[FRIAM] Message to the non-posting 95%

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Well, there's evil, and there's Evil. This thread, including RussA's implicit confirmation of Marcus' point about fora rigidity, dovetails nicely with the [ab|mis]use thread and Nick's trope about ancillary vs primary effects. The scammers, themselves not necessarily their children, are Evil ... but we can empathize if they're doing it because the world is a harsh and complex place. You gotta make money somehow. They're simply doing what we tell them they have to do.

Lurkers are opaque. Presumably, Google is a lurker on every clear text email you send through their platform, including this one. But I haven't really noticed any targeted marketing, perhaps because I use their IMAP interface, not the web interface? So even if they're using this content to profile and target people, it's merely little-e evil and I (perhaps falsely) understand why they're lurking. They're a for-profit business. It's a way to extract money. You gotta make money somehow. Google is simply doing what we tell them they have to do.

But individual lurkers are much harder to guess about. The opacity doesn't bother me, personally. It's none of my business what others think of me. (Similarly, to quote Fleetwood Mac, don't ask me what I think of you. I might not give the answer that you want me to.) But it does seem to be important to some. My advice is to treat this like a traditional medium. Each post is something you'd be willing to print out and nail to the telephone pole downtown. Any other conception seems like magical thinking.

On 1/28/21 2:18 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Of course it is criminal to do that. I used to think whenever something is happening in nature it is either supper or pairing time. Now I tend to think whenever something is happening it is something selfish. Or evil. There is so much evil in this world, isn't it?

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