--- In [email protected], "lurkernomore20002000" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I did respond to this Off. Perhaps you missed it just as you did my > emails. I said "I enjoyed pushing you anger button", in the context > that that I knew from experience that expressing an opinion that > differed from yours evokes a harsh response from you. From experience > I have learned that there seems to be little tolerance on your part > for an opposing POV. I realize it could have sounded like badgering > or baiting, and for this I apologize. But this was not my real > intent. Now, it's 7:10 CST, and 8:10 EST, Lets CARPE DIEM!
Since people have managed to make flaming the Subject du jour :-), I'll weigh in with my definitions. Almost everyone flames occasionally, because almost everyone has buttons that get pushed occasionally. And almost everyone who flames occasionally doesn't think that they're doing it, or thinks that they're fully justified in doing it. That is almost the *definition* of having had your buttons pushed. The ego, which believes it is not only firmly in control but *justified*, is in reality firmly *out* of control, and *nothing* can really justify that particular state of attention. But the flamers are *in* that state of atten- tion. They'll keep on going, like the Energizer Bunny, as long as that state of attention has them in its grasp. *Literally* everyone around them may be laughing at them or exasperated with them, and the flamers don't notice. *They* don't think they're flaming. *They* don't think they're out of control. And so they cry, "I'm not really flaming. It's the other guy." That's a statement that's right up there with "My shit don't stink" in my opinion. :-) So. Everybody flames from time to time. That's a given. How then do you tell when someone has gotten *so* out of control that a bit of inter- vention might be required? Easy as pie. Can they be persuaded to drop the subject? If so, the state of attention has passed and they are human again. But if they keep *prolonging* the subject, keep bringing it up and restating it in different ways, keep trying to defend themselves, keep trying to "win," or to suck more and more people into the discussion, then they're not only flam- ing, they are completely lost in the flame state of attention. And they might just need a good kick in the nuts to wake them up to this fact. Did I overreact yesterday to mainstream's made- up assertions about me and resort to flaming? You betcha. I ripped him a big new one. Do I regret it? Only a little. But did it pass, and did I drop the subject? Yes I did. And yet some are still debating it and attempting to perpetuate it and point fingers and say, "X was a bigger flamer than Y." I'll settle things for you. I was the biggest flamer. I scorched the earth with a couple of posts. But then I dropped it and forgot about it entirely and went out and had a really good time and never thought about it again until I logged into FFL this morning and found every- one still arguing -- and thus still *in* -- that state of attention. Everybody flames. It's like shit...it just happens. Somebody gets their buttons pushed and plops a big stinky one in the communal punchbowl. But if that person then "moves on" and drops both the flames and the state of attention that generated them and *others* keep trying to perpetuate the fight, I'd say that somewhere along the line the "baton of flaming" has been passed from one runner to another one.
