Oh My Aching Andy
FcNexter Andy Swarbrick is frustrated.
He tried to announce that someone at Yahoo! said that they would no longer delete groups on the basis of trademark infringement claims from The Freecycle Network, Inc.(TFN). This aroused joyful tears on Andy’s part, as indicated in the subject line of his FcNext post announcing his blog post about it, that FcNext subject line being, “Wiping tears was never so enjoyable.”
They are something like crocodile tears.
His blog offered the unsubstantiated announcement, “It is with great pleasure I have the most important announcement to make to this freecycling globe. … YAHOO WILL NO LONGER DELETE YAHOO GROUPS BASED ON SPURIOUS TRADEMARK CLAIMS BY TFN.”
He was unwilling (or unable) to provide evidence that this is now an official policy or position of Yahoo!, or to identify the person at Yahoo! making the declaration. Later, when challenged about it, he back-peddled to say, “If Yahoo on their blog stated unequivically [sic] by the Director, Leonard that they would not delete non-TFN groups, what would that mean? It would mean nothing.”
In his own words, Andy is in tears of joy about a revelation that means nothing. Things like that often occur in cults: emotional fervor (or torment) over phantasms.
From the outset, we saw nothing of substance in Andy’s tearful announcement. He said that Yahoo! would no longer delete groups based on “spurious” trademark infringement claims by TFN. One might call this a truism, whereas obviously a corporation’s defenses of its trademark are not “spurious” when they genuinely believe that they have a real interest in a trademark they own, and Yahoo! did not deem them spurious when they acted on TFN’s infringement claims. Andy, we suppose, thinks himself in possession of a better understanding of U.S. intellectual property law and practice than Yahoo!’s corporate legal counsel.
FcNext cultists call the infringement claims spurious, illegal, unenforceable, etc. because they don’t understand the difference between an unregistered trademark (using the TM symbol) and a registered trademark (circle-R symbol). They keep saying that TFN “has no trademark” because the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has not yet granted a registration. In typically cultic fashion, this ignores reality, in that anyone can establish a trademark without USPTO registration.
FcNexters also attribute their denial of the existence of a TFN trademark to the fact that TFN’s existing trademark is pending a court challenge (also the reason the USPTO has put the registration application on hold). There is no guarantee that the pending litigation will result in the USPTO ultimately denying registration. Maybe it will; maybe it won’t. Meanwhile, TFN has a trademark, and Yahoo! is within its rights to choose to acknowledge it, as they have.
We agree that TFN may have damaged its ability to successfully defend its trademark, because of defects in its approach to establishing that trademark, but that is still a matter under litigation. Nexters put themselves above the law by declaring things decided that are still pending a court verdict or settlement. Such are the foundations of cults: revelations of “truths” not substantiated in reality.
We really don’t care whether TFN has an existing trademark or secures a registered one. We just want to point out the nonsensical behavior of FcNext cultists on the matter, such as Andy’s tears of joy over an unproved Yahoo! policy decision that he says means nothing anyway. If it means nothing, what is he crying about?
In that same FcNext post, Andy asserts, “Words are cheap - just read any post from nexteritis.”
Cheapened words are such as those self-contradictory and delusional ones making tear-filled “most important announcements” deemed one day later by the same speaker to “mean nothing“.
It is fitting that Andy feels the sting of words published by Nexteritis. After all, “Nexteritis” means “inflammation of the Nexter,” intended to goad them into action to amend behavior they have not the strength of conscience or initiative to correct on their own without being prodded like cattle. Inflammation is often the factor driving an organism to change its diet, seek treatment, or stop shooting itself in the foot and banging its head against the wall.
We find it noteworthy that nobody in FcNext has any substantive response to anything said in the Nexteritis blog. This is not surprising. Neither is it surprising that they have gagged themselves on our words so much that they won’t let themselves speak on what we say (perhaps for fear of puking on each other as they choke on our “cheap” words). We render them speechless with our “cheap” words.
FcNext will never hold its own accountable for their behaviors in a forthright, responsible way. They will not take a stand against deceptive, trashy directories like freesharing.org and sharingisgiving.org. Their moderators will not act against their TOS violators, personal attacks, foul language, and character assassinations. Neither will they act in favor of free speech and freedom to dissent. To them, to clean their own house would mean creating disunity within the cult. Instead, they prefer that all live in filth and sling their mud at any resister to its cultic brainwashing in slime.
All we can do is expose them for what they are, for the public benefit and for the edification of those capable of seeing beyond the ends of their noses.
Andy adds, “Yes, I am positive. I will not be swamped by the negativity that seems to drown some. Negativisim [sic] is not realism. This group [fcnext] started as ‘the future of freecycling,’ and that’s what drives me.”
Wishful thinking is not positivity. It can be delusional, like the belief that FcNext has anything to do with a positive future for freecycling. Realism may necessarily sometimes include some negativity. Exposure of hypocrisy and irresponsible, unethical behavior can be called “negativity.” If Andy can’t take the heat, he should get out of the kitchen.
FcNext is not capable of a solution to their problem. Their only “solution” to what they dislike about TFN is hate-baiting cultism. Their heads are bruised all around from banging against the brick wall of trying to take TFN down. No wonder Andy is frustrated to tears.
We don’t know what drives Andy. Realistic approaches to the future of freecycling seem to be no part of it, when he flies into tears over something he says means nothing, has no cogent response to anything said by opponents of FcNext, and will not take a stand for accountability regarding the fallacies and improprieties of FcNext cult favorites like freesharing.org and sharingisgiving.org.
Speaking of wishful thinking and delusion, Andy also says, “There are possibly 10m people freecycling out there on Y!G, depending on how you do the stats. Which means that DB holds less around [sic] 40% of the marketplace at best. That can be your future.”
Oh, brother! We’ve got to see the math behind that fiction. Ten million members of Yahoo! freecycling groups? His use of the qualifier “possibly” veers sharply away from possibility; more like delusion. It’s certainly not realism.
Setting aside the relatively small number of non-Yahoo-based freecyclers (since Andy referred to ten million only within Yahoo! Groups), it is probably impossible even for Yahoo! to establish an accurate estimate, given the reality that so many people hold membership in multiple groups, cross-posting among them, and hold multiple accounts within the same groups, move around from one group to another, go inactive or bouncing, etc.
We know of a group that once sent a message to its 800 members saying that they had to reply to the message in order to stay in the group. The moderator repeated the notice two more times, carefully making sure that none of the members were in “no email” delivery status. After three notifications, 500 of them did not reply or ask questions about it. Careful records were kept about who was terminated for not replying. Over time, about 100 of them came back puzzled that their membership had terminated, meaning that they did not read the three notices from management. The other 400 were never heard from again. They were not really “members” at all. Not even “lurkers,” really.
Such is the nature of freecycle “membership.” Most of the “members” are not really “members” at all, just inattentive subscribers to a service they do not use. In smaller groups, it is easy to see how the majority of all postings come from the same people repeatedly, those few true members actually participating. Then there are in every group those greedy consumerists only there to see what balls and chains they can add to their enslavements to possessions, or what they might make a buck on selling in their next yard sale or Ebay auction.
Even if we counted every subscribed email address as a “member,” TFN and other number-touting people rely on the member count shown on Yahoo! Groups home pages. They have no way of knowing how many of those “members” are really members at all (i.e., non-participating, bouncing, etc.) and how many of them hold membership in multiple groups, and how many of them hold membership under multiple email addresses within any given group.
Thus, TFN’s claim to about 4.7 million members (as of the moment) is by necessity somewhat inflated, though it is the best estimate they have. In any case, that’s 47% of ten million, not Andy’s 40%, so we’re suspicious of any math he may have used to arrive at his ten million figure, given his roughly 15% degree of error in simply calculating the percentage of ten million represented by 4.7 million. A remedial math course is in order for our tearfully frustrated Andy.
Another factor complicating any possibility of an accurate estimate is the absolute unreliability of figures provided by people like Eric Burke, who claim that the freesharing.org directory represents “897 groups listed serving over 389,000 members.” We know already that 60% or more of those “groups” are not truly active, viable, legitimate freecycling groups. At best, Burke’s directory represents maybe about 156,000 legitimate freecycling group member email accounts … ACCOUNTS, not necessarily unique people … and, among the freesharing directory listings there are some TFN-affiliated groups already counted in TFN’s number.
We would not count the content of the SharingIsGiving.org directory at all, knowing that it is padded with so many bogus groups and so many duplicates of the entries in the freesharing.org directory. If we count the legitimate groups listed there that are not already counted among those listed in freesharing.org, they might amount to a few thousand members at most. We doubt that there are even one quarter million real members among all the listings combined at freesharing.org and sharingisgiving.org.
We have never tried to estimate the memberships represented by ReUseItNetwork.org, RealCycle.co.uk, FullCircles.org, and other such network directories. We doubt that they represent more than a million real people, all combined, and many of them are listed at freesharing.org and sharingisgiving.org, too.
This ridiculous ten million figure is just more evidence that Andy and fellow FcNextercultists (who let his estimate go unchallenged) are not known for realism (or arithmetic).
Andy’s market share prognostication is unrealistic, and foolish. FcNext-aligned groups can never aspire to his estimated 40% share of the freecycling population. (For the moment, we’ll set aside notice that his assertion indicates his ultimate desire to completely undo TFN, the only real goal of FcNext.) Right now, groups moderated by FcNext members would be lucky to realistically claim 1% of the global freecycling population, and only a tiny bit of those groups are run by vocally loyal core Nextercultists rather than other FcNext members who are only there out of curiosity or to keep the enemy close, including TFN affiliated moderators among them.
The notion that FcNext offers a viable alternative to TFN, or ever will, is something like Eric Burke hitching his wagon for “saving this country” to a star like Ron Paul, except that Ron Paul actually has some good ideas and the ability to express them cogently, respectably, honorably and professionally, and is a bona-fide authority on matters within his purview.
In that same FcNext post, Andy announced, “Oh, and I have just been accepted as a member of nexteritis - aren’t I lucky!”
When he learned that we would not allow the Nexteritis Yahoo! Group message archive to be abused in typical core FcNexter TOS-violating fashion, he came back whining about it, “Nexteritis hides message archive and yets [sic] wants posts … What a waste. Time to leave the nexteritis.“
Where is the sign saying, “Posts Wanted from Rabid Wolves?”
The group home page says plainly enough what we are about. The group certainly does not exist for Andy’s pleasure, and he does not get to make the rules there about archive access, though it has no bearing on his ability to post messages there, or to engage in dialog with members there through posting activity.
The information we want made public or retrievable from anything like an archive is here in the Nexteritis blog. Andy knows about this blog (and it is linked on our Yahoo! group’s home page). If he has something to say to Nexteritis Yahoo! Group members, he can join and post it. If he has something to say publicly about what we write, he can do it on his own blog, and as he so often does, post a link to that in FcNext and elsewhere, or in our Yahoo! Group. He can also post his flimsy arguments in FcNext postings, though we understand that Nexters are now afraid to do that, knowing that we hold their feet to the fire for what they say. (How curious of FcNext to give such control over their posting activity to Nexteritis, FcNext supposedly being such advocates of “free speech,” now denied even to their own loyal insiders.)
We suspect that Andy really has nothing of substance to say to or about Nexteritis, but only joined the Nexteritis Yahoo! Group to mine its archive for information he does not deserve to have. If he joined to say something to its members, he could have done that, and still can, if he re-subscribes.
We did not expect Andy to last long as a Nexteritis member, anyway, given that we already know one truth a day keeps the Nexter away.
The Nexteritis blog contains all our significant material. FcNext members already holding membership in our Yahoo! group can confirm that. The Nexteritis Yahoo! Group is for private discussion among its members, and to notify them of new blog posts as they come online. Andy is welcome to contribute to such a discussion, but having nothing to say, we doubt he will.
Too bad about the fear-based gag order FcNext imposes on its frustrated members like Andy so aching to whine about Nexteritis. That’s Andy’s problem, not ours. He’ll just have to live with the way those birds built their Fc Nest.
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Copyright 2008 by Nexteritis. All rights reserved. For permission to use, write to: nexteritis-owner@yahoogroups.com
