bitch, bitch, bitch

[redbird]

Before seeing The Glass Blowers last night, I met Lise, Moshe, and Andrew Porter for dinner. In between various other stuff, Andrew asks me what happened to the rassef meetings. Nothing happened to them. He wanted to know why he isn't getting email anymore, and I explained that nobody is, and that they're announced on the newsgroup. So far, so good (or would be if I didn't find him irritating for hard-to-identify reasons). But then he tried to give me his email address so he could get reminders.

I explained, less patiently this time, that I'm not sending reminders by email. To anyone. That I'm doing the work, and it's enough work already, and if he's interested he can find the reminders on any of three different newsgroups. He claimed to be a fakefan in this regard; that's his privilege, but not wanting to read the newsgroup, or even skim it for subject lines or for threads started by me, doesn't entitle him to more of my time and energy.

It doesn't help that what he would generally do, when he showed up, is spend his time trying to convince other people to take home old fanzines that he didn't want anymore. If I were in a mood to make exceptions, I'd be making them for people who contributed to the conversation.

It also doesn't help that, in the same conversation in which he wanted me to do extra work because of software he won't use, he explained that he couldn't ask Harry Warner to write even a paragraph for two on a tight deadline, because Harry uses a typewriter, not email. Everyone, apparently, should use all but only the technology he finds convenient.

Comments

[aiglet.livejournal.com]

Well, not that this will solve the problem, but would you like me to set up and maintain a Yahoo!Groups or some such e-mail list for this?

I'm moving to the city in May and am planning on starting to show up to the get-togethers on a regular basis (along with soulchanger, who I've finally suckered into convinced to read the group, and I wouldn't mind putting in the effort to help out. (Also, let me know if there's any other sort of help you need -- I like the gatherings and think they're a wonderful idea.)

[aiglet.livejournal.com]

Oh, my lacking HTML skills! The "suckered into" was supposed to be struck-out, but I can't figure out how to do it... :(

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

I am an evil person, and think that since the group was originally created for the people who read the rec.arts.sf.* newsgroups to meet, that posting in those newsgroups is a reasonable way to announce the meetings, and that while it has been a kindness for Vicki (and others in the past) to send out email reminders, it's not necessary -- and people who don't read the group, but try to pressure Vicki into sending them personal reminders are being incredibly rude.

sigh I don't know if this is coming across properly, and I have very mixed feelings about Andy Porter -- mostly negative -- but this feels like another example of people not willing (NOT you, obviously) to do anything to maintain or support the group/activity, but wanting things made easy for their convenience. (Ask me, one day, about the number of people who have bitched about the locations, but never suggested, much less researched, another place.)

Rant, rant, rant. This bothers me in ways that I can't clearly express

[aiglet.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, I agree with you completely about the fact that announcing a get-together for r.a.sf.* on those newsgroups and *only* on those newsgroups is more than adequate, and that it was terribly rude to try to pressure Vicki into doing more work than she's already doing (and doing a wonderful job of, from what I've seen).

I just also know that sometimes not everyone who would like to come (and is a worthwhile person) has a news connection, and that maybe an e-mail list might be useful. I wasn't going to set one up without asking, though, and it seems as though no one really wants one, for understandable reasons, so scratch that idea. (Hrm... Brain is burbling over some ideas about Usenet outreach, but I'll think them over and write them up on my own journal.)

I do understand that idea of "people who aren't contributing asking you to do more work than you're already doing merely for their convenience" and have run into it in subtle and malicious forms running NonCon (http://www.noncon.net). ::sigh:: Which is, of course, why I offered to help (an offer that will stand open) -- I figured that if I was planning on being involved with the NYC r.a.sf.* community, the least I could do was take advantage of being young and enthusiastic and underemployed and be *useful*! (Or at least try... ;P)

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Andy Porter is a self-centered arse.

If he can't be bothered to read the newsgroup, he can bloody well organize his own fannish gathering once a month, and hand out his freaking fanzines then.

I'm with Redbird on this.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

The point about the rasseff meetings is that they're rasseff meetings (and why doesn't anyone else have rasseff listed as an interest on LJ?). New York fandom has a long history of imploding fan meetings, and the rasseff meetings are pretty unusual in being open-to-everyone meetings that have never drifted into acrimony. As soon as you start an email list, they'll begin to become a general everyone-in-NY fannish meeting; I think there's a lot to be said for just leaving the announcements on the newsgroup.

Re: I'm with Redbird on this.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

"New York fandom has a long history of imploding. . ."

You could just end that sentence there.

Re: I'm with Redbird on this.

[redbird]

This is basically it.

It wasn't that difficult to maintain an email list, in terms of time or software. (The list was small enough that it just lived as an alias in my address book.)

But it got messages forwarded to people I either didn't like, or didn't know. Not r.a.sf.* posters or lurkers who wanted to talk: people who came and hung out with the people who'd forwarded the mail to them.

If they didn't want to socialize with the rassef crowd, why come to our socials? I don't know. Can it be that difficult to email your friends and say "hey, let's meet at X on Wednesday?" instead of attaching yourself to someone else's get-together. (These meetings are in bars: it's not as though we were renting a room and they were using the space.)

I told one or two people who complained that if they wanted to set up a different/more general NY fandom meeting, I'd cc their first announcement to my list. None of them took me up on it.

difficulty factors

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

*snrch*

"Can it be that difficult to email your friends and say "hey, let's meet at X on Wednesday?" instead of attaching yourself to someone else's get-together."

But if they actually did that, they'd have to take responsibility for selecting a place, setting a time and date, and dealing with people who didn't like smoke/alcohol/ambient noise/blue wall decor/parsnips on the menu.

Much much easier to grab someone else's coattails and ride, while bitching about the speed, the quality of the fabric, and the direction.

(The Cuisinart School of Metaphor Mixing)

Re: I'm with Redbird on this.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

and why doesn't anyone else have rasseff listed as an interest on LJ?

Cos I've got rec.arts.sf.fandom listed. I can never figure out how many S and Fs to put into "rasseff".

Re: I'm with Redbird on this.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I am very, very tempted to solve the "one or two s's, one or two f's?" question by making it a both/and thing, and using three each. rasssefff. -grin-

And while I'm at it

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

My, that sounds like a challenging group of people to go eat dinner with!

Re: And while I'm at it

[redbird]

If Moshe had told me that the one other person who would definitely be there was Andy Porter, I'd have declined and found a bowl of noodle soup or something. Lise arrived late, Robert Legault later--both as expected. But everything went well as far as the food, ordering, and paying, except for Porter asking questions about what to eat that suggested that he not only has no experience of Japanese food (surprising but not a sin), but couldn't be bothered to look at the menu enough to notice that every single item was described, parenthetically, in English)

Re: And while I'm at it

[jenett]

*peer* That sounds particularly frustrating.

Big difference between "Ok, this is what it says - is there other stuff I should know about this dish?" or "Ok, I'm trying to decide between X and Y, and I'm not sure what the difference is..." and the basic "What's in it?"

(The example I'm thinking of is that there are a couple of standard pizzas in Italy which come with an egg fried lightly on top at the very end of the cooking process. If you look at the English descriptions at such places, they often say just "Egg". Someone going "Egg? What sorta egg?" in that situation has always made sense to me. "What's on the pizza" when it's there in English... much less sense.)

Re: And while I'm at it

[redbird]

"What's in it?" should be addressed to the waiter, not one's dining companions. But even that is probably better than "What should I have?" addressed to someone not an intimate, nor intimately familiar with that restaurant.