<<Hey hey!  This was originally supposed to appear in Absorbance #2 but no
one has any idea what the hell happened to it.  So now i bring it to you,
faithful quad-p follower, for you too must know the greatness that my words
can bring.  As a side note, it appears that my ego has taken over the rest
of my body...>>



 WindRider's Rant of the Month
 Volume 1  Episode 2:  The Coded Frontier

        That time of the month has come once again.  I've gotten out of the
 rut that way too many commitments causes and have again decided to regail
 you all with another worldly rant.  I've got a couple of things to discuss,
 and i'm willing to bet that more than a few of you will feel completely at
 home with what transpires below.  This time around, my concerns are these:
 explaining the 'scene' to friends, and the potentially detrimental effect
 that IRC could have upon it.  Let's begin with explaining 'the scene' to
 others.
        This began innocently enough a few days ago when i spoke to a friend
 who had been 'surfing the net' (i hate that term) but was just recently
 exposed to irc.  As with many people, the appeal of irc to him was the
 abundant flow of warez sites that can be found in any one of a hundred
 different channels.  He was speaking to me of still trying to figure out
 the fine details of the commands, so i spoke up and explained as much as I
 could while still remaining within the realm of communication that a
 beginner could understand.  When he asked just how i knew all this, he was
 quite surprised to hear that I had used IRC and the various available client
 programs that were available.  Inevitably, this led to the obvious question
 of "so what do you do on there?"  That seemingly simple question soon
 revealed the great depth it possessed.  I tried to explain the concept of
 the "underground computer art scene" with mixed success, trying once again
 to find just the right words that a beginner would understand.  It was at
 this point that i realized what is obvious to many, but beyond the grasp of
 so many more.  This underground culture, the "ART SCENE" if you will, has
 developed such a profound linguistic and technical jargon that it rivals
 most professions.  Words like pack, newschool, oldschool, and colly seem
 incredibly simple and obvious.  To an outside observer, however, these have
 an almost mystical quality.  Bah, i've grown tired of this topic.  If you
 still don't quite understand this problem of jargon creating rifts instead
 of bringing together, then maybe you should think about it.  Or just go back
 to #ansi.  And that brings me to the second point of this article: IRC.
        I'm getting really really REALLY tired of the attitude out there that
 somehow IRC _IS_ 'the scene'.  I can't recall how many times someone has
 asked how long "person x" has been on IRC, only to say something incredibly
 dumb like "oh, so you're new to the art scene?".  What a load of shit (Can
 you feel the definitive turn towards a rant that this has taken? I knew you
 could).  I had been involved with my own particular art form and had been
 part of international groups for years before encountering IRC.  Somehow,
 the idea that #ansi is the center of the universe has crept into the minds
 of all the niave little children out there.  I recall a conversation
 recently from #ansi (one of the few times i've lowered myself to actually
 stay in there longer than 10 seconds) only to see someone comment that "all
 these other art channels were created because the people were pissed they
 couldn't get ops in here".  Wow is that both egocentric and incredibly wrong.
 Unfortunately, the rare glimmer of intelligence that #ansi shows is buried
 beneath a 20 foot layer of pure crap. Just try to refute that.  It simply
 cannot be done.  The sooner that people (and i'm starting to use that term
 loosely for most of the inhabitants) realize that there's a DISTINCT
 difference between the ld bbs art community, the 'underground artscene', the
 'ansi' scene, and the #ansi scene, the sooner we can all try to get back to
 the sense of family and comradery that has been lost to the ircbeast.

        I'll state this once again.  I really don't give a damn if you don't
        agree with this.  It's a rant.  That's what a rant does.  So you can
        either step back and shut up or you can respond to this with
        something other than #ansi-speak.

                                - WindRider, King of the Mighty Rant

SAUCE00Windrider's Rant of the Month      Windrider           Quad-P Productions  19970328Ö                                   