[FRIAM] Message to the non-posting 95%

[Russ Abbott]

Hi, (breaking the eerie silence)

I'm still here. This thread illustrates why I rarely post these days. I
liked Nick's original post asking non-posters to say something. But I found
the ensuing discussion of spam not very interesting. If that discussion
were to be carried on at all, it should have been in another thread,
leaving this one to its original purpose.

A feature that you probably can't implement would be to allow readers to
mark threads as non-interesting, which would exclude them from that
reader's stream.

-- Russ Abbott
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles


On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 10:04 AM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> This all reminds me of a point I *thought* Jon made about the death of the
> DJ. But now I can't find that post. A friend of mine insists he hates the
> radio. On the surface, it sounds like a typical complaint about being
> "constantly interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet
> paper". But I think it goes deeper ... into QAnon territory. Being *part*
> of the game, as opposed to a mere consumer of it, is an important part of
> social reality. Some of us spend more time in a state of transcendent calm,
> content to watch or ignore some process. Others tend to get in and stir
> things up, send out rhizomes. Some of us feel helpless when the dancing
> rabbits come on, our individualism shattered. Some of us revel in the
> absurdity of it. And some of us sing along because the jingle is an ear
> worm.
>
> Scammers robocall me at least once per day. Inspired by the many
> scambaiters on youtube, I almost always press 1 to get my credit card rate
> lowered or to get that refund for the MacBook I didn't buy and have a
> long-ish conversation with them. After several attempts to get me to tell
> them my CC number [⛧], the "manager" yesterday finally told me to "fvck
> off". I'm like "You called me!?!" And he hung up. Ha! My time is even less
> precious than theirs. I can't help but wonder what his "employees" lives
> are like. Was the 1st guy on the call just as much a victim of his boss as
> I am? More? Or do they all live like Kings from the thousands of dollars
> they steal from the elderly?
>
>
> [⛧] We have this terrible noise problem on our landline that's not due to
> unfiltered DSL. Renee' wants me to get rid of it. I'm not motivated to
> because it helps me tease the scammers. "Is that noise on your end? Hang
> on, let me try something ... [set the phone down and reduce some sim
> output] ... Is that better? Oh well, now what were you asking?"
>
> On 1/28/21 9:29 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> > I don't let my spam filter automatically file my spam...  I visually
> > scan the subjects and senders and depend on my peripheral vision to
> > notice spam markers... if something is suspected spam but *isn't* I
> > notice pretty close to real-time which means that there isn't a lot of
> > negative reinforcement for false-positives.   I also try to be
> > thoughtful about what I mark as spam... I don't for example, call things
> > I simply am not interested in as spam.  Before I do a "delete spam" or
> > "move marked to spam folder" I scan again, just on principle... I *very*
> > rarely catch anything in that scan but you know "belt and suspenders"....
> >
> > I try to limit who I "subscribe" to and then whack-a-mole the allies
> > that seem to spill over.  ActBlue and/or ButtigeigForPrez and/or
> > BernieIsSoCoolItHurts seem to have gleefully given my e-mail address to
> > another half-dozen or so other campaigns (DitchMitch, MakeGeorgiaBlue,
> > OMGtheRedStatesAreComing, etc.) who then flooded me.   For a while they
> > were a hydra it seemed... and I WAS tempted to overtrain my spam filter
> > and send it direct to a folder or trash but got through it without doing
> > that.
> >
> > Finally, after November I started unsubscribing from the campaigns I
> > knew I'd opted into (even if by sly accident) and included an admonition
> > that if THEY were the source of all the side-spam, they should rethink,
> > because it ended up *inhibiting* my support for their cause(s)... though
> > I am not sure that was very significant.
>
> On 1/28/21 9:18 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > Some readers want novelty -- they are channel flippers -- and others are
> looking for an activity or even a process.    And then there is a range in
> between.    I'd guess Roger and Nick on opposite ends of that spectrum.
>  I'm a channel flipper until I see something that looks like an itch to
> scratch or something to puzzle over -- a good distraction.
>
>
> --
> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
>
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