[meteorite-list] [off-list] WHATS WITH THE ATTACKING

From: Jason Utas <meteoritekid_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:26:41 -0700
Message-ID: <93aaac890907230226q36c9a95fkf9c6200375d6e2b_at_mail.gmail.com>

Hola All,
Elton's comments are preceded by >'s
The nice thing about this is that I was thinking of majoring in
psychology - before switching to astrophysics - so this wound up being
a lot more fun that I thought it would be. See below.

> Ahem... "worse crime"... ?please, get real!!! I read this test below today and guess who jumped to mind?

Even if Steve does so abuse the list with prolific posts, he does not
attack unless provoked, and apparently has learned to do even that
privately. This is not the case with a number of other list members,
as evidenced by Tom, your 'codependent.'
I don't know, Elton, which is the worse crime. That would be open to
opinion, after all. That said, in my mind, I prefer the person who
won't shut up to the person who riffs on them for doing so, especially
when they know damn well it's not going to make a difference.

> I think you feign offense in Tom's extraordinary circumstance posting to the list which showed "the Other Steve's, Other side".

Hardly. It may not have been an appropriate email, but Steve sent it
to one person, in private. It's one thing to call someone an a**.
It's another to do it in front of a crowd. We all know proper
etiquette, Elton. Posting messages that were intended to be kept
private to the list is wrong - unless they are necessary in proving a
situation such as a deal gone wrong, or cheating having taken place,
as has happened with a number of dealers in the not-so-distant past.
While Steve's reputability may be in question, the email posted
revealed no insight. It was a private matter made public, with the
aim of defamation.
Or would you care to see some of the private messages I've gotten over
the years? A past list-member (only one, mind you) went so far as to
physically threaten me in an email, to the point at which I could
probably have him arrested. You'd think some people would find the
block button before going to such lengths, but apparently not.

Such events only serve to show the true nature of the people attacking
Steve; bullies, who relish the pain they cause others by putting them
down so that they might feel better about themselves.

>This is because you are emotionally co-mingled with the pathetic other Steve. Seems he is your surrogate medium you use as an excuse to attack others when you have neither the talent nor the judgment to do directly. Seems you attack under the guise of being attacked to justify your own issues that you can't come to terms with.

Wrong. I took psych. In this case, I'm your enabler and Tom is mine.
 Tom would be the one co-mingled with Steve, and I would be the one
co-mingled with Tom. You would be the person co-mingled with me.
Things get more complex if you look at secondary relations, because
Steve would be acting as a catalyst for my own venting, but since I
wouldn't have said a word if Tom hadn't made an idiot of himself, Tom
winds up being my partner in crime, so to speak. If you go so far as
to call secondary interactions the direct enabling forces, I might as
well go ahead and say that Steve enables you, through transitivity;
after all, it takes his post to start an argument, which you'll jump
into later. So Steve would be your enabler, as well as myself, of
course.

> What is an enabler?(adapted for the specific situation you posted to the list).

In this case, from your simplistic perspective, I enable Steve. From
my perspective, you enable Tom (and contribute substantially to the
problem, if you have a look at archives), you enable me (I am
responding), and you also enable anyone else who now chooses to
participate in the discussion. You've really played too much with the
definition of 'enabler' for our purposes by confusing the way in which
it applies to interpersonal relationships.

> An enabler in most definitions is a person who through his or her actions allows someone else to achieve something. Often the term enabler is associated with people who allow colleagues to behave in ways that are destructive. For example, an enabler member a meteorite interest group lets an compulsive liar cheat sociopath continue to provide the offender with the attention he craves. A person might be an enabler of a compulsive spender by lending them money to get out of debt.

Right, just as you support Tom and the others who in the past have
made idiots of themselves by repeatedly attacking Steve, sending out a
number of posts comparable to his own.
Which in turn enables Steve's defensive posts, etc. Been there, done that.

Again.

And again.

And again.

> In this fashion, though the enabler may be acting out of love and trying to help or protect a person, he or she is actually making a chronic problem like an addiction worse. By continuing to support/defend/ protect to the enabled, for example, the offender doesn't have to face the consequences of his actions. Someone is there to bail him out of trouble and continue to enable his behavior.

Right, except it seems that in this case, we each see two different
problems, generally speaking. There's the 'Steve' issue and then the
'people who repeatedly go after Steve with no hope of stopping him'
issue. From an interpersonally first-level perspective, I enable one,
you, the other. The trouble is that they propagate each other beyond
a point, meaning that assigning blame to one party is irrelevant.
Once the first punch is thrown, the fists go flying.

> The term enabler is also part of the larger definition of codependency. Codependency at first arose as a definition of adaptive behaviors a person might make if he or she lives with someone with substance abuse or severe emotional problems.

Right again...kind of. The trouble with this analogy is that I simply
don't care about how many emails I get; it's a non-issue. If I really
cared, I might block Steve's email, or filter emails with his address
in them - it would take a mere minute (gotta love gmail), but I
honestly don't care; my inbox has thirty or so thousand emails in it
right now. I star the important ones for easy access (a search for
starred emails will get everything important) and everything else
just...well, I don't know if gmail has a limit, but it's yet to become
an issue. It saves a lot of time really - I wouldn't want to have to
go through every email daily, trying to figure out which to keep or
get rid of. This way I just star the ones I know are important and if
anything comes up later and I need another, they're easy enough to
find. Steve's messages are a mere drop in the bucket.

>A codependent tends to remain so, because he or she adapts to or ignores the behaviors of the ill person.

It causes me no harm, and it causes no one else any harm that they
couldn't remedy with the click of a few buttons. - He's annoying -
fine, block him. God knows how many times I've said this, but you
still just don't seem to get it.

>From a purely rational point of view, you say that I in particular
have adapted to his presence - haven't we all? After all, if you look
at the definition of adaptation in this context, you're talking about
adjusting to/accepting his presence. The lack thereof would involve
leaving the list, or at least being in the process of doing so.
Unless you're planning on leaving the list, you've adapted to his
posts as much as I have. Just because you don't like dealing with him
as much doesn't mean you're not just as well-adapted to him as I am.
You've just adapted in a different way. I sit here and accept, you
sit there and rankle.
It's when your folks boil over and spill your s**t that I get annoyed.

> In fact, the codependent often becomes an enabler because it allows one to be involved in fewer conflicts.

With regards to his allowing me to be in fewer conflicts, well, that's
clearly not true. Seems like I'm jumping in to more tiffs thanks to
this...so, no. Wrong.

> For example, one "poster: is a habitual liar and established fraudster running a con on the rest of the group he parasites from,

And the other who takes it upon himself to be the self-proclaimed
vigilante force of the list, breaking more rules in his 'defensive'
actions than he saves from being broken. Bullying the not-so-innocent
because he can get away with it.

>while the other has unresolved emotional issues that make him overlook the overall picture so he can be the other person's special friend.

Special friend? I don't give a rat's a** if there are...however many
of Steve's posts there are in my inbox. He writes a lot of stuff, and
gives away a lot of free meteorites.
Boo hoo.
Spam I can deal with.
It's the insults and senseless, shameful conduct that follows that
pisses me off.

>Perhaps the member or many members who do have a problem with the behavior has stated that she/he will no longer tolerate the behavior on and off the list. Then the fights ensue. The first member violates the rules again and again. The enabler stands up for the offender not knowing that he himself has been groomed for the role by the manipulations of the ill personality.

So Steve has groomed me to be his knight in shining armour, eh? Your
analogy's getting pretty weird - last time I spoke to Steve privately
was a good few months ago - he sent me a message when he left the
list, and a perfectly civil one at that.
You don't seem to get it. What Steve does is wrong, insofar as he
does break list rules and in doing so, he pesters people - more often
than the list rules say he should. Ok. So get Art to do something
about it, or get Steve to do something about it. But, for the
quintillionth time - KEEP IT OFF THE BLOODY LIST.

(SPAM) + (SPAM SENT TO REDUCE SPAM THAT DOESN'T REDUCE SPAM) = MORE SPAM

Figure it out. Steve may not know better, but you profess to - it
seems as though you just don't realize how hypocritical you're being.

> Eventually, the non-abusing member may simply decide that the fights are worse than the person being a liar, cheat and worse. He or she caves in on this issue, perhaps even defending the scoundrel.

When the fights accomplish nothing but propagating the problem, it
seems that an intelligent person would try to find a different way to
address the issue, instead of beating his or her head against a brick
wall.

>In this way, the the enabler of the chronic liar, is codependent, acting in unusual ways that continue to allow the lying cheater behave in a destructive manner.

Well, I don't know how chronic a liar Steve is, because to date, all
I've seen is a man who loves meteorites at odds with a bunch of a**
holes who don't like his emails and berate him, as well as 600 other
people with a bunch of nasty messages. I almost forgot the messages
posted to the list that condemned Tom's post. Apparently he does have
some backing, at least more so than Tom.

> Enabler can be a more broad-based term for other forms of abusive and destructive behavior. The wife who refuses to fill out police reports after being abused by her husband enables his continuing to beat her. Thus the enabler often suffers almost as much as the mentally unbalanced or addicted person.

 As said, his emails do me no harm. Same goes for you. Of course,
your posts don't truly pain me either, in that sense, but, I shall
repeat myself for the umpteenth time - while his are generally
pleasant and well-intentioned, the anti-Steve posts are downright
asinine, and not a pleasant read.
If I do suffer, it's only because I feel embarrassed that such a small
community, and one that I would like to be proud to call my own, has
so many unsavoury (and vocal) characters.

> This seems to apply to you even if you are too close to the pain to admit it.

And you, Tom, and all of the other people who still haven't understood
that, after a decade of Steve's being solid as a rock on this list,
'he ain't moving.' If it applies to me, it applies to you. But I
took psychology this past term and it seems pretty obvious that you're
a very egotistical person undertaking a character assassination in
order for yourself to feel better about...yourself. You think you're
better than Steve, you think you know better than him (as well as
myself), and you'll be damned if you stand idly by and let him get
away with breaking the rules, because, after all, you do know better,
and no one seems to be doing anything about it.
But you're not solving the problem. You're just putting Steve down,
again and again and again.
I wish I had someone I could just go off on like that - talk about a
stress reliever.

>Were you abused as a younger child?

Seems like you're the one trying to make up for it, not me.

>Your blind passion for standing up for this ass is revealing much about your own personality as well as the person you defend. ?This doesn't clear up for younger people until past 35 years old.

Wisdom comes from experience. I will now tell you the story of a
group of brave men who tried for ten years to force a single man whom
they disliked to be quiet. They did everything they could; they asked
him to stop, begged him, pleaded with him, and finally resorted to
insults and calling him names. They did the same things, again and
again, for ten long years. After the decade had passed, they...kept
doing the same thing. They were over 35 years old, so they knew
better (apparently), but they just couldn't help themselves. This is
the story of Elton, his men, and their quest to stop the horrible
Steve from giving away meteorites for free, and to stop him from
sending too many messages to the list.

No, Elton. being over 35 doesn't stop you from being stupid. Dumb I
could forgive; we all start with a different deck. You seem to have a
brain, though, and one capable of reasoning. It's disappointing to
see this, to say the least.

>So in the meanwhile why don't you give it a rest, as by your post in these situations it is clear that you do not have a mastery yet to discern reality. Your interpretation of the messages you are commenting on aren't in the majority.

Do as you say, not as you do, eh? My problem is posts like Tom's, and
he got more opposition than support. Take another look.

> ?There is no "attack" by Tom just a question to Steve about why he is back again after his 5th pronouncement that he is leaving for good.


"

Wait, didn't you leave this list for good not long ago?

 God(tm) almighty someone stop this guy......I will NEVER buy ANYTHING
from you Steve. EVER.

Go away.

"

One hell of a pointed "question." I particularly like the "Go away."
at the end. Never mind the fact that this message is obviously a
personal post that has no business on a list for METEORITES.
(I know, neither does this, but I have high hopes that Elton may well
learn something. Eventually. He is, after all, the only one who
keeps supporting the 'anti-Steve' crowd on a regular basis.)

>Your jumping on Steve's verbiage illustrates this lack of reasoning ability in this situation.

What? First-off, given the fact that we're disagreeing, that's just a
general way of saying "you said this, therefore you don't understand."
 The trouble is that you're saying that because I reference the
material of what he said, I therefore do not understand the problem.
The implication of this statement is that it's not what he says that
matters, merely that he posts as much as he does (if the material of
his messages is irrelevant, then it must be the messages themselves
that are the offending article, regardless of content). To which I
point out that his few posts created more anti-Steve posts than he
sent. Which, even if you're going by your standards (# of messages
versus content), still makes your lot (the anti-Steve's) worse than
Steve himself.

And I would say that your repeated posts do precisely what you accuse
my single post of doing: viz, revealing a simple inability to
understand the situation. See above...and below.

>It isn't Steve you are defending so much as the emotional attachment he has to your own psyche.

So says the bully.

>Perhaps in time you will be able to separate the two entangled constructs.

Now you're just projecting; you need to tear him down to feel better
about yourself. If you'd have just shut up already, I'd never have
said a word. You're argument simply doesn't make sense. I didn't
respond to Steve: Tom did. If anyone's tangled up with him, it's Tom.
 I'm the one tangled up with Tom, and you're ensnared with me.
I would be a codependent with you and Tom, because they're to whom I
respond (I get to include you because you're eliciting an action on my
part with this message). You're not even getting the psychological
aspects of your argument right. Come on.

If you really want to look at it from a psychological perspective,
since *you* responded to my post, you would be the one dependent on
me, and I would be your enabler. It is, after all, my post that led
to your post. The ramifications of this are twofold; firstly, it
becomes evident that I should not post if I don't want you to
perpetuate the problem. Granted, I shouldn't have posted for that
reason, but Tom's post was pretty bad. I think I was justified, and I
had no way of knowing that you would respond.
The second, of course, is that you are dependent on me to feel good
about yourself. You wanted to write another nasty email on the
subject if only to put me down and thus feel better about your own
psyche. I *enabled* you to do that.

Go figure.

*A nice aspect of this psychological analysis is that I know that if
you do respond, you'll be getting great emotional satisfaction from
putting me down, and that alone.
And if anyone does care enough to read through all this twaddle,
they'll know it, too.

>Meanwhile perhaps you will also learn to keep out of the onlist topics when you don't have skills and understanding of your own co-dependent tendencies.

You're just reiterating past rubbish from above - this is the point
where you should go back and actually read my response in the distant
hope of learning something from it.
Another nice thing I noticed regarding this situation is that even if
I am completely and utterly wrong, at least I don't go around making
other people feel like s**t for no reason.
In other words, I have the ability to learn. Even if you have that,
too, you're still an a** - and I'm sorry, but I don't know how you can
go about fixing that.
Good luck.
Jason

> --- On Wed, 7/22/09, Jason Utas <meteoritekid at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Jason Utas <meteoritekid at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] WHATS WITH THE ATTACKING
>> To: "Meteorite-list" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
>> Date: Wednesday, July 22, 2009, 10:32 PM
>> Tom,
>> What is said in private for a reason is generally meant to
>> remain
>> there.? You attacked Steve publicly using the list,
>> and he shot back -
>> in private.? At least he had the decency to keep
>> private messages
>> where they belong.
>> Tom...you've just proved yourself worse than he is.
>> Regardless of how he uses the list, it is not for the shameless attacking oflist-members, which is undoubtedly a worse crime than
>> over-posting.
>> So, as has already been asked, what is your problem?
>> You can't say it's Steve's conduct without being a
>> hypocrite, so I'm actually curious as to what you're going to say.? But
>> if your last post was your last, as you said, perhaps a private response
>> to me would be more appropriate.
>> After all, why the hell do I care if you're not going to
>> buy anything from Steve?? Perhaps you have a reason for sharing
>> that with all 600 of us.
>> Steve may be wrong.? But, two wrongs don't make a
>> right - especially when the second one is worse.
>> Jason
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 7:05 PM, Tom Randall
>> (KB2SMS)<tommy2005 at hvc.rr.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Hello list,
>> > ? ?I do not post often. I do not sell meteorites.
>> ?I BUY them occasionally.
>> > I've bought from many people on this list. I am a
>> small time collector.
>> > Anyone remember Steve saying he's leaving? He's like
>> Herpies, he keeps
>> > coming back. Time and time again. Selling his stuff.
>> Disregarding the list
>> > RULES. Here is an email he sent me after my original
>> response to his post:
>> >
>> >
>> > "TOM GO TO HELL.WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM???
>> > ?Steve R. Arnold, Chicago!!"
>> >
>> >
>> > I mention nothing about hate in my post. Here is my
>> original post:
>> >
>> >
>> > "Wait, didn't you leave this list for good not long
>> ago?
>> >
>> > God(tm) almighty someone stop this guy......I will
>> NEVER buy
>> > ANYTHING from you Steve. EVER.
>> >
>> > Go away.
>> >
>> > Tom"
>> >
>> >
>> > Where's the hate? This will be my last post on this.
>> Steve you're just a
>> > liar. You have serious issues.
>> >
>> > Don't blame me, it's your OWN fault.......
>> >
>> > Tom
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ______________________________________________
>> > http://www.meteoritecentral.com
>> > Meteorite-list mailing list
>> > Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>> > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>> >
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>
Received on Thu 23 Jul 2009 05:26:41 AM PDT