Re: War has been declared

Posted by Douglas Roberts-2 on Feb 19, 2010; 8:47pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/War-has-been-declared-tp4595214p4599988.html

Did you wake up on the wrong side of your bunker this morning?

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 1:44 PM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thus spake Douglas Roberts circa 10-02-19 12:24 PM:

> There actually is a complex social network component to the whole episode.
>  I just did a quick back-of-the-envelop addition:  during the past 18 hours,
> approx 500,000 individuals were exposed to the article that I wrote about
> the Newegg interaction.  Contact was made via a combination of Facebook,
> mailing lists, and the Linux Today online publication.  Newegg's Facebook
> page alone has 249,512 fans subscribed to it.
>
> Information flows faster these days than it used to, if you want it to.

But what's the point?

The normal path now would be for you to post some sort of "I got what I
wanted out of Newegg" message to those 500k individuals.  This would
demonstrate that Newegg is not such a bad actor after all and/or that
you are a most powerful techie samurai, or whatever.

But that's not very interesting.  This sort of thing happens EVERY DAY
to lots of people.  Sure, you had your satisfaction.  And you probably
made Newegg a little more bureaucratic and conservative in the process.

But what have you actually achieved?

Why have you wasted the time and attention of 500k people?  To what
purpose?  What's in it for those 500k people?  Or did you, perhaps,
simply use the time and attention of those 500k people to get what YOU
wanted?  I continue to wonder who the "bad actor" is, here.  Newegg, who
would sell crap to unwitting fools and only capitulate when coerced?  Or
Doug, the guy who's willing to abuse the time and attention of 500,000
people because he happens to be mad about something?

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com


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--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org