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A true ‘tea-cup in a storm’ (i.e. it’s not even as big as a storm in a tea cup) has erupted over Debbie Weil and her ‘did she/didn’t she’ commit an ethical faux pax.
Much discussion has ensued and the conversation has geographically bounced all over the globe.
I’ve not heard directly from Debbie on this blog, and I’ve screened some typically fatuous comments from the strumpette, sticking to my line announced April last year that she was banned from commenting on this blog.
Like Debbie, I was once accused of inappropriate behaviour. I considered that my crime was one of a difference in humour and expecting everyone to share the same warped and dark sense of humour. They didn’t and so I publicly and very humbly apologised. I ‘built a bridge and got over it’ as we say here; I trust that Debbie will do the same. I’ve had my say and given my point of view and so consider the matter closed and move on.
But the purpose of this post is to let you know that arch cynic Vaspers the Grate has spoof alpha-launched the fabulously-monikered Venim, which he wickedly points out is
a social networking site devoted to blogocombat:
- extreme e-debate
- mindbot bully-rebuke
- artful online argument
- hamfisted me-media smashing
- digital surrogate skirmishes
- destroy-mode troll bashings
- blogophilic fatalism feats
- harnessed node negativity
- socnet safety-fighting
- self-effacing neo-net ninjas
- hardcore comment clobbering
…and other esoteric routines.
No doubt the insufferable but indefatigable Strumpette will be a heavy [ab]user!
Techorati is tracking Debbie Weil and this issue: 
Debbie Weil
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
vaspers 07.15.07 at 2:08 am
My blogging began with not having my own blog, but hammering out my theological positions on now defunkt Vessle of Honour blog, an extreme Anti-Calvinist Anti-Churchian blog of Mac Swift, who may no longer exist.
I was also on the Baptist Board, a message board with religious intent. At this time, I called myself “Sunday school teacher”.
Very few people, Lee, know these details.
We mostly joined forces, I quickly became his Most Comments commenter, neck to neck with a female rival who also had way too much time on her hands, and few friends, so that at one fever pitch Anti Passion Film round, he warned me to chill out: “you’re taking over my blog!”
I was responding to nearly every comment anyone put on his blog. Visitors began to think Swift’s Chick Publications Admiring blog was more my blog than Swift’s.
Right about that time, after declaring war on Mel Gibson and The Passion film at Baptist Board, where I first called myself “Vaspers” (no “the Grate” yet), my long campaign of disparagement, which evenly divided the Baptist Board members, many of whom were more strident than I about the heresies and falsifications in The Passion, predicting it would have no effect on evangelism, which George Barna later proved, I went too far, and got banned from Baptist Board.
Later, I would be banned from two web design sites for my views on usability vs. narcissistic design anarchy, and politics. I approved of ethical social anarchy, but frowned upon design anarchy, wanting design to submit to users.
Fast forward, past my starting Vaspers the Grate, and my wife’s invention of “blog scorching”, I got on Twitter due directly to blogocombat.
In the wake of the Kathy Sierra/Mean Kids debacle, in which I was a leading participant both in the controversy and behind the scenes, Scoble complained of the trolls in blogs, and stated “No wonder I prefer to hang out on Twitter.”
I then had a reason to get on a site that asks “What are you doing now?” I decided I’d ignore that tyrannical query, and use Twitter as a marketing and reputation machine, as I benefited the community with fiery rhetoric for flimsy causes I deemed important.
I believe in destroying your enemies by converting them into friends.
This is the goal of true, ethical, aggressive blogocombat.
Some of the best tools are humor, self-effacement, ambivalence, and seeing all online attacks as letters typed by what may be a chihauaha or hamster on Dogster pet socnet. Yeah, a hamster pretending to be a dog on the web! Well, maybe anyway.
Thanks for linking to and promoting my Venim blogocombat training socnet.
Lord willing, I’ll have enough developers banging out the required code, and we’ll be up and running by September or perhaps tomorrow. Who knows?