THE REPORT ON LAMENESS

Published in the Zeth Manifesto, Chapter 13

Compiled by Justin Zeth (guruzeth@starmen.net)

The question has been raised many a time my many a person as of late, "What exactly is a lamer anyway?"  For this reason,
the Department of Lameness (DoL) has undertaken a study to recognize and report patterns in the behavior of those people
who are referred to as "lamers."

The most glaring and possibly most common misconception is that anyone who does anything wrong or in violation of
any rule is automaticaly labeled a lamer.  This is way off base.  Almost everyone, myself included, has violated rules
at some point, but this means little in the long term.  Lamers as a species might or might not be chronic rule-breakers;
some lamers are very skilled at riding the fence and finding loopholes and never quite violating any specific rules.
Others blatantly violate rules just for the sake of violating them, and for the fact that they constantly have nothing
better to do.

There are a few things that I've noticed that most, if not all, lamers have in common.  I speak of no particular
person when I say these things, there are numerous people who fit the profile.  Generally though, when I speak of lamers
I speak of people who are already banned from the chat and/or the forums and have generally been parted from the rest of
the community, yet still hang around.

That's the first interesting fact.  They hang around.  They whine and whine, on and on, about how reidman sucks and
guruzeth is a meanie-head and the rules are stupid and they hate pretty much everyone, but yet they spend the majority
of their free time hanging around these establishments that they supposedly hate so much.  Why?  Because they don't
have anything better to do.  Because the fact of the matter is that, when given the choice between a range of
activities, they get the most fun out of hanging around and complaining about everything.  These are the kinds of 
people that, later on in life, end up being the ones standing in Times Square on New Year's Eve with the huge THE
END IS NEAR signs and screaming at the top of their lungs at everyone going to and coming from National Party Conventions
even though the TV stations make it obvious that nobody cares.

The next pattern about lamers is that they invariably seek attention any way they can get it.  It seems a lot of the
time like they're highly power-hungry, and this is usually true, but they'll do whatever it takes to put themselves
in the spotlight, and they are absolutely consumed by jealousy towards anyone who does get attention.  This explains
why they usually attack such people, such as reidman and myself.  They like control, they like to have people around
them who will do their bidding and look up to them regardless of right or wrong.  For those of you who have read
"Lord of the Flies", Jack is a good example of what the lamer is like -- commanding respect even though by no means
has he really earned it, and having people follow him even though they have no idea why.  The lamer lives in a strange
paradox -- he hates power and anyone who has it, and yet wants power for himself more than anything else.  It's easy to
see why in general lamers don't get along with one another.

So, with this in mind, what should we do to combat lamers?  The answer and the question in this care are the same:
Why should we care?  Our attention and concern, even if we're only complaining, is the fuel upon which lamers feed.
The odds are that they would probably decide they would have more entertainment value out of something else if they
realized that they were shouting into the empty wind and no one really cared, beyond their cronies.  

Friends, we are taking the whole lamer situation way too overboard.  I realize it may sound hypocritical for me to say
this, being the most outspoken proponant of the War Against Lameness, but I did a poor job of stating my opinion clearly.
The truth here, in my eyes, is that we care too much about lamers and devote too much of our time to them.  It now seems
paradoxical that I would first devote this article to them and then encourage people not to devote any of their time or
energy to them.  The real purpose of this article, however, is to try to convince you the reader to cease caring about 
laners and their activities by helping you understand more what "lameness" is about.

In conclusion, the shortest, most generalized definition of "lameness" is "Complete, total and arrogant self-indulgence
and self-glorification; the utter disregard for others".  Every other noticeable pattern of lameness falls in with this
generalization.  But again, what's it matter?  Just leave them alone to their self-indulgence, since ultimately they
only care about themselves anyway.  This is a rare instance in which the best resistence is no resistence.  Kick them
out of our channel, our forum and out of our community and then turn our head forever to them.  The issue is not how
to frustrate them, for that would be making ourselves no better than they are; the issue is ignoring them and continuing
with our own lives without them pestering us.  It's entirely up to us whether we choose to allow lamers to get under
our skin or not.  I implore you to not allow this to happen.

- Justin "guru" Zeth
	8/25/00