CoN Reviews? Bah!
By Lilith DemHareIs
It appears that some people have a different view of Nasty than others. It seems that some people think that we are not Nasty enough, and we should be crude, arrogant, bitter and slam on the world. They want us to be horribly Nasty. Then, there are others who think we are cute and bouncy, in a farcical "Nasty" (with a capital N) way. They want us to be lightly sarcastic and mocking the world. They want Nasty in a sophisticated way.
They're both wrong.
Capital of Nasty is dedicated to subtle Nastiness, publishing that which is brutally honest, without seeming overly whiny or hard-to-please.(Okay, so we do whine from time to time. It's our right.) But we realize what our places in the world are, and what's wrong with the world, according to us. This wrongness is the Nastiness of which we write about. Jobs and the net and annoying people and our own angst. We see the world through individual eyes. Very few others in the world see what we see, and even fewer are willing to do something about it. When the bucket under the drain is beginning to get full, they empty it into the sink under which it resides.
We bite our thumbs at the world! We do not sit on our hands, nor do we offer the crude one-finger salute. One is useless, and the second equally so.
And remember, you can't take anyone (or anything they say) seriously if they apply the word fuck in any way but a direct reference to Full Unholy Carnal Knowledge.
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AOL Users
By Jason MacIsaac
Don Fitch wrote:
Ah, yes, "the 'uniqueness' of AOL users". What a _nice_ way to put it! Being one of them, and sometimes (much often, actually) needing to use the "Members Helping Members" forum, I understand all too well the rationale behind the stereotype. But "RealityMAG" does have what seems to me to be a valid point -- there _are_ a good many people who are on aol because it's fairly easy to learn to use (& our priorities don't include investing a lot of time in becoming /c/y/b/e/r/n/e/r/d/s/ skilled computerists), because it's the only dependable & inexpensive Service Provider with a local telephone number, or for some other good reason. Personally, I'm fond of Generalizing ... but usually manage to remember that there are always a significant number of exceptions (up to almost 50%, & maybe more) and try not to carry this too far.
Yeah, but, but...
Okay, so it's easy to learn to use AOL. Fair enough. Not everyone’s a technical genius. I know, I'm useless technically too. We don’t really care about that. What screams "I'm an AOL user" is a complete lack of social grounding. A lot of them don't seem to realize that they’re talking to other human beings and so many the same rules of written correspondence and speech apply. Introduce yourself before making demands. Speak in complete sentences, and although you don't have to spellcheck, research and footnote your message, try to print something approximating English and not "i want sad chetats sned the m to meplease"(Actually, maybe a spellcheck is a good idea). The Internet isn't a breeding ground for great literature, but if I wanted to find the dumbest, most incoherent messages, I guarantee they would be written by _______@aol.com.
Also, because you pay for AOL, some people seem to think that they have bought the Internet. That means that if some webpage doesn't quite measure up to their high standards, they get flame mail. "i cliked your link andit said 'not found' i'm going to see you get the chair for this." The Internet is NOT a service provided to any one group of people, and sometimes it just doesn't work very well. So scream at your lousy connection or slow system, gently point out that an image link is broken. But just because you bought AOL does not give you the right to take a shit fit because someone else’s' server is too busy. I'll bet AOL gets regular user complaints that “Freddy’s Spice Girl Page" on Geocities is down so they want their money back.
I'm not so sure AOL succeeds because they are so simple to use. I think they succeed because they are one of the first, and most marketed. I pour myself a friggin' bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and I have to pick a free AOL disk out of the bowl. Christ, the other day it rained AOL disks. They mass-marketed it all to Hell, and because of that, they attracted a fair share of morons. How can you tell if you’re a moron? If you read this and
A) Write a message that reads "no youre an asshole aOL rulez";B) Write a message that basically reads "Your entirely argument is invalid because you forgot a space between "and" & "the";C) Write a message that wonders how you can say such nasty things to a fellow American (wake up kids, the Internet spans the world);D) Assume that the statement "I got a stupid message from an AOL user the other day" actually means. "ALL AOL users are gay and necrophiliacs and they smell and they're stupid and they have small testicles, even the women, and it is my personal mission in life to kill every one of them";
Congratulations! You're a moron! (Especially if you misinterpreted D)
You're not a moron if you take exception to a stereotype and make a rational argument to the contrary. The person who wrote that last message actually could write, acknowledged a problem, but still printed a reasonable and contrary argument. They should make it mandatory that you have this level of intelligence before sending you off on the WWW.
I should point out lastly that this behaviour is by no means unique to AOL users. All of the long-time Internet providers who will let anyone with a credit card and a pulse join up have a large population of moronic subscribers. The same rules apply to them. If you don't want to be treated like an idiot, don't act like one.
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Chain letters
By Leandro
Welcome to yet another issue of CoN. Forgive the delay for this week, but I didn't have much to fill this issue with. Many of my requests for permissions haven't been answered, and many other people have been busy with their duties in life and if I bug them any longer about sending their stuff in, they will kill me next time they see me.
An Avid reader wrote back in regards of the survival guide that appeared in the last issue of CoN:
I have a question for the great oracle of knowledge called CoN. What if you are single? Do these rules apply?
Waiting your answer oh great pot of...ehh...I mean source of knowledge.
Dear Avid reader, if you are single, I believe then that you are happily involved with your temporary girlfriend, Rosy Palms.
And yes, these rules do apply. Well... eventually they will. Even sheep call back you know?
There was a strange e-mail from Jayne Giambrone who simply asks:
"Are youp phycho?"
Now, this boggles the mind. How can you misspell two-thirds of a three word sentence?
At the end of each issue of CoN it says something different. In last issue, I wrongly used the word "chain letter" instead of "fake letter”. This caused a few people to write back. Lynell from Hawaii was the first:
And at the end of the newsletter you mentioned you sent a *CHAIN*letter! That will get you in big big trouble. When did you do that? I read the entire newsletter and I don't remember. . . are you trying to confuse your readership?! Spankings!
Fortunately in this wonderful world there are those that are able to make the best out of everything. William proved that even a mistake could turn into a case of mental illness:
From: "William"
Organization: Purple rabbit runners
To: con@capnasty.org
Date sent: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 01:35:46 +0000
Subject: Re: Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine III.6
A chain letter. I can't believe we published a chain letter.
A chain letter? I missed it! What kind of chain was it about? The kind you put on a prisoner when walking them to the chair? The kind you wear around your neck, to hold your ID badge? The kind that snaps the rottweiler's neck back when he gets to the end of it, trying to kill you, and you sit there wondering just which one of those links is the weakest one, and how close did you come to a bloody death this time? Or the kind that seems to hang in convenient places for movies for someone to use to hang another in mid-air?
Or the kind that dangles from the trailer hitch making wonderful showers of sparks as it drags down the highway, and as you drive behind it you realize that at any second you could get a quick tour though the trailer if that chain caught on some piece of the highway causing their car to suddenly stop??
My favourite kind is the shiny, new chrome type, simple ovals welded where they join to make them stronger, and reduce scratching when someone pulls at them, trying to get out of them.
I don't have any chains; the people around me always take them from me. I like to take the ID badge kind and swing it around on my finger, but sometimes it would slip off, and I'd spend the next half hour bandaging the wounds of the person holding the cat when the chain hit the wall behind them, so they don't let me have them anymore.
One thing I have never figured out is why people chain themselves to trees. I don't see how they expect to survive, they are a lot softer than the tree and any chainsaw that could cut a tree isn't even going to notice a little meat and bone. And if it caught on the chain, that thing is going to squeeze you so tight you won't notice when the saw hits. If you want to stop a tree from being cut down, you have to burn it. No nasty chains needed.
If I had to chain myself to something, I think it would have to be a naked woman. All I need is a volunteer. Chain's optional.
William
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