jack_mingo_the_man_and_the_malaise_part_one

This posting is about Jack Mingo, the man, which of course means (to be fair) "Jack Mingo, The Usenet Poster". The article which follows after this one will treat the "Mingo Malaise" which has now infected several newsgroups.

JACK MINGO, FLAMER

In the Usenet flame world where I grew up, there exist several varities of flamers who prove so undeserving of any respect that even the dregs of flame society shun them.

Jack Mingo, Flamer, you embody two of these lowly varieties.

First, there is the flamer who proves far too cowardly to admit he is a flamer--this sort lets it be known to all that he would not go near the "flame pits" (like alt.flame) with a ten-foot pole.

Despite his pose, though, a glance at this type of sneak flamer's posting history will show him to be an inverterate flamer. In fact, he soon--with his very own flames--pollutes any non-flame newsgroup he happens to park himself in. That's you, Mr. Mingo, to a tee.

You are a flamer, Mr. Mingo, let no one make a mistake about it. You have wrtten very likely as many

"attack posts" as anyone on the net. You are a habitual epithet-hurler, an insulter, and even a threatener (we will discuss the nature of your threats later).

Further, you are an e-mail flamer, and that is a particularly lowly breed--especially when your e-mailed flames purport to attack the flaming of others. I don't get in e-mail flame wars, and you might as well stop flaming me, Mr. Mingo, because from here on all your e-mails will go unread into my little GUI "rubbish can".

MINGO THE SELF-SERVING SPAM EXPERT

On thing that has become very apparent to me, Mr. Mingo, is that you are extremely arrogant. Your intellectual dishonesty and arrogance show in the fact that you distort or qualify the commonly agreed upon definitions of words to suit yourself. Take the way you throw the word "spam" at people who upset you.

Spamming has a very specific meaning on the net. Although not everyone agrees on the precise quantitative definition, reasonable people have long agreed that it involves putting the same off-topic article in a great many newsgroups where no reasonable person would view it as a relevant posting, regarding the newsgroup topic.

I'm not a spammer, Mr. Mingo. Well over ninety-nine percent of my thousands of Usenet posts have been squarely on topic. When I have made a mistake, I have apologized for my honest error.

When you--both in posts, and by repeated e-mailed flames--make insinuations about my supposed "spamming" I get annoyed, Mr. Mingo. Every post you fuss about in my dispute with Wilkes' grew directly out of what was posted earlier in the same group. We are not talking about a spat in alt.rabbits.pets that was "spammed" over to a prose newsgroup to annoy Mr. Mingo, despite your many recent dissimulations on the subject.

JACK MINGO'S REPEATED, VEILED THREATS

In addition to your hypocrisy about accusing others of flaming merely because they have the spine to call a flame a flame and you don't, and besides your general self-serving dishonesty in using the term "spamming", there are a few other things that bother me about you, Mr. Mingo. I promise to remain candid.

We could talk about your arrogant tendancy to answer serious arguments with cheap quips, but let's talk about something far worse: Your proclivity toward making veiled threats. Most of your e-mails to me contain them, along with with your dark references to having successfully disposed of your net "enemies" in the past, Mr. Mingo.

Most significantly, though, the thing I notice about YOUR threats is that they are suggestive of the most cowardly sort of behavior, Mr. Mingo.

After all, if someone says, "Smith, if you do not retract what you said about me, I will write and post an article making you the laughingstock of three newsgroups," that is a threat. But it is an honest threat, because it implies very straightforward posting behavior, not skull- duggery.

With YOUR threats, Mr. Mingo, thare are all sorts of allusions to behind the scenes chicanery, and, of course, you have a malodorous reputation for that sort of thing.

In fact, the first time you e-mailed me, you made a vain, foolish attempt to recruit me in one of your orchestrated complaint campaigns, where you use e-amil to try and get as many dupes as possible whining to someone's ISP so your opponent might lose his or her internet service. I didn't buy into it.

I strongly suspect that the fact I made it very clear to you that I always do my complaining in an open and public fashion--not with back-door, under the table actions--was one of the things that won me your enmity, Mr. Mingo.

JACK MINGO, USENET WRITER

There is also the matter of your boasts to me of your being a professional writer, Mr. Mingo.

Fact is, I think your hang ups on that score have led to some of your problems in getting along with others in Usenet.

You see, Mr. Mingo, Usenet is an inherently egalitarian universe. We are what we post. We are words, you and I.

In your words I see a desperation that says, "Don't view my trite, querulous articles as emanating from one of your equals in a prose newsgroup. Instead, understand those posts as coming from Jack Mingo, the professional writer, who has long graced this newsgroup with his presence, primarly for the benefit of you awed amateurs, of course."

Fact is, Mr. Mingo, this is an amateurs' world. If you want to impress intelligent people here, you must do it with your regular creative efforts, not by smugly reminding people that your rather lackluster Usenet articles come from the keyboard of the great Jack Mingo, professional writer.

Many of us aren't impressed in the least.

The fact that you may be in BOOKS IN PRINT means nothing to me. Rest assured that I will not bother to check the next time I am at the bookstore; nor do I intend to do a search relating to you with Amazon Books on my computer. You have bragged, but you haven't SHOWN me anything that would attract me to books you may have written, Jack Mingo.

Some "professional writers" would have a hard time putting together a creditable paragraph, were it not for their editors. Others have mastered the common conventions of prose, but prove utterly lacking in originality. Frankly, although it is clear you are not one of the first types, some of the postings I have seen by you lead me to suspect that you fit snugly into my second category, Mr. Mingo.

JACK MINGO SUMMARIZED:

All in all, Mr. Mingo, I see in you a person so lacking in integrity that he claims the right to define common Usenet terms in his own private way, simply to allow him to hang negative labels upon his opponents.

I see a longtime Usenet flamer who lacks the integrity to call his own neverending flames FLAMES.

I see someone who--when challenged--skitters off the wordscreens of the world in fear and anger and takes to skullduggery to extract a coward's revenge on his critics.

I see a professional writer of modest talents who likes being in the small pond of Usenet amateurs, as long as those amateurs take his self-serving pontifications at face value. I see someone who lacks intellectual spine for defending his pronouncements.

I see you, Jack Mingo, in my mind's eye...

[Next, "Jack Mingo: The Man and The Malaise" [Part 2]