the flawed logic of democratic peace theory

[raven]

Pottering about on teh interwebs, as I do when I ought to be working, I have noticed I have an unexpected number of new LJ friends. Um... hi! Nice to meet you! Just so's you know and aren't here under false pretences, or something: this is my geek space, where I tend to write about life, fandom, combinations thereof, er, interesting clouds, books, philosophical lightbulb jokes and whatever else pops into my head. Fandom-wise, I've been around a good long while. I try and stay out of trouble, it doesn't always work. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Which is not to say I'm not a geek in real life, because, alas, I am. I'm a final-year undergraduate, I'm a lifelong insomniac, I'm an NRI, I live in Oxford, I say "omg!" a lot, I'm pretty much terminally uncool. Make yourselves comfortable. There's pie.

Um. Things of interest that I have noticed recently:

A Cambridge ghost story, from mrkgnao.

isiscolo wants to know how fannish people use LJ. I had to admit to being surprised by this one; I think I assume, with everyone else, that every fannish person uses it like I do. Which is obviously not true at all.

abyssinia4077 (whose name I wish I could spell!) on why fannish meet-ups are ftw, which I mention because I then asked the very reasonable question of whether they are transitive. I mean, as in, Fangirl A meets Fangirl B, and they have a great time and neither of them is an axe-murderer, and then Fangirl B meets Fangirl C, and they also have a great time and neither of them is an axe-murderer - you get the picture. How long does the chain have to be before it stops holding?

In some ways this is a sensible enquiry - it is the principle on which communities such as theladiesloos work, for one thing, and also, I get the sense that fandom makes me feel, rightly or wrongly, much safer about the whole meeting-people-on-the-internet thing. I've met a lot of fans, often in places very distant from home - likethesun2 and the_acrobat in Chicago; musesfool in New York; heidi8 in Miami - and nearer than that, hathy_col and I have been friends for years, the first thing I did in Oxford was meet ou3fs collectively for ice-cream, and well, my sample is running to about fifty people and I am yet to meet people I don't like, let alone people who want to kill me with an axe. My friends page is quiet at the moment because a lot of people are getting ready for/on their way to bitchinparty, and I'd love to do something like that someday - without at any point really thinking about the axe-murderer issue. Like I said, I may be right or wrong on this issue.

In other ways, this is not a sensible enquiry at all. When we're talking about people I've known and loved for years, it does seem to stop being relevant.

And, finally, jacinthsong tries to make a reasonable post about gender/race issues in Firefly, I proceed to make terrible puns. Basically, everyone wins.

Um. What else? Um, the lunatunes theme for this week is, and I quote: "Mannnnnn, that song is so epic!" I heartily approve of this. Have five six songs that are epic:

Sigur Ros - Hoppipolla
Snow Patrol - Make This Last Forever
Indigo Girls - Ghost
Something Corporate - Konstantine
Goo Goo Dolls - Black Balloon
Stars - The Night Starts Here

Um. Okay, now I should go and do some actual work, because that would be good, yes. I meant to buy this yesterday, and forgot, and now it's sold out. Fail, Threadless, fail. Except not, it's actually me who fails in this instance. Anyway. Work, doing thereof!

Edited to add: OTW is open for formal support and membership. Hurrah, is what I say to this.

Comments

[minttown1.livejournal.com]

I absolutely adore two songs on that list, so I am downloading the other four. Thank you!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heh, you're welcome! Which ones, out of interest?

[minttown1.livejournal.com]

"Konstantine" and "Make This Go On Forever." I adore both those songs, especially the former.

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

[info]abyssinia4077 (whose name I wish I could spell!)

*cough*

True story: When I chose that username I was mostly just looking for something that was M*A*S*H (back when I thought that would be my only fandom ever HA HA HA) without being OBVIOUSLY M*A*S*H and it seemed like a good word and then I realized OMGWTFBBQ I had no clue how to spell it and I was going to have to type it A LOT. I still can't spell it if I think about it, but my fingers can type it automatically :)

[and I think maybe non-axe-murdering is limitedly transitive - like for maybe 4 steps or something. I mean, people who ARE axe murderers presumably do not kill every person they ever meet, so it could be that the person assuring you of someone else's safeness was simply lucky]

[such_heights]

Ooh, love those Sigur Ros and Stars songs, shall be checking the rest out!

[sophiahagia.livejournal.com]

I spent last week with a friend who was very surprised that I wasn't into the Indigo Girls (I only had one song of theirs, and that was a cover). She insisted that I should start listening to them, but I was kind of meh about complying. So now I just downloaded "Ghost" from you and I've listened to it, like, 5 times already. *goes a-music huntin'*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, I do love the Indigo Girls. Want any more of them? I have.... um, let's say I have an embarrassing amount. :)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Enjoy! They are all lovely.

(Also, while I have you. I've added your, um, "real" journal; I figure fannish philosophical people ought to stick together. *g*)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, Konstantine. It should be so emo - it is so emo - and somehow round about the ninth minute you want to forgive it everything and volunteer to have its babies.

[safebox.livejournal.com]

Well now, that's a principle I can get behind! :)

[minttown1.livejournal.com]

I remember being in the car with a friend one night. She was taking me home when that song began, and we circled the block until it ended. And you're right, that it was somewhere around the 8:30 mark (I think) when we both said, again, that it was an amazing song.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*grins* Oh, that makes me feel old. Very very old. Take it from someone whose primary fannish name is also the most popular Mary-Sue name of all time. *g* It's nice, though, yours. You do need to know the show pretty well to get the reference.

(I would say that we should do a study, but I'm hoping that there aren't actually enough fandom-linked axe-murders for one to be statistifically significant. *g*)

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

You're still younger than me (I'm pretty sure at least) :) I was kindof a fannish late-bloomer, I think (was totally a trekkie growing up but didn't really have internet until I started college in 2000 and didn't really poke at fandom until my last semester).

You do need to know the show pretty well to get the reference.
Yep. I have a strong aversion to using character names, so it works. I do keep wanting to drop the numbers (abyssinia was a taken LJ name at the time) but being too lazy/cheap to bother.

[yeah, that study would hopefully be difficult to get results on]

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I started young! I'm twenty-one, but I've been in fandom since I was not-quite-fourteen. It occasionally worries me that I've spent a third of my life here. I try not to think about that too much.

[mrkgnao.livejournal.com]

Eeek, I assure you the post not entirely about me was a momentary aberration :)

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

It's mostly transitive, particularly with respect to axe-murdering. But for example, Fan A is good friends with Fan B who is good friends with Fan C, but Fan A and Fan C hate each other. Alas.

I have met a lot of people in real life whom I have first met on the internet (both within and out of fandom) and in no case did my opinion of them change. I.e., the stuck-up pretentious bitch on the net was still a stuck-up pretentious bitch, and the warm and sweet person was still warm and sweet.

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

It took me a moment to figure out what you were asking - it's not the transitive-friendship thing (since you already "know" these people, that part is dealt with), it's the web of trust. Safety is pretty much transitive, I guess.

It's interesting. The large online social group I've met repeatedly was old and established when I fell into it, and had the major advantage of a) being demographically older and sane, b) being reasonably geographically tight (heavily UK-based), c) having got all the initial meeting done long before I got there, and d) being Back In The DayTM, when we were all a lot less worried about The Scary Internet People ;-)

[likethesun2.livejournal.com]

I think I've been in online fandom since I was thirteen-ish too, or anyway certainly since middle school. Is it just me, or is this terrifying to think about? I mean, god, the crappy writing I must have inflicted on people. And from my perspective now, thirteen is so young and innocent; it must've freaked people out a little that I was in their fandoms.

[deepbluemermaid.livejournal.com]

I also have trouble spelling Abyssinia correctly, but I have a good reason! Abyssinia/Ethiopia forms a crucial part of my doctoral thesis (I study the Italian colonies in Africa), and all my sources are in Italian (which doesn't use the letter Y). So I default to Abissinia instead of Abyssinia...and Etiopia instead of Ethiopia, and Libia instead of Libya, and so on.

[likethesun2.livejournal.com]

I agree: I, and most of the other fannish/LJ people I know, feel much safer about meeting big bad Internet people than the average person I know. My sister and I have a joke about this, about how according to popular culture--particular the Very Special Episodes of teen TV shows--every single person on the Internet is a sexual predator... EXCEPT FOR YOU. Think about it.

(K said, "Maybe you are a sexual predator. Maybe the Internet's so bad that as soon as you log on, you become a sexual predator without even knowing it.")

And maybe I'm not quite skeptical enough, but when you've spent several years meeting people off the Internet--sometimes renting hotel rooms with them, or inviting them to your apartment, or going to cons with them, or staying at their houses for a weekend, or meeting their parents for holiday meals, or whatever--it just starts seeming like a normal part of your social life. No more or less treacherous, if you're smart, than any other part. Plus, as you say, there's a sort of web of trust; most of the people I've met are people within my fannish set, who've already met other friends of mine whom often I've already met. If one of us were completely psychotic, someone would figure it out.

I mean, no one has figured it out about me yet, but give it time. :)

bitchinparty, and I'd love to do something like that someday

YES. That's what I've been thinking recently, too.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Aw, thankyou for the link. Comments are doing much better than the actual post, I'm cringing slightly at how unready-for-publication my bit was but I was tiiiired. :)

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

sometimes renting hotel rooms with them, or inviting them to your apartment, or going to cons with them, or staying at their houses for a weekend, or meeting their parents for holiday meals, or whatever

*cough*

check, check, and check.

*waves*

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, that would mess you up.

I think I'd have to change LJ names if I was in your shoes :)

[likethesun2.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, yeah, you have defined most of my meeting-online-friends-offline precedents. Pretty much the only risky behavior I haven't engaged in with you is allowing you, upon our first meeting, to get me sloshed in a major metropolis in the middle of the night. Luckily, someone else got that covered. :D

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Hey! That was our second meeting! And it wasn't like I wasn't several sheets to the wind myself! :P