Open Source Bullying
Remember the sheer genius of knocking a folder or book of papers out of a victim's hands?
I was reminded of this just this morning as I walked from the Post Office to the Rep with a bucket of mail on my shoulder at precisely the moment I realized that I was at that moment totally open to that kind of attack.
It was a flash to elementray and junior high and high school that hit like a subtle taste or a smell, evocative of a whole body feeling in a flash.
The genius of this kind of attack is that it immediately puts the victim in the position of having to make a choice: chase the attackers or attend to the papers now scattered across the hall, sidewalk, playground, whatever. And that hesitation, that moment of indecision and weighing options, provide plenty of time for the attackers to flee, should it become necessary.
No matter the victim's choice, they will have to at some point return to the disorder, perhaps the muddy, rainy destruction, of their belongings.
In an instant, the attackers have won. Game, set, match, checkmate, book it, take that shit to the house and drive it down.
This is the kind of tachnique that can only arise through practitioner innovation and evolution. The system designed and developed by those who use it is always the strongest. Open source bullying.
Yeah, open source can be applied further than it is, and it is more than "clever" meme-constructing juxtaposition. It works with software as it works with sidewalks (as the smart civil engineer leaves a space of lawn clear until walkers wear the paths and then lays down the sidewalks).
Somehow, this is feeding my wrestling match with the phrase "open source religion," both in terms of how that term is derisively used (like in the Left Behind series) and how it is perhaps positively used (Douglas Ruchkoff's Nothing Sacred talks about this quite eloquently), and how I want to fit that term and my use of it into my narratives.
(And, just for the record, I was rarely if ever the folder-shover, and often the one picking up soggy papers as a group of cooler, and apparently open-source-dedicated, kids ran away.)
I was reminded of this just this morning as I walked from the Post Office to the Rep with a bucket of mail on my shoulder at precisely the moment I realized that I was at that moment totally open to that kind of attack.
It was a flash to elementray and junior high and high school that hit like a subtle taste or a smell, evocative of a whole body feeling in a flash.
The genius of this kind of attack is that it immediately puts the victim in the position of having to make a choice: chase the attackers or attend to the papers now scattered across the hall, sidewalk, playground, whatever. And that hesitation, that moment of indecision and weighing options, provide plenty of time for the attackers to flee, should it become necessary.
No matter the victim's choice, they will have to at some point return to the disorder, perhaps the muddy, rainy destruction, of their belongings.
In an instant, the attackers have won. Game, set, match, checkmate, book it, take that shit to the house and drive it down.
This is the kind of tachnique that can only arise through practitioner innovation and evolution. The system designed and developed by those who use it is always the strongest. Open source bullying.
Yeah, open source can be applied further than it is, and it is more than "clever" meme-constructing juxtaposition. It works with software as it works with sidewalks (as the smart civil engineer leaves a space of lawn clear until walkers wear the paths and then lays down the sidewalks).
Somehow, this is feeding my wrestling match with the phrase "open source religion," both in terms of how that term is derisively used (like in the Left Behind series) and how it is perhaps positively used (Douglas Ruchkoff's Nothing Sacred talks about this quite eloquently), and how I want to fit that term and my use of it into my narratives.
(And, just for the record, I was rarely if ever the folder-shover, and often the one picking up soggy papers as a group of cooler, and apparently open-source-dedicated, kids ran away.)
posted by JJisafool at 9:50 AM
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