It has been often said in these electronic wooods that when
your writing makes you famous enough in the Usenet
community they start crawling out of the woodwork after you.
"They," in that most respectable of Usenet-culture truisms,
no doubt alludes to a motely collection of vindictive
spankards (sore flame-war losers, that is), along with
babbling fruitcakes and raving nutcases whose
disturbed minds have focused on a writer because
of his or her wide following among newsgroup readers.
This annoying collection of net pests includes human
leeches of sundry descriptions, one of the most common
among them simply being the talentless loser who--
lacking the skill and drive to attract readers through
his own efforts--envies the popular writer the
reader****p his or her name attracts.
As a result, such an envious bloodsucker often tries
to attach himself to the writer (invariably using one
reprehensible means or another) in order to gain a
few readers which our pest's own feeble efforts and
paltry talents could never honestly attract..
The notorious counterfeiter currently abusing my good
name in Usenet belongs to the latter category, of course.
Apparently, the fraudulent malefactor in question has
been hanging around writing groups for years, growing
more and more jealous of my constantly-increasing
reader****p on the net.
As a result, this spineless bloodsucker recently took to
forgery of my name in order to attract readers to
his drivel.
The thing that both amazes and disappoints me, though,
is that some a.f.o. readers encourage him in his prose
depradations, going along with the pathetic, unethical
notion that forging the name of a famous writer to get
readers is within the bounds of satire worthy of the name..
Far from being cute, his name-thievery is utterly reprehensible.
Now, those things have been observed before, but are well
worth repeating.
What needs to be added in this new posting, though, is that
the forger--the "Bill Palmer doppelganger," as it were--has no
writing talent at all, beyond the ability (being as charitable as
possible) to compose basically grammatical sentences.
Need it be said that good satire, or even low-level lampooning,
in fact, takes a bit more than that?
In legend, the doppelganger will often perpetrate evil
actions and blame them on the person the doppelganger
has taken the form of.
In a very real sense, there is a connection with the case at
had, because my "doppelganger" is committing all sorts of
crimes against the principles of effective writing.
Horribly, the subsequent atrocities he posts could possibly
be blamed on me, especially among newbies reading his
pitiful forgeries, people who may never even read a "Bill
Palmer" post actually written by me!
One typical example of my doppelganger's utter lack
of talent shows up in his means of laming: his reliance,
that is, on the snip-and-drool.
Anyone familiar with net flaming can tell you that the
"snip-and-drool" is a fourth-rate flame effort of the lowliest
order, one generally practiced by seventh graders with
sloping foreheads who are newbies to flaming.
Doing a snip-and-drool simply means going through someone's
stand alone post and adding puerile little attempted-putdowns
after every couple of lines posted by the writer being "lamed"
by the talentless unfortunate.
While the successful stand-alone satire represents theb
quintessence of quality flaming, the snip-and-drool is one
of the crudest of all laming tactics, generally preferred by
the half-wit flamer-wannabes who remain in alt.flame "lamer's
cellar"--in the flame world, the lowest of the low, the crud-
de-la-crap.
Now you can see that there is a sort of logical connection
between my most recent counterfeiter and the doppelganger
of legend.
While the legendary doppelganger is known for
his vicious pranks and downright evil actions in society, this
pitiful counterfeit using my name posts vile crnmes against
good flaming, vicious offenses against the demands of
effective satire, and--ultimately--violent felonies against the
principles of decent writing.
The dishonest, half-wittled old fraud turned envious
snip-and-drooling doppelganger should be roundly
condemned by every honest reader and/or poster
in these newsgroups.
bill-palmer
--firing posts at random from a window in an office
upstairs from rec.arts.prose
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