h0p3
Some essentials.
This is my first ‘person’ page. And, of course, h0p3 has been doing this for a very long time and I am only copycatting. His are ‘light-hearted plain-web d0xxings’ or somesuch—email, address, phone number, links to conversations. Mine are just that person’s words and my thoughts in summation—which is far more of a calling card to me, particularly after these other identifiers have expired.
As with most things, though, I am still playing catch-up with him. (He is the premiere modern Public Self-Modeler, in an age where such a thing is possibly dangerous, uncomely and, well, selfie-stickish.
He says in Find the Others:
I believe that by honestly uploading my mind into my wiki, we both have access to an enriched network of references for generating accurate theories of each other’s minds.
Ahh, dear me, so then it takes much more than a page—this entire endeavor is sunk. There can be no eulogy or summation. It would take a massively overloaded TiddlyWiki to accurately describe such an one as this…
To some non-trivial extent, the labels, attributes, characteristics, properties, and models I generate about a person help form a kind of name.
In reply to this, our friend Sphygmus[1] writes:
I want to talk about the vocabulary of “modeling” another person as well. I think I have observed that people don’t understand what you mean when you say you clearnet doxx them in order to better model them. For me, though, that was one of the most intuitive things you say. When I was in college the first time, I worked as an ILL student worker and loved it, largely because it sent me wandering through the stacks to pull out such a varied selection of books. One of the books I pulled that really stuck with me discussed how we form mental models of people in our heads and rehearse conversations with those people at various times, and the ways in which those rehearsals could be helpful or not. If I remember correctly, there were even worksheet-like questions for shaping mentally rehearsed conversations in a more helpful way. Sadly, I can remember exactly where I pulled the book from in the library but I’ve been unable to figure out the title – I wish I could go back and read it again!
Of course it also has to do with the problem of other minds and the unbridgeable gap between me and the outside world. Inevitably we only know others through our construction of them within our own minds.
After a discussion of the merits of psychometric tests between the two, h0p3 says:
I am inevitably forced to use labels, adjectives, etc. to model (boxing things in is what makes it computable information at all for us).
Ah, well—so this page is my box. And these are the things I put it in it.
(If you meet someone—someone with ASCII glasses on, say—and they purport to be a ‘madman in the desert’—then put this page straight away. FOR YOU NOW have the genuine artifact in front of you!)
(However, if you are uncertain, you can do one more thing: you can tell the man a joke. Like: a homunculus and a dark triadic memetic walk into a bar. He will stop you. ‘Let me stop you right there. Before you finish, please know that I am quite literally autistic and your elegant form of advanced humor which you are so carefully deploying might end up lost in my limbic system somewhere. Forgive me, please, and tell your joke, and thank you for saying it is a joke—k0sh3k will laugh at me later for this, but I will test out three interpretations of the joke with you now and then have her review the transcripts later…’)
(These overwhelming feelings of endearment and admiration and sheer pity that are now coming over you will now materialize in the form of laughter. The joke that was designed to pique the curiosity has now been outpiqued by a new curiosity: one in ASCII glasses that has gone to such great extent to analyze the joke that has been placed on the table—and, now look—this analysis has expanded everything in sight. You look at the joke and see that it is much bigger. And the conversation is now expanded, it is bigger. And the table—the table is much bigger, too!)
(Ok, now, tell me: did you laugh? Did you feel some endearment and admiration and some pity? I don’t know if you will enjoy or love h0p3 as much as I do, or as much as I purport to—if not, well, then I understand that, too. There was a time when I thought that I would only frustrate him or that he might just annoy me—I was reluctant to say anything or to take the time to read so very many words…)
(But what is life but a chance to expand a joke, to make the conversation a little longer, or to fancy that maybe even the table at which we sit has now grown?)
I aim to do you justice.
It’s that chivalrous, sensible, steelnivorous h0p3—he steels you up, then it’s all night steel for breakfast!
This short sentence is a trope of h0p3. He ‘aims’—he has a very specific set of purposes in mind for you, good good, his work is a pointed effort. A discovery of truth? A deep sea recovery of some rarified moral sense? I cannot characterize it properly. But to ‘aim’ is truly a bold facet.
True literature can exist only where it is produced by madmen, hermits, heretics, visionaries, rebels, and sceptics.
— Yevgeny Zamyatin
The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy.
— Yevgeny Zamyatin
That h0p3 labels himself a ‘madman’, a ‘jester’, a ‘retard’ and so on—well, this is a rich tradition and these are rarified, very colorful and storied appellations. I do think of Zamyatin—who is forgotten to our society, but who was prescient to the disasters of the 20th Century that he lived in. We was a catalyst to the entire utopian and dystopian genres. (I have no doubt that my beloved Vigoleis also saw himself among this rabble.)
This is cause for alarm—and I see this in h0p3’s more dismayed dispatches from time to time—the world will not be kind to him. However, he is a heretic—we know this. He must do his work; it is too valuable.
I am wet with paranoid anticipation.
Sweating. Strange. Eager. A fork. I imagine him holding a fork. A big fork for grilling? No, a regular fork. Persperating. Eyes a-poppin. Veiny eyes. Saucer veiny eyes. Really sweet, sweet, shiny fingernails, right? Very eager. Heyooo!
Oh, wait. Wet, hahaha, forgot the best part, yeah, wet-t-t-t!
I’m trying to decide whether this codes as just IAWWPA or something more like just being ‘parawet’. THIS IS VALID HONEST WORK.
A friend. What more do you need to know? ↩︎
