One of the strange things about growing up in Malaysia was somehow being introduced to Marvel and DC comics when Unspun was at an impressionable age.
One of the things that stuck to Unspun‘s impressionable mind then was an idea from Conan the Barbarian. I forget the context and the context of the words but it runs something like this: “Barbarians tend to be more polite because they know that they can get their head split for rudeness.”
The occasion that prompted this recall is an incident involving two bloggers, one of them being ranked within the top 5 Indonesian blogs in English in Indonesia Matters, and another a relatively unknown blogger.
Something happened between the top blogger and the Unknown, whereby Top Blogger wrote something about Unknown. Unknown is now responding with threats of physical violence to Top Blogger. Unknown also tells Top Blogger that he knows his identity and where he works. “He has set up a blog to discredit me and to get me physically and to discredit my company.”
Top Blogger is now so terrified that he’s taken his blog off air. In addition Top Blogger has written to many bloggers in the Indonesian blogosphere of the incident. It is not clear what he expects other bloggers to do about it.
Unspun did not read Top Blogger’s postings about Unknown so am in no position to judge. And before anyone can distort anything that Unspun says, let’s make this very clear: UNSPUN IS AGAINST THREATS OF ANY KIND TO BLOGGERS, ESPECIALLY THOSE INVOLVING PHYSICAL VIOLENCE.
Having said, that if the past is any indication, and if Top Blogger’s rhetorical style is anything to go by, Unspun would say that he had it coming to him. He and some of the Jalan-Jaksa type bloggers here have been very unreasonable in their arguments, employing dishonest tricks such as emotive language, labeling and other verbal subterfuge and sometimes hunting as a pack.
They are bitter about Indonesia, about their situation in life and would not hesitate to pour vitriol on anyone. The only problem is that they think that they are being smart and vigorous in their argument, which is a far cry from reality.
So this is perhaps a wake up call to all those bloggers out there to keep things civil, keep the playing field level and to take responsibility for what they write. This starts with blogging under your real name – it is extremely foolish to think that you can blog anonymously an with impunity – anyone with a good enough knowledge of how the net works can trace you in a jiffy.
We’ll probably not get to know the exact exchange between Top Blogger and Unknown but Unspun would not be surprised that Unknown felt like Conan the Barbarian when faced with a rude, dishonest and smartass adversary. Make no bones about it, Unknown’s threat is barbaric and should not be condoned. But barbarians sometimes can get the respect that other more genteel folk can’t get. Funny world this.
Unspun 
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