[Buddha-l] Ahh, fame

[Richard Hayes]

On Mon, 2008-05-26 at 11:15 -0400, Bshmr at aol.com wrote:

> Other than that, are there any, especially you academics, with aliases  or 
> with hidden web-lives that I should know about? <(-:{

About ten years ago I dipped into the hell realms know as news groups.
There were several on Buddhism, which I investigated. Never have I seen
such ugly verbal behavior. People ganged up on each other and said the
most vicious and apparently deliberately hurtful things they could. It
seemed as though a whole bunch of really lonely passive aggressive
sociopaths had decided to get together and discuss Buddhist compassion.
I tried to participate in discussions for a while but was met with such
wholehearted condemnation that I quietly slunk away, but not before
receiving some hate mail that one of my colleagues (obviously more
paranoid than I) interpreted as a death threat. It became clear to me
why almost everyone who gets involved in that world uses a nom de
clavier. 

A few years later, I joined what would now be called a blog on current
affairs run by Christian Science Monitor. After I had posted about two
messages, a group of four guys singled me out for disapproval, and I was
once again treated to hostile and uncivil verbal behavior, most of it
containing wild accusations clearly meant to undermine my legitimacy and
fanciful (and sometimes quite amusing) ad hominem attacks. I withdrew
and just read for a while and noticed that just about anybody with views
perceptibly to the left of these four guys met with the same treatment;
since it was not at all difficult to be to the left of these four guys,
the only people who lasted were either racist, sexist, xenophobic,
jingoistic, Bible-thumping, nativist bullies or masochists who had some
deep-seated psychological compulsion to be abused by troglodytes.

Buddha-l has always seemed to me, in contrast, one of the most genteel,
hospitable and cordial places on the Internet in which people can
discuss their views without being badgered. 

It is no news to anyone here that I have a non-academic web page and a
blog, both of which are rarely read. Like Richard, I would like to know
about blogs, or other kinds of web pages, that other buddha-l folks
maintain. 

-- 
Richard Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu>
University of New Mexico
http://dayamati.blogspot.com
http://dayamati.home.comcast.net