Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!hoptoad!ihnp4!chinet!rhonda From: rhonda@chinet.UUCP Newsgroups: alt.flame Subject: Re: There IS a hoax at UCB Message-ID: <1876@chinet.UUCP> Date: Fri, 20-Nov-87 15:32:14 EST Article-I.D.: chinet.1876 Posted: Fri Nov 20 15:32:14 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 22-Nov-87 22:04:34 EST References: <5909@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <1842@chinet.UUCP> <5944@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <1851@chinet.UUCP> <1311@aurora.UUCP> Organization: Chinet, Chicago Ill. Lines: 121 In article <1311@aurora.UUCP>, barry@aurora.UUCP (Kenn Barry) writes: >>Well, Roger, Skyler, and Mike, that's the whole point. For Matthew to pass up >>an opportunity to send me a note calling me a "moron twit" (one of his >>favorite expressions) for messing up the e-mail header (hee hee) instead of >>just forwarding the mail over to era1987 is as likely as a monkey passing >>up bananas. > > You conspiracy theorists out there should appreciate that one. >Real indisputable logic :-). Kenn, I think it's funny that you talk about "conspiracy theorists" here when the rest of your article seems devoted to far more contorted conspiracy theory than I could have imagined. The really funny thing is your equating lunatic conspiracy mongers with people who document what they're talking about. I documented what I was talking about. The rest of my article supports the facts as I have uncovered them. I further supported with additional evidence the association of Matthew Wiener with this charade. You selected only a subset of that evidence and mocked it. I'll try to be a little more diligent in dissecting your conspiracy theory than you were with mine. >>that enabled people to contact the real Mark Ethan Smith described in that >>court docket. (Which is why you flamed so much about it!) Luckily, friends >>of mine managed to contact her. Guess what? She has NEVER heard of the net. >>She is not an "old Jewish woman on social security" (a cloying plea added to >>the hoax by its perpetrators). And she's NEVER heard of you or Mike Robinson! > > At this point it starts to look like somebody's out-and-out >lying. Unless Rhonda's friends found the wrong MES, it seems either >that: > 1) Those who claim to have met MES are lying. > 2) Rhonda is lying. > 3) MES is lying. Either he lied to Rhonda's friends about >knowing about Usenet, or someone claiming to be MES is lying to everyone >in sight about who he really is. Well, you say you don't like 1 or 3, prefering 2 (obviously). But obviously what really happened is a combination of 1 and 3. My own sysadmin here on chinet has told me of "proof" he has gotten about Smith, including phone calls, copies of licenses, conversations with others. But given the fact that there IS a real Mark Ethan Smith who doesn't know anything about this net at all, we KNOW that some people are lying (namely sklyer and robinson). I think there's a combination of people who have been duped and people who are doing the duping. > Let's consider 2). Who, after all, is Rhonda Scribner? Anyone >know? She's relatively new to the net. She posts from a public access >system, which means she isn't physically located at a site where others >with net access can say, yes, I know Rhonda, she sits at the next desk. >Her terminal, presumably, is at her home. Has ANYONE met Rhonda >Scribner? Randy Seuss runs a relaxed system at chinet, and there are no >big-deal verification procedures for getting an account. Couldn't she be >anyone, or no one? Is it unreasonable to suggest that she, herself, is a >pseudo? Even these "friends" she mentions as checking up on MES for her >are anonymous. Is there a shred of evidence she doesn't make all this >stuff up as she goes? If so, it hasn't been posted. I remember when these very same types of accusations were posted by other people about Mark Ethan Smith (who interestingly enough was also here on Chinet, where she was kicked off for harrassing another woman subscriber, Meg Geddes). What was the outcry from people like skyler and robinson? It went something like "How dare you attack the honesty of this poor persecuted person? Another example of sexist persecution! It's none of your business." This "relaxed system" could have been used by the hoaxsters to do exactly what you describe for "Mark Ethan Smith," couldn't it? Wasn't it? What you are suggesting is in fact what really happened as perpetrated by the hoaxsters. > Rhonda seems to enjoy throwing around accusations. Well, it's a >principle in American justice that one gets to confront one's accusers. You might remember that the first accusations came from skyler and robinson (and "Mark" of course) accusing me of not really being a woman because I disagreed with "Mark" and "her" postings. Is it any wonder where they got the idea to accuse me of being a man posing as a woman? No wonder at all, they were doing that very thing themselves, it was probably the first trick that came to mind. Now it comes back to haunt them. Consider MY accusers confronted. > Possibility 3) seems unlikely. Everyone agrees there is a real >MES. Rhonda's suggestion that someone on the net is impersonating the >real MES is prima facie absurd. Who impersonates someone no one has ever >heard of? Someone who is trying to play "pseudo" and yet pose some shred of evidence that the "person" they were posing as is real, so that anyone questioning her existence would be pointed to this stray random evidence. The charade about Mark being a poor homeless person was part of the tipoff. A homeless person, who supposedly is having a difficult time just surviving, has enough time, energy and resources to post to the net? Is Berkeley that gracious in giving out accounts AND terminal access? And what about the long distance calls to public access machines in Chicago and New York, machines which "she" was posting from SIMULTANEOUSLY with her Berkeley login? A woman on "social security" can afford those kinds of phone bills, even with PC Pursuit or Telenet access? Give me a break. Yet despite the ridiculousness of the homeless person story, it provided a nice cover. How do you supposedly find this person? You can't, you have no idea where to begin. That was where Larry Lippman's information came in. Until this point, there was no point of reference to find this Mark Ethan Smith. Now there was, and for this skyler and robinson flamed Larry hotly for having the "audacity" to post this information (publicly available) to the net. That information helped break the truth about the hoax. Everybody agrees there is a real MES. By taking the trouble to actually contact that real MES, anyone and everyone can find out that that is not the same person who has been posting to the net. >How would the impersonater(s) have found out about Mark's >case? It was never mentioned on the net until MES became a known >personality hereabouts. The story was more than likely covered in local news media, a woman suing the government for sex discrimination. I get the feeling the hoaxsters found the idea of a woman named Mark Ethan Smith rather amusing, so they used the name for their little prank, figuring that no one would ever be able to trace things back, and figuring that no one would ever be able to find the real Mark Ethan Smith. Kenn, you seem baffled by it all, yet quite sure of certain things. One way you can become sure of some of those things is to contact Mark Ethan Smith directly. That should clear it up for you once and for all. --Rhonda