"But won't people change their minds when they see that somebody lied to them?", some will ask. No, for several reasons. One is general human nature. People should try to reserve judgement until they've heard both sides in a dispute, but the fact is that most won't. Most often, they will let themselves be swayed by the first person they hear, and then refuse to think about what the other side has to say. Even if the rightness of those in opposition begins to penetrate the consciousness of the audience, those who have rashly supported those in the wrong are more likely to try to browbeat those pointing out the embarassing truth (about their lapse in judgment) into silence, than they are to willingly face the public shame that will follow if this lapse is acknowledged by themselves and others.

In part, this problem is a general societal one, that some ill considered mores act to reinforce. One is a stubborn insistence on scorning those who admit to having recently done wrong, even if they did so in a moment of weakness and are willing to work to atone for their error. We may say "it takes a big man to admit when he's wrong", but our actions rarely reflect this very Christian (and very Jewish) principle, in this allegedly Judeo-Christian society we dwell in.

True, no matter how hard we work to conceal the truth, if it is sought long enough, it will tend to come out. Which brings us to another ill considered custom. That which holds that wrongs done 'a long time ago', however long some will define that to be, should simply be forgotten with no attempt made to set them right. Thus, if one can intimidate others into not noticing that one has done an injustice long enough, one needn't take any responsibility for it, or face any disapproval for either it or the shady methods one used to evade responsibility in the eyes of society, for its commission. What a system! Having elected to punish those who make the hard choice to do the right thing, and reward those who make the easy choice to do the wrong thing, we shake our heads in feigned sorrowful bewilderment and ask ourselves why so many choose to do the latter, as if it were a real mystery why so many would make that choice.

But in the case of Usenet, there were also issues at play that, while not unique to Usenet, were made more of an issue by its' structure.

In the beginning, it was made a universal feature of posting, that one's e-mail address appeared automatically on anything one posted to Usenet. Further, a feature was introduced that allowed one to automatically send e-mail to the writer of an article, without even having to take the time to write out his e-mail address. At the time, this must have seemed to be a wonderful idea, but it didn't quite work out that way.

Imagine being able to pick up a journal and with a thought, be able to find oneself speaking with the author of an article one enjoyed and be able to ask him questions about it! And not articles about alien impregnations or who is a "dork breathed loser", but notices of the most recent developments in science, discussions of philosophy, works in progress by authors, scholarly discussions of serious issues. Or even the simple trading of jokes or recipes. It must have seemed that Usenet was going to be a wonderful experience and very often, it was. But, by the very nature it was given, it couldn't last.

From the beginning, the very openness of Usenet proved to be a problem for it. It tended to promote the visibility of its most obnoxious residents. No surprise there, if one examines real life. In an argument between somebody who is a relative jerk and somebody who is reasonable, the jerk is having fun. That's what makes him a jerk. And he really doesn't have a better place to be than in that argument, because no place that let him become part of it, could remain a better one for long. The more reasonable individual, however, is having a very bad time. In real life, this problem is solved by walking away and inviting people to join one. On the net, everyone is on the same board and the only way to "walk away", is to abandon a group altogether. Even that may not be enough, as people have been known to follow departing "enemies" from group to group. (This practice being known as "cyberstalking").

True, one can erect "killfiles", which keep the articles of the offending party off one's screen and "mailfilters", which delete his mail from one's mailbox. But these are relatively late introductions that those who provided internet access were reluctant to offer their users, and they don't do enough. They don't keep those articles from appearing as excerpts in the articles of those one hasn't killfiles. And they don't keep the writers one has turned one's back on from going out and stirring up hostility among those new to the situation, toward one.

So, the more obnoxious tended to drive out the less obnoxious. As the more interesting authors had something to offer the less worthwhile ones, but not vice versa, the former were far less willing to slog through the list of ever less worthwhile articles to find the few that interested them, than the latter who, if anything, were intrigued by the opportunity to be mixed in with, and read postings by those who would never have had the time or desire to associate with them in real life. Thus, quality tended to be driven out of the forum, by an ever advancing wave of trash. Certainly, those who were publishing serious material were reluctant to have it tarnished by being associated with such material, and so the exodus of those writing it accelerate, as the bad drove out the good before it.

The existence of the mail function in Usenet was billed as a "corrective measure" for this problem. It turned out to be exactly the opposite. It was a failure, because, like Usenet in general, it was designed for use by human beings without human nature being taken into account in its design. As we've already noted, in a live gathering, the more intelligent, reasonable people deal with the idiots by walking away from them. The mail function, on Usenet, made the analagous effort online even more of a futility than before. The idea, in all of its questionable glory, seemed to be that those who were a disruptive presence would be harassed by the group into leaving. In real life, this would be termed an adolescent's solution, and with good reason - only an adolescent has time to engage in it. Some of those adolescents online were well into middle age.

Dissenters with the increasingly preposterous group consenses soon found themselves being subjected to mass harassment. This came in the form of massive waves of abusive, obscene, and occasionally threatening e-mail, not only by their opponents online but by their faceless supporters who never posted ("lurkers"). Sometimes, the e-mail would come in such quantity as to flood a users alloted disk space. The "mailbomb" was thus born - not in its currently envisioned form of a mass mailing by a single individual, but as an often orchestrated effort at mass harassment in which small amounts of mail were sent by many, so that no single one of them could be blamed for the act.

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