What
April 20, 2002 11:46 PM   Subscribe

 
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/B1FF.html:

B1FF /bif/ [Usenet] (alt. `BIFF') n.

The most famous pseudo, and the prototypical newbie. Articles from B1FF feature all uppercase letters sprinkled liberally with bangs, typos, `cute' misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ HE"S A K00L DOOD AN HE RITES REEL AWESUM THINGZ IN CAPITULL LETTRS LIKE THIS!!!), use (and often misuse) of fragments of talk mode abbreviations, a long sig block (sometimes even a doubled sig), and unbounded naivete. B1FF posts articles using his elder brother's VIC-20. B1FF's location is a mystery, as his articles appear to come from a variety of sites. However, BITNET seems to be the most frequent origin. The theory that B1FF is a denizen of BITNET is supported by B1FF's (unfortunately invalid) electronic mail address: B1FF@BIT.NET.

[1993: Now It Can Be Told! My spies inform me that B1FF was originally created by Joe Talmadge , also the author of the infamous and much-plagiarized "Flamer's Bible". The BIFF filter he wrote was later passed to Richard Sexton, who posted BIFFisms much more widely. Versions have since been posted for the amusement of the net at large. See also Jeff K. --ESR]
posted by Settle at 11:51 PM on April 20, 2002


Strange, very strange.
posted by jaden at 11:51 PM on April 20, 2002


The most famous pseudo, and the prototypical newbie. Articles from B1FF feature all uppercase letters sprinkled liberally with bangs, typos, `cute' misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ HE"S A K00L DOOD AN HE RITES REEL AWESUM THINGZ IN CAPITULL LETTRS LIKE THIS!!!)

I finally get it Settle==B1FF
posted by eyeballkid at 11:57 PM on April 20, 2002


I pretty much assume every post from settle is a further elaboration on his "trolling is flirting" post -- I'm at this point sure he is trying to get each and every one of us in the sack, or under his bridge, or in a sack under his bridge.

Altho' the DudeAmIBlowingYrMind? type troll/flirt is surely preferable to the political variety.
posted by malphigian at 12:43 AM on April 21, 2002


Please stop trying to make me commit murder.
posted by bargle at 12:44 AM on April 21, 2002


MAKE ME, I DARE YOU
posted by Settle at 12:47 AM on April 21, 2002


Settle surprises me every time. I like being surprised. I like the connections he makes and destroys; the way he re-invents himself post by post. He's a finger-scorching puzzler with a mind always on the boil. What's not to like? I thank you, Settle, for being so refreshingly inflammatory and so generous with the friendly fire. Our cold, staid brains should welcome the heat. Think before you start crying, you...weenies! ;)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:10 AM on April 21, 2002


A friend of mine told me, he knew a sister who looked just fine, but instead of being my deliverance she had a strange resemblance, to a cat named frankenstien.
Going to bed now not getting up until noon (my twin and I alternate masses).
posted by Settle at 1:18 AM on April 21, 2002


my twin and I alternate masses

The little bastard can be clever, I'll give him that.
posted by Optamystic at 1:26 AM on April 21, 2002


Our cold, staid brains should welcome the heat.

Speak for yourself, Grandpa.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:27 AM on April 21, 2002


Must. Kill. Settle.
posted by evanizer at 1:35 AM on April 21, 2002


I'm not ready to be a ranged wizard yet.
posted by WolfDaddy at 2:02 AM on April 21, 2002


In Keanu Reeves' voice: "Settle, it's time to take your meds, bro."
posted by Stumpy McGee at 2:22 AM on April 21, 2002


Just for the sake of completeness, I would note that this post seems to be a followup to this, 32 minutes earlier.

I don't care how much Miguel or anyone else thinks Settle is a 'breath of fresh air' or something of the kind, this kind of bending of MeFi to your own ends is not on. It reminds me of the sort of behaviours that a certain other Very Noisy newcomer exhibited for a while several months ago, until he got smacked in the head so many times he started to play nice. Enough.

This should perhaps have been taken to MeTa. I don't think it's worth it, to be honest.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:35 AM on April 21, 2002


Why, stavros - what a prim little policeman and upstanding citizen - not to mention "friend" - you've turned out to be. If you think I "play nice" because I was "smacked in the head", then perhaps you don't understand how newcomers are taught the rules and persuaded to fit in.

The members who made me realize I wasn't respecting the community were actually the kind, patient ones. There were a lot of them. Such as yourself, by the way. The head-smackers - it's a law of human nature - just provoke and inspire contempt and so end up by bringing out the worst in the people they hope to "correct".

Nobody's here to be cowed, head-smacked, ganged up on, or beaten into submission. I thought you, of all people, knew that.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:50 AM on April 21, 2002


Figure of speech, Miguel. I'm glad you don't treat Metafilter like your personal plaything anymore, but I think it's disingenuous of you to claim that the people who ganged up on you (and, as you mention, I was not one of them) had no effect on your posting and commenting habits at all.

I find it worrisome that you encourage Settle, precisely because you are listened to around here, and because I've yet to see how he has demonstrated that he has the level of maturity or ability to see how his behaviour is disruptive, in the way that your clearly did, which is why people like myself encouraged you to stay and participate those many months ago.

Newcomers aren't taught the rules and persuaded to fit in by having the disruptive things they do encouraged, my friend.

Primness has nothing to do with it. I'd just rather avoid all the handwringing and endless verbiage that accompanied the Taming Of Miguel this time around.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:10 AM on April 21, 2002


Uh, "...you clearly did..."
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:15 AM on April 21, 2002


I really dig that Skinhead Hamlet.
posted by ZachsMind at 4:54 AM on April 21, 2002


Thanks, Zach. The secret to Settle is to actually click on the links. All you others: is that so hard to do? Wouldn't it be much easier and more boring for the guy to just post "Skinhead Hamlet" and gather all the literary crowns of laurel?

Here are my two centimes, fwtw: Settle is probably a young, black, gifted undergraduate(cue appropriate Ska, Trojan-record-label song)who's studying either Literature or Art. Do we really want to frighten him off? Are we that incapable of being teased, challenged and made fun of? Read his posting history - I dare anyone to say he's not friendly or enthusiastic.

Fold_and_mutilate, another previously decried poster, was also burnt at the stake. Did he accept? Did he fuck. These are the people we should welcome. People who like MetaFilter enough to be unashamedly themselves. It would be very easy to script an AMP(Acceptable MetaFileer Post)and follow through. But all you have to do is read the best MeFi posters' history to realize that all the best posters were seemingly unacceptable(with Matt himself at the forefront) to begin with.

Perversely, I think the litmus test is not being petty or contentious about being deleted. Matt knows. If there's one proven rule here on MetaFilter(banning EngineBeak apart)that's it. People grow into MetaFilter. All great posters have. Even though I find the distinction between good and bad posters unhelpful.

Because - who's to know?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:21 AM on April 21, 2002


Damn you for (deliberately?) missing my point yet again, El Cardoso, but bless you for being such a big freaking softy, I guess.

But saying things like "people who like MetaFilter enough to be unashamedly themselves" is just making empty, nice sounding phrases to appeal to people's warm-and-fuzzy glands, and you know it. Practicing for politics, perhaps?

'Personal expression' is all well and good, but an online community is a much more fragile thing than a real-world one, and demands from its members, if it is to hover precariously somewhere above the lowest-common-denominator deafening-howl of IRC, for example, the ability to control their desires for mad! freeform! expression! in a responsible way, and act with some degree of recognition of the fragility of the dance floor, and a modicum of respect for their peers.

I guess we'll see how Settle goes, we will. I welcome him here, and really I have no great problem with him, but if he keeps shitting where he sleeps, I'll hafta start getting annoyed.

Regardless, you and I, I think we have no argument.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:43 AM on April 21, 2002


And, yeah, I liked the Hamlet link too.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:47 AM on April 21, 2002


Ah so! Well, in that case, I apologize for being so touchy and sensitive and welcome you back into my fold, Chris - hoping(though not demanding) you will do the same. So thank you, you big softy. We're no good - the both of us - at sounding macho; you know that. I'll avoid it from now on; if you will. Just don't head-smack me, OK? :)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:59 AM on April 21, 2002


Now that the dust has settled...ouch...rotten tomatoes hurt, you know...
posted by Optamystic at 6:09 AM on April 21, 2002


SCENE IV
The Battlements. Enter HORATIO, HAMLET and GHOST.

GHOST: Oi! Mush, get on with it!
HAMLET: Who did it then?
GHOST: That wanker Claudius. He poured fucking poison in my fucking ear!
HAMLET: Fuck me!

(Exeunt.)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:13 AM on April 21, 2002


MiguelCardoso - Fold_and_mutilate, another previously decried poster, was also burnt at the stake. Did he accept? Did he fuck. These are the people we should welcome.

No, we should not. This is what fold_and_mutilate has to offer in response to courteous treatment and honest qestions: taunting, abuse, shit-stirring, and a painstaking avoidance of every opportunity to contribute to the topic of discussion from his experiences.

But we knew that already.
posted by NortonDC at 6:59 AM on April 21, 2002


...hey, whistle why ya work. I defer to Chickenking. Sets' just trying to play the winky-wink game."In Keanu Reeves' voice: "Settle, it's time to take your meds, bro." i used to getta alot of that, thats not fair to settle. But he keeps this shit up and into MeTa he goes, like me in the beginning. so, settle, i'll make it my...BI-NIT. Chill out a little." He's a finger-scorching puzzler with a mind always on the boil." sounds like a blurb for a Connie Sellers novel:)
posted by clavdivs at 9:55 AM on April 21, 2002


i took a stage directing class last year where we had to write out how we would stage skinhead hamlet, seeing as how it's unstageable and all. interesting exercise.
posted by pxe2000 at 10:04 AM on April 21, 2002


I just wanted to make you laugh

*doe eyes*
posted by Settle at 11:22 AM on April 21, 2002


Oh - industrial design, actually. I actually want to make the world better, as ridiculous as that sounds.
posted by Settle at 11:24 AM on April 21, 2002


And so we leave Miguel and Settle, walking down the sunlit street, close together, sucking Ginjinha out of a double-strawed paper cup, flipping chestnuts into each other's smiling mouths, while grumpy Stavros looks on from a dark, deserted doorway, plotting and scheming.

I love the MeFi Sunday comics.
posted by Opus Dark at 11:37 AM on April 21, 2002


Stavros is just like a king / who's lost everything / he sits all alone, on his throne / he's got his pride, but deep down inside / he's mine, and mine alone.

o<
posted by Settle at 11:51 AM on April 21, 2002


Miguel, who said I ever clicked on all the links? If I started using MeFi FPPs as performance art, Matt would shut me down in a heartbeat. So don't imagine for a minute that I'm on Settle's side here. He's not making a cyberdifference. He's making indifference and indignation. The Sex Pistols proved that chaos doesn't work on rock n roll and it doesn't work in here either.

Pxe2000 I agree that your description of the class exercise is very interesting. Actually Skinhead Hamlet is very stageable. Skinhead Hamlet can be staged easy and if done well, downright hilarious. The venue would have to be uncensored though. The piece depends too much on blue humor. Remove a single f word and you might as well just read the cliff notes into a microphone.

You get two guys dressed up laughingly like skinheads, the way Milton Berle used to go on stage in drag. Then they have simple props and costuming effects hidden away or displayed on a table, and they choreograph the piece with the props both for comic effect and to identify the characters for the audience. Very Prairie Home Companion on Acid.

Or you have one guy dressed full tilt as a classic Shakespearean Hamlet, who takes down center on a barren stage with a single spotlight heating him, and then you get a half dozen or so other actors dressed up as believable skinheads (not going for comic effect in the costuming) and each one of them represents one of the characters. The Hamlet would recite his roles in full dialect and melodrama as if he were truly a Shakesperean actor and the other players speak their lines as if they're picking a fight with the audience. When in the script it says for Hamlet to "exeunt" actually he just walks off to another part of the stage where the next scene will take place. Never more than three steps in any direction. The scene would have to go really fast with the dialogue overlapping. Hamlet would play it more straight and all the other roles would be picking on him and giving him a hard time. In the final scene when everyone's dead and the remaining characters are talking about Hamlet, the stage business would be them picking Hamlet's pockets and giving him a good kick or two in the midsection before leaving the stage. I think it'd be the funniest thing since Comic Relief 2.
posted by ZachsMind at 12:26 PM on April 21, 2002


The Sex Pistols proved that chaos doesn't work on rock n roll

Really. Walk me through that proof, Zach.
posted by rodii at 12:50 PM on April 21, 2002


*pictures Zach writing three dots next to some entropy equations and the word "bollocks"*

I promise, skallas, I will always be a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm / the runaway son of the nuclear a-bomb.
posted by Settle at 1:01 PM on April 21, 2002


Rodii? You got it.

Sex Pistols wanted to use chaos to destroy rock n roll. That was their intent with the punk movement. Then Billy Idol went pop, Sid & Nancy killed all their brain cells and by the way true Rock N Roll never died it just stopped being profitable and went underground. Sex Pistols had nothing to do with any demise of rock n roll, despite Viscious' desire to be the lynchpin to its demise. You can't do a job on rock n roll with chaos. Sex Pistols proved it.

Now sometimes rock n roll sounds and looks like chaos, but it's an illusion. The Who is an example. To make destroying a guitar on stage look good you have to orchestrate it. Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire but to do it properly so he didn't accidently set the audience on fire, Jimi had to plan it out ahead of time, if nothing more than in his head. Good rock n roll is the illusion of chaos through order. Too much chaos you get Sex Pistols. Too much order you get Garth Brooks, which is the real reason he had to go country. Early Chuck Berry. That's rock n roll. The perfect balance of chaos illusion through order.

... bollocks.

What this has to do with Settle's vain attempt at MeFi performance art should be readily apparent. If it's not, you haven't had enough vodka.
posted by ZachsMind at 1:47 PM on April 21, 2002


Why must everything be performance art to you?

I posted a whole bunch of AMUSING LINKS.
posted by Settle at 2:09 PM on April 21, 2002


zachsmind, you have me and my analysis of skinhead hamlet and its staging beat. most of the kids in my directing class wanted to stage it in full shakespearean garb, but i think the contrast between merchant/ivory costume porn and rough and tumble dialouge would turn the play into an overlong "saturday night live" sketch. my idea was to stage it as a bare-bones, "black box" production and let it be funny instead of drawing attention to the "skinhead" or the "hamlet" (or the associations of high brow culture our society brings to hamlet). your staging is much better and i tip my hat to you...bloody wanker. :)
posted by pxe2000 at 3:58 PM on April 21, 2002


Sex Pistols wanted to use chaos to destroy rock n roll. That was their intent with the punk movement

How many times does John Lydon have to say that they did it for the money before people start believing him?
posted by BitterOldPunk at 4:14 PM on April 21, 2002


I posted a whole bunch of AMUSING LINKS.

Where?
posted by eyeballkid at 4:19 PM on April 21, 2002


Why are mefiers so nasty to eachother?!?!

I will be taking a haitus before I post again. I need to find a bunch of links to make you all love eachother!!
posted by Settle at 4:36 PM on April 21, 2002


You know, whenever someone says that they're going to take one, I wonder, what is a haitus, and can one make haitus arrangements at their local travel agency?
posted by Dreama at 6:40 PM on April 21, 2002


Remember when the Haitus and Tutsis were slaughtering each other in Rwanda?
posted by Karl at 7:40 PM on April 21, 2002


Aw, never mind.
posted by Karl at 7:54 PM on April 21, 2002


The Sex Pistols couldn't even spellchaos. Don't believe the McLaren hype. It was showbiz all the way. But I take your point(s).

Are the Haitus Hutus from Haiti? Or is that Hootie?
posted by rodii at 8:02 PM on April 21, 2002


Ha! It is tu laugh.

I've given up trying to understand Settle, I just wait and see if the next personality that pops up is more or less interesting than the last.

*ooh!* a pretty flower!
*ah.* a sage tree.
*ugh* a weed

Even with all the suposed bio material that we've been given, if we ever do have a New England MeFete, I won't be at all surprised if the Settle that I do end up meeting is actually a late-30's white guy with greasy hair who lives in a TRAILER, DOWN BY THE RIVER
posted by yhbc at 8:03 PM on April 21, 2002


sorry yhbc, but the quote is a VAN down by the river, not a trailer!
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:44 PM on April 21, 2002


* slow burn *

posted by yhbc at 8:58 PM on April 21, 2002


it isn't greasy it's just wet
posted by Settle at 4:33 AM on April 22, 2002


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