Truly, if I did not exist, some would have needed to invent me. In a sense, that's exactly what happened on e-Playa a few years ago.

There was a time, not nearly long enough ago, when I was a convenient presence for anybody who wanted to pick a stupid argument. Somebody would claim that alien impregnations were possible, and instead of laughing his idiocy off, I would feel the need to argue the fine points of probability with him. Reason being wasted on those who don't wish to be reasonable, these discussions never went anywhere, and I ended up with my blood pressure elevated and my time wasted.

I eventually got over it. What I needed to learn how to do, was how to truly look down on those who deserved to be looked down on. Once I could do that, I was able to laugh at the foolishness of the trolls and flamers I met, instead of being angered by it. This, to a troll, is not a pleasing income, because I was no longer giving them attention, or helping them get it, and good straight men are getting harder to find online, every day.

The solution some found to this "problem" was inventive to say the least, libeleous to say the most. Everybody who dissented with the "party line", as spelled out by the local cabal, was declared to "really" be me, in secret. For good measure, this declaration was aimed at a number of people who had already grown fed up with the idiocy on e-Playa, had announced that they were leaving, and hadn't posted for a while. "Aha!", announced somebody calling himself "Taylor Fishsticks". "Ever since the plot was exposed, none of these people have posted. That proves that they are really Joe Dunphy". Based on this "logic", one could prove that anybody who has ever stopped posting on e-Playa was secretly me all along. Reality check, kids: that's a lot of people with a lot of posts, and nobody could type that quickly.

Who wants logic, though, when illogic gives him what he wants? Certainly not the members of an online cabal. Trolling fails when its intended victim just walks away, shaking his head, and failure does not validate the status of the cabal as leaders of anything. It is a threat to their collective machismo. So, where reality gave them a defeat, they manufactured fantasy in order to give themselves the illusion of a victory.

A few months after I went to Burning Man, I got to hear myself referred to as "the notorious Joseph Dunphy" on e-Playa, where I had barely posted at all. Somebody even decided to 'expose me' by posting a link to that feeble attack of Tim Skirvin's, over on the "Killfile Dungeon" page. It's the same one that I posted a rebuttal to, in the course of writing The Fred Cherry Story, here in The Halls of Eternal Disbelief.

I was amused, but not entirely surprised, having wasted far too much time being the big fish in the incredibly small intellectual pond of the Burning Man online forums. I ended up being highly visible on them, without even trying to be. Out of curiosity, I checked out why I was being used as the local bogeyman, this time.

Most of the dissenters had wisely declined to use their real names. In the defamation-happy environment of the Internet, doing so can save one a lot of hassle. One of them, calling himself "Truthteller", had upset the local cabal by questioning the local mythology. What else? There is little satisfaction to defaming an anonymous poster, so they decided to plaster my face on the mask Truthteller decided to wear.

What was the controversy? Get ready for something memorably stupid.

One of the claims that we are given is that the Playa dust is so corrosive that it will eat its way through one's shoes during one's stay at Burning Man. One is urged, based on this claim, to buy the cheapest shoes that one can find to use during one's time on the Playa.

No doubt about it, the Playa is rough on bare feet and it does its damage very quickly. One quick barefoot trip around Black Rock City can leave one limping for a month. But that corrosive? As Truthteller so rightly argued, we should use a little common sense.

The Playa dust is not heavy, coarse stuff that a wind will barely lift off the ground. Quite the contrary, all will vouch for the fact that it is fine, lightweight stuff that even a slowly moving vehicle will kick up into the air. It is so fine that the clouds kicked up by a duststorm almost look like fog. The dust gets in everything. It finds its way into your food. It embeds itself in your socks, and your clothing, working its way through the weave. Open drink containers will end up carrying some of it. We've all ended up breathing at least a little of it in, and being coated with a layer of it after being caught in a storm. Dust storms can blow up in a matter of seconds, and it takes time to put on one's goggles and keffieyeh (Arabic head scarf), much less a gas mask.

Here's the common sense : if the Playa dust was corrosive enough to burn its way through your shoes, what would it be doing to the delicate tissues of your lungs? Leather is nothing more than cured cow skin, the curing makes the skin tougher, and seriously, who has tougher skin, you or a cow? If the dust would eat its way through leather, what would it do to soft, uncured human skin? What would even a little of it do to our eyes? What would consuming it do to the delicate membranes lining our mouths and esophagi? For that matter, if it attacked plastic, what would it be doing to leather, skin, your non-polyester clothing, or anything else of organic origin?

Clearly, this is a fairy tale. Sure enough, I still have the gym shoes that I wore that week. They are in practically mint condition. The worst thing that you can say about them is that they still have that slightly funky playa dust smell. (Actually, I kind of like that). A little puff of dust will come up when you pick them up. (It would be gone already, but I went back to wearing my trusty etonics, and the playa shoes have been sitting in my dad's home ever since the trip). On the ride back, I watched from the front seat in amazement as the driver took another pair of shoes that looked just as new, and tossed them in a basket, announcing that the Playa had destroyed another pair of shoes. He saw only what he was told to see, instead of what was there in front of him.

The problem with a lot of these forums, as I see it, is that this is what seemed to be expected of those taking part. Reality is whatever the ruling clique (or cabal) says it is. One is literally expected to let the cabal's declarations overrule the testimony of one's own eyes, and if one doesn't, the facade of friendliness online is lost very quickly. "Truthteller" did just that, pointing out the things I mentioned above, and people got very personal with him, very quickly. Somebody who had flamed me elsewhere, seized on the complaints about this "abusive" posting as an opportunity to claim that "Truthteller" was really me, and that his posts were mine. What can I say? I'd love to be able to take credit for them. They were well written, sensible, and to the point.

How can I comment on a group of people more eloquently than they comment on themselves, though, when skepticism, expressed in an articulate fashion, is considered to be an abuse of the forum? That should tell you just how "free and open" the process of discussion there, really is. It also may tell you why the bus driver tossed those shoes. Forget about "thinking for oneself". This part of the "Burner" subculture has grown so cultlike in its dismissal of individual dissent with the group consensus, that people are conditioned to not even see for themselves. He saw what he was told to see. Once somebody reaches that point, there is no sense in even trying to talk to him.

Let's continue.