From: Steve Greenberg <steve@oc3s-emh1.army.mil>
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 94 02:44:14 PST
To: cornpop@glia.biostr.washington.edu (Dan Lieberman)
Subject: Re: All of this Death Threat Shit.
In-Reply-To: <9401010953.AA09462@glia.biostr.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <9401041041.AA24051@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Dan Lieberman writes:

  >Hello Fellow CypherPunks....
  >
  >But when it came to this 'Tentacles' and 'Medusa' stuff, I thought that
  >it was getting a little close to the edge, but not too far.  Not 
  >death threats?  Come on guys!  I'm 15 years old, and even I'm beyond
  >death threats about senseless matters.
  >
  >I don't think that any of this should have gotten this far.  I think
  >people took Mr. L. Detweiler's posts as anything to be serious about.
  >I dismissed them when I saw them, yet some people took them personally.
  >I think L. Detweiler made that clear in some of his last postings.
  >Something to the effect of:  If you would have ignored me, I would have
  >gone away.  
  >



Dan,
	I think that you've made a few assumptions that aren't
warranted.  Firstly, people on this list HAVE been ignoring Detweiler.
It wasn't more than a few months ago that one of his posts would
reverberate for days and generate dozens of responses.  Rarely is
there more than one or two responses anymore.  The same pattern has
repeated on several other lists he posts to regularly (alt.conspiracy
and sci.crypt in particular); initially people spend effort trying to
refute what he says, but eventually he becomes a clown that people
just ignore or read for humorous content.  Secondly, you've assumed
that the death threat came from THIS cypherpunks list.  It was
supposedly delivered by someone from the Colorado cypherpunks list,
which is separate from this one.  There are, according to lead tentacle
and list moderator E.Hughes, about 500 people on this list.  I think
that the amount of self-restraing it admirable.  Finally, and most
importantly, you've assumed that Detweiler didn't write the message
himself.  Considering the tactics that he's used in the past, I don't
think that you can assume that out of hand.  Don't believe everything
that you read, especially from a nut like Detweiler.
	From my point of view, the interesting thing is that he got
what he wanted; that is to say that his "reputation" is now enough for
people to believe or disregard his statements out of hand.  He's a
brand name.  If you're worried about whether he's actually convincing
people or not, subscribe to his much-hyped "cypherwonks" list.
There's almost no traffic at all.  That is the final judgement, wouldn't
you say?
	Now, finally, a few comments you didn't invite.  Firstly,
don't tell people that you're "only" fifteen.  It prejudices them
against you.  If your ideas are good, then they're that way regardless
of your age.  If not, your age still doesn't matter.  What DOES matter
is that you listen to the responses that people send to you and pick
from them everything that you can.  If you think that my arguments are
full of crap, that's okay, just make sure that you know WHY you think
that.

					Take care,
					Steve

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