"Naively,
as we had to realise. nn went from one or two messages every day in February
to an average of three to five message in April and up to eight and ten
messages per day in May and June - and that on a list which had a regular
daily traffic of three to five messages a day. The distributed nature
of the nn collective makes it possible for them to keep posting 24 hours
a day - great for promoting your online presence, irritating for people
who have a less frantic life rhythm. nn's messages are always cryptic,
sometimes amusing, often tediously repetitive in their quirky rhetorics
and style, and generally irritating for the majority of people. Its activity
on the Syndicate - like on many other lists it has used and terrorised
- soon came to look like a hijack. But the sheer mass of traffic nn was
generating, the sheer amount of nns presence, was overwhelming.
Perhaps this phenomenon could be compared to SMEGL, short for super mental
grid lock, a term that was developed to describe traffic jam situations
in NYC back in the eighties (or was this term coined in Berlin-Kreuzbergs
famous Fischbuero? Who knows, the boundaries get blurred...).
In the spring of 2001, nns and other peoples activities who
use open, unmoderated mailing lists for promulgating their self-promotional
e-mails, triggered discussions about 'spam art', on Syndicate as well
as on other lists. Actually, given the extreme openness and vulnerability
of a structure like the Syndicate it remains quite astonishing that this
structure survived for such a long time. What happened in the course of
2000/2001 (not only to Syndicate, but also to several other mailing lists)
was that the openness of these lists, i.e. the fact that they were unmoderated,
was massively abused, and, finally, destroyed, by relentless 'creative'
spamming. One of the basic principles of the Internet its openness
suddenly seemed to become a mere tool for attacking this very principle.
Netiquette did not seem to be of much value anymore and was
sacrificed for the egotistical self-expression of (distributed) artist
egos. The irony of this process is that, like any good parasite, this
artistic practice depends on the existence of lively online communities:
it not only bites, but kills the hand that feeds it. - These parasite
nomads will find new hosts, no doubt, but they have over the past year
helped to erode the social fabric of the wider net cultural population
so much that communities have to protect themselves from attacks and hijacks
more aggressively than before. Their adolescent carelessness is partly
responsible for the withering of the romantic utopia of a completely open,
sociable online environment. However educational that may be, we despise
the deliberation with which these people act.
nn got unsubscribed from the Syndicate without warning on a day when there
had been nothing but ten messages from her. After some days of silence
and sighs of relief, angry protests by nn came through. On the list, accusations
of censorship and/or dictatorship were made. A small but noisy faction
denounced unsubscribing nn as an act against the freedom of speech. They
called the administrators fascists, murderers, and 'threatened' to report
the case to 'Index on Censorship'. While some other list members welcomed
the departure of nn on and off the list and the admin team again and again
explained their move, the ludicrous allegations and vociferous insults
continued.
The real shock for us was that the majority of list subscribers did not
participate in the discussion and thus silently seemed to accept what
was going on. It was personally hurtful not to receive more support against
the insults raised against us, but more frustrating was the indifference
that made the whole process possible. Within few days, the alienation
from the atmosphere on the list was so great that we admitted defeat,
re-subscribed nn and began to withdraw from the Syndicate. The list was
moved to a different server and is now administered by other people at
anart.no/~syndicate."
Andreas
Brockmann and Inke Arns in Rise
and Decline of the Syndicate: the End of an Imagined Community,
Berlin, November 2001.
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