On a similar note, during the years from 1998 through until about 2004, I was exposed to an ongoing perpetual conversation within Astrology:1, one of the chat rooms at Yahoo.com —a chatroom that had a revolving cast of various chatters, and that often devolved into arguments and flame wars—it became obvious that the layer of anonymity afforded by a Yahoo ID allowed the id of the various participants a kind of public freedom of expression.

Over the years of either engaging in chat or watching and listening to chat rooms, a number of patterns became apparent, the most important for this text being the way that focal points developed in reaction to what a chat room would view as a threat by a troll, spammer, or chatbot.

Individuals who fought every day, often for hours at a time over the most arcane extrapolations of astrological minutiae, would immediately band together to confront an external stress.

Return to Page