Tea at Trianon: The Online Internet Etiquette Manifesto, 3rd Edition

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, June 25, 2022

The Online Internet Etiquette Manifesto, 3rd Edition

From Medium:

At the dawn of time, in the early days of people communicating online, before AOL, before MySpace, before Facebook and Instagram, there was peace. It was in those prehistorical days, before all digital online activity was stored forever at a top secret data processing center in Sarasota Springs, Utah, before the end of privacy when people were able to keep secrets, that the following Manifesto was published on a small BBS.
It is written in the vernacular of the people of that ancient time. It was written incorporating the ancient beliefs of those early and very nerdy internet pioneers. The style, which may seem strange to us today, was popular at the time among those who wore pocket protectors and fed punch cards for hours on end into mainframes the size of large rooms programming them to play pong. These early hominids believed that their shared religions, culture, and world view would come to dominate the world when PCs became common household items.
They believed they would rule the world and there would be no more bullying either online or in person. They believed that the general public would look to them in awe and in need of their expertise as the high priests of computing. Finally, they would have the respect due to them. Finally, they would have their day. (Read more.)