[LMB] Cultural clashes, was Listbiz: 'king of the internet'

[Paula Lieberman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lois Aleta Fundis" <lfundis at weir.net>



[snip]

> I'm going to repeat this to emphasize it: When I became aware of the 
> problem - however rudely I was notified of it, and it was Peter who first 
> complained in a way that implied I was already aware of it already and was 
> intentionally doing it  -- I tried very hard to figure out what

Back to Barrayar versus Beta, and different ways of communicating/cultural 
perspectives.

At work Friday, one of my coworker on the other side of the cubicle wall 
whose cubes are by the south windows, said something about Anna Nicole 
Smith.  "Who's Anna Nicole Smith?" asked another coworker on that side of 
the cubes.

"A [dead] golddigger," said the first coworker.
"A ditz," I said.
"What's a ditz?" asked the second coworker, who's an old former rocket 
scientist.
Both I and the first coworker gave verbal definitions/examples.  Coworker #2 
did some googling and read off five definitions he found...

It's not that similar a situation, however, I'm trying to indicate that 
different people take the same information and can react very differently. 
I don;t expect that most people would ask for a definition and simultaneous 
start googling for definitions... my public school classmates when I used a 
word they didn't know got offended and hostile, they didn;t treat it like 
they were the English language out acquiring a new term...

I think perhaps that Peter was trying to get the situation changed and not 
contemplating how the comments might be received.

> was causing it and whether it was something I could fix, and if so how. It 
> seemed to be a problem in the type of ASCII  (7 bit vs. 8 bit)  which 
> apparently Yahoo does differently from some other  e-mail clients, some of 
> which couldn't resolve the discrepancy.  At least that was one suggestion 
> that came from a listee that was actually trying to be helpful instead of 
> just taking ti as a personal insult.  Thus, even though from my point of 
> view the problem seemed to be in the software being used by a relative few 
> of those *reading* the e-mails, not in what I was using in sending them, I 
> was trying to find a way to solve the problem, and I mentioned several 
> times on the list that I was trying. Yes, I even tried contacting Yahoo 
> about it (they never answered back).  Meanwhile, all that time Peter and 
> others, but mostly Peter,  were complaining as if I were doing it on 
> purpose, like I wanted my comments to be hard to read!  I don't know if 
> anyone noticed, but I quit posting to the list for months just because I 
> was tired of snarky comments about weird character infecting (apparently 
> otherwise immaculate) e-mails!
>
> And yes, sometimes I get e-mails or see web pages or LJ posts with strange 
> things in them, usually differences in rendering punctuation or 
> diacritical marks -- usually a difference between Unicode or ASCII codes 
> for such marks. But I don't go around accusing and insulting people! I 
> just accept that different computers and different programs, like 
> different people, do things differently, and they don't always agree. It's 
> not like I can't figure out what they're saying.
>
> All of that is why I was, and am, very offended by Peter calling Jill's 
> e-mail "butt UGLY", caps and all.  That was disgusting, gross, nasty and

"That's ugly" in tech terms is an aesthetic judgment on how something looks, 
not on the person whose material looks that way... "butt UGLY" is a fairly 
common geek term denoting that something has come out aestheticially quite 
displeasing and it would be preferable to not have that -appearance- -- but 
it again is not a personal attack/.not intended to be a personal attack.

> utterly uncalled for!  (Much ruder even than he had been to me.)  The very 
> term "butt UGLY" is filthy, even borderline obscene, and ought not

Geeks and social graces tend to be casually related...

> to be used in polite company at all.   He could simply have pointed out 
> that there was a problem with the lack of spacing and suggested Jill look 
> into fixing it, or if anyone on the list could help suggest a solution. 
> She certainly didn't intend it to look that way.

Ah, but that takes social grace, which lots of people don't have (speaking 
from personal experiences as Social Clueless Wonder...)

> I don't want Jill to think that our list is full of angry insensitive 
> people who will jump on her for the least mistake, especially ones she's 
> not actually responsible for.   Most of all,  I think it's unhealthy for 
> the list when someone characterizes another person's e-mails with such 
> offensive language as "butt UGLY," and not even for anything she actually 
> said but simply for a formatting error that was out of her control. 
> Anyone who is that rude should be called on it. The real ugliness was not 
> in her e-mail but in the attitude in his response. No strange character 
> that ever appeared in any of my e-mails even *remotely* came close to that 
> comment in its ugliness.

That's an aesthetics judgment, and aesthetics can different dramatically.  I 
think that Irish Belique (spelling) is ugly, for example, and that buildings 
designed by certain famous architects including I. M. Pei are ugly, and the 
post modern building design of putting fake pink or green peaks on buildings 
is ugly... but other people like those appearances or they wouldn't have 
those things built those ways and continuing to commission like buildings!