opportunity indeed...

This is not at all a rare opportunity. You can have all abuse and

counter-abuse you want, at any time, by subscribing to the public,

unmoderated USENET newsgroup called alt.recovery.from-12-steps. Some of the

trolls who haunt that group are actually witty and creative at times (though

abusive and mindlessly repetitive most of the time.)

alt.recovery.from-12-steps was really where it all started. Well, not

really. In the beginning there was alt.recovery, which was supposed to be

open to all points of view, AA, RR, or whatever, about 'recovery.' The

result was a lot of pointless argument and quarelling between AA members and

everybody else. Then two groups spun off from that -- alt.recovery.aa and

alt.recovery.na -- to accomodate the steppers who absolutely couldn't stand

anything but the party line. (Note that 2 groups were necessary, because the

AA folks couldn't get along with the NA folks.) But this left the

'alternative' people hanging, because alt.recovery continued to attract

orthodox steppers, who would just argue with and insult anybody who wasn't

in the god-given fellowship. Then in Dec. '97 a genius named created

alt.recovery.from-12-steps, thinking that the name of the group would make

it clear to all that it was not a place to come and talk about gratitude &

your higher power. Things went along okay for a couple of months, but then

the 'flame wars' broke out. Some of the 'arfers' contributed to the wars by

posting stuff about alternative recovery on alt.recovery.aa and

alt.recovery.na. During the wars alt.recovery.from-12-steps would be flooded

with literally hundreds of posts from AA-ers and NA-ers every day. The

trolls would stay up all night posting a response -- usually a nasty insult

or a crude one-liner -- to every post that appeared on arf12s. Some of 'our

side' got into it too, countertrolling right back. Trying for the ultimate

put-down, the complete and total refutation of everything the steppers

believed in. There was a certain grandeur to it all... But anybody who

stumbled into the thing looking for real information about how to actually

recover from the effects of the 12 Steps would, at times, have had to wade

through AMAZINGLY huge quantities of insulting dreck...

Some of us sought refuge in a mailing list (whose name I have forgotten)

that was supposed to be for people who had left AA. But the moderator of

that group had his own peculiar views and various pseudo- and

crypto-steppers got into the act there too, and the result was a good deal

of flaming at one point.

That's why Ken started this thing -- 12-step-free zone. The whole idea was

to have a forum for non-steppers, ex-steppers, and anti-steppers, where you

could get beyond having to constantly defend the basic idea that you don't

have to go to AA, and get into some genuinely supportive discussion.

So if you want to experience the thrill of dealing with trolls and flame

wars you can do so very easily. Most likely you'll get tired of it VERY

quickly, but there is always a chance that you'll get obsessed with it (some

of the old-time arfers are still there, 1.5 years later, believe it or not,

jousting daily with the likes of Reese, damomen, the inimitable Glenn S.,

etc.) But PLEASE don't do it here! Let this be a place where those who are

in the process of breaking away from the step cults can get a friendly

reception and constructive support.

--wally

January 13, 2000

You're probably right Jim, but that's true to form with most abusers, until

you hit the right button. A few on here have done so, because they have

gotten a reply. He almost seems to be the type that is a preditor within

the walls of AA and fears that this is a movement that could destroy his

source of prey and he hits on the AA's to try and keep them sick enough to

return to thier meetings so he has a continuous supply of confused prey to

hit on. He gives himself away on what he's guilty of, by the things he is

acusing everyone else of doing.

Mike M

At 05:45 PM 01/13/2000 -0800, you wrote:

>It might be a waste of time to respond to 's obnoxious posts. If

>he's true to the form he displayed on about.com, he won't read them or

>reply. His receiver must be broken.

>

>By the way, I suspect he's snuck (sneaked?) back on to the about.com

>forum under the alias DrBob4apples. The overall tone and quality of the

>posts is identical but now he seems to be adding a few punctuation

>marks and capital letters.

>

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>-- Talk to your group with your own voice!

>-- /VoiceChatPage?listName=12-step-free & m=1

>

January 13, 2000

Up to this point I have been a little to ethical to do that Bob, but what

would you like it to do?

Mike M

At 09:18 PM 01/13/2000 -0500, you wrote:

>Mike May wrote:

>>

>I personally feel that is here for a reason. He is a totally

>abusive I say be as creative as you like with this man in learning how

>to deal with this species of human scum.

>

>Anyone have a computer virus handy?

>

>See ya.

>Bob Warner

>

>------------------------------------------------------------------------

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>

>-- Check out your group's private Chat room

>-- /ChatPage?listName=12-step-free & m=1

>

January 14, 2000

This history was fascinating, Wally, thank you. I'm reposting it just in

case anyone did not receive your original post.

Judith

> This is not at all a rare opportunity. You can have all abuse and

counter-abuse you want, at any time, by subscribing to the public,

unmoderated USENET newsgroup called alt.recovery.from-12-steps. Some of the

trolls who haunt that group are actually witty and creative at times (though

abusive and mindlessly repetitive most of the time.)

>

> alt.recovery.from-12-steps was really where it all started. Well, not