Fighting Words

The ghost of Captain Ayhab still haunts us

Yolanda: I think the anonymity of the internet brings the worst--and sometimes the best actually- in all of us.  But I think (and I may get a lot of grief for saying this) that we, or at least a lot us, still, somewhere in the deep recesses of our brain, think too little of ourselves.  As such, we respect a gathering (whether virtual or physical) of non Iranians as "more important" than that of Iranians only.

Humanbeing: I think that you are treated better because 1) you're not an Iranian, and 2) because you don't get involved in heated debates.  At least that's my guess.  Welcome, btw, to IC.  

yolanda, you are too kind

the thing is, at this point in my life, i would give back lots of ivory tower credentials if i could become more of a people person; to communicate. for this i should learn how to speak live languages, and how to interact on a non-academic level, with more empathy. i'm working on this all the time. it needed artificial prodding at first, but i hope it becomes second nature.

you live and you learn.

bavafa

ey bivafa, i guess you didn't quite understand what i said.  click on the link on the top left corner of this webpage where it says "my account."  once you do that, you're looking at your own account.  there's a big title on that page with the title "recent contributions."  that's where you'll find the 43 contributions that you have made to i.com in terms of blogs and news pieces starting with June, 2009 and ending in May, 2010.

i stand by my previous comment (i'm pasting it so that you won't get confused):

as far as this bavafa character, i can't believe the gall he has to respond to your criticism.  out of his 43 pieces of contribution, 36 involved gaza/israel/iraq, 1 regarding north korea, 1 promoting niac, 1 regarding i.com, and 4 regarding iran (one was an article suggesting clotilde reiss being a spy and another promoting trita parsi).  i don't care if someone puts the palestinian cause over iran's but if they do that and pretend otherwise, then they're fair game for criticism.

.....

Hi! Human-being,

   Don't worry about the languages are dead or classical.....you have the knowledge, you can be a professor, a teacher, or a researcher!

Good luck! 

thanks yolanda

still lots to learn. it's embarrassing, i don't know persian properly! most of the languages i studied are 'dead' or 'classical'. but if all goes according to plan, i will review my grammar this summer, and be taking a course next year on a classical text. this year they taught pahlevi at our uni in the iran/armen./indian studies dept., but it fell on my own teaching hours.

your math knowledge is very impressive to me. it is something a priori beyond my reach, yet so brilliant. like the north star.

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Hi Anahid,

   I am Ok. I look forward to your next blog or poems.

Take care! 

....

yolanda, I am OK. How about yourself? Are you OK?

hamsade ghadimi:

Firstly, this "Bavafa character" had voice against intended personal insult and not criticism. Hope you can differentiate between the two.

Secondly, I looked up his contribution for the month of May as a sample and the findings do not support your statistics the slightest bit.

Here there are so you don't think it is a figment of my imagination, but heck let me apologies ahead just in case they are not in line with your likings.

//iranian.com/main/2010/may/mothers-journey

//iranian.com/main/blog/capt-ayhab-18

//iranian.com/main/blog/shazde-asdola-mirza/what-if-i-am-jew

//iranian.com/main/blog/bavafa/dont-let-iranian-americans-be-silenced-0

//iranian.com/main/news/2010/05/18/france-frees-killer-ex-iran-pm-shapour-bakhtiar

//iranian.com/main/news/2010/05/04/ahmadinejad-gives-exclusive-interview-rt

//iranian.com/main/2010/may/stoning-women-shroud

//iranian.com/main/2010/may/coke-vs-pepsi

iranian.com/main/2010/may/kurdistan-general-strike

iranian.com/main/blog/veiled-prophet.../i-oppose-any-censorship

iranian.com/main/2010/may/aravane-rezaipage4

iranian.com/main/2010/may/nuclear-deal

iranian.com/main/2010/may/james-woolsey-nuclear-iran

iranian.com/main/blog/niloufar-parsi/spelling-it-outpage3

iranian.com/main/2010/may/women-harassedpage2

iranian.com/main/blog/capt-ayhab/soul-sale

iranian.com/main/blog/anonymous-observer/who-anti-iran

iranian.com/main/2010/may/ahmadinejad-un-speech

iranian.com/main/2010/may/ahmadinejad-un-speech

iranian.com/.../what-your-favorite-post-revolution-persian-music-video

iranian.com/main/blog/mm/trita-parsi-andisheh-tv

iranian.com/main/blog/ali-uk/question-put-reza-pahlavi

iranian.com/.../little-house-kebobs-located-yonge-and-gerrard-st?...49

iranian.com/main/blog/niloufar-parsi/spelling-it-outpage2

iranian.com/main/2010/may/zibakalam-nuclear-deal

iranian.com/main/2010/may/atousa-pourkashiyan

iranian.com/main/2010/may/bp-role-1953-coup

iranian.com/main/2010/may/baba-karam

iranian.com/main/news/2010/05/03/irans-leader-slams-u-s-israel-u-n

iranian.com/main/video/2010/may/sexy-kurdish

iranian.com/main/albums/afghan-war

Mehrdad

.....

I am going to the Shajarian concert on May 30.....I will see if they behave..:O)...I really can't picture they were bad 'cause the 5 Iranians I know are great, 2 are Math teachers and 3 are former colleagues....of course, it is a very small sample.

Hi! Human-being,

 I like the posts you wrote about Linguistics and languages! Wow! You have a lot of knowledge!

Hi! HG,

 Wow! You have all the blog statistics!  Very interesting!

Hi! Anahid,

 I hope you are OK! 

One id?

is not really possible at least not by JJ. How could he enforce that? People may get 100's of email addresses and make up names to register. I guess he could ask for social security number but I doubt many will provide it. Plus that only works for Americans and needs to be verified.

In short: there is no way to realistically enforce this by JJ. Requiring a government issued something will just push people away. 

Onlyiran, if everyone had one ID, we would have less problems

Onlyiran, I just read your blog and I have not read the comments yet but I can tell you that these days, I think twice before writing on IC.  Yes, there are many great blogs and excellent contributors but there are also some aspects of it that I don't care much for.  I am still upset over a comment that slandered me and I flagged many times and JJ keeps the comment.  The comment includes lies about me and JJ knows it.  So what does this supposed to make me feel like? 

Then few nights ago, I was on IC and there was this Boom sha... (I don't care to remember rest of his ID).  Answering to his comments or just reading them had no use except making me upset. So now I have a new rule for myself that I am limiting IC use from 10PM to 6AM unless I am posting a blog or reading blogs of my favorite writers.  I see no use to get engaged with characters that their comments are like"arbade keshi", and we have few like this on IC.

Regarding Captain, I had few exchanges with him and he definitely had issues.  On one recent blog, he acted like he and I were coming to an understanding.  However, couple days later, on another blog, he was commenting again about me as if the previous blog and the supposed mutual understanding never happened.  So you really did not know where you stood with him. 

Any way, I still think part of IC 's problems is the fact that people can have  multiple Ids. A person can just register so they can make the worst negative comments about others who have been long time contributors to the site.

I believe if everyone had only one ID, we would have less problems on this site.  I will still contribute to IC since there are many great aspects to it but I wish JJ would address some of these issues.

irooni bazi

i think many web communities attract strong personalities who try to dominate the community.  sometimes, it feels that some users think that they're in the reality show 'survivor' where they want to bump off another user through pacts with other users, extra usernames, and sufficient brown nosing of other users. 

i personally never had a bad experience with an iranian because of the iranian culture.  i have a friend who is a mechanic and has a car lot and interacts with many people, iranian and non-iranian.  he did have problems with some iranians but i think the majority of iranians had very smooth dealings with him (including me).  it would be interesting to see the percentage of his problematic iranians clients versus the problematic non-iranian clients (better if he could separate the non-iranian foreigners and americans).  i should note that his type of business has a great potential to have un-satisfied customers even if he's the fairest mechanic/car salesman in the world.

the phenomenon you experienced in googoosh concert is the classic term expatriates call 'irooni bazi.'  it would have made me chuckle as i would have put it in context.  the 'irooni bazi' is a form of strategic behavior (as in game theory): before acting, one thinks how the other would react, and sometimes one would think of series of rounds of actions and reactions, and accordingly one would change his behavior to maximize the success of his interaction.  i think that's exactly what happened in the googoosh concert.

as far as this bavafa character, i can't believe the gall he has to respond to your criticism.  out of his 43 pieces of contribution, 36 involved gaza/israel/iraq, 1 regarding north korea, 1 promoting niac, 1 regarding i.com, and 4 regarding iran (one was an article suggesting clotilde reiss being a spy and another promoting trita parsi).  i don't care if someone puts the palestinian cause over iran's but if they do that and pretend otherwise, then they're fair game for criticism.

He was the one that

He was the one that threatened Darius? Hilarious, and goofy at the same time.

I don't think Capt. was an educator. Or if he is, maybe he's from one of those for-profit schools I recently heard about on the PBS show Frontline. In any event, I'm glad the kids in my family aren't studying under him.

Most of the social traits complained about in this thread can be compared to behavior in Tehran's traffic jams. And by the way, I've seen the same kind of behavior at American sporting events, particularly after the home team has lost a decisive contest. 

monkeys in jungles

in my particular jungle, the monkeys have not been outed in the popular consensus. the uncouth jungle animals are too submissive and emotionally jaded or lazy to even recognize this. many have yet to look in the mirror, maybe their instinct tells them they won't like what they'll see, so they stay away. that's the way i was until i recently dared look in the mirror.

The Monkey Effect

Tehran vast majority of them would push & climb each others head just to get ahead on person at the passport check. 

My theory is that having a meymoon as persident is exuding an aura of monkeyness. This causes people in proximity of AN to revert and get urges to climb on things. There should be studies made of whether this climbing urge happens when AN is away from Tehran. If any correlation is found then we can prove Darwin's theory that we are in fact evolvefd monkeys or maybe not so much.

The

reason Ayhab's postings on HoPo are civil is because there is strong censorship on HoPo. If you post something too out of line they don't even publish it. if they did then someone will flag it and they will remove it. 

Therefore this is not so much a reflection on us but on HoPo. IC thanks for JJ is more free. You get to post without pre-screening. Good for JJ. Personally I oppose banning of Ayhab though I differ with him very often. 

onlyiran jon

Didn't know our resident intellectual anti-everything I'll-use-my-2-blog-a-day-quota-everyday blogger has been banned. Must have been while I was away. 

Great topic though - not about A-hab as he is yet another hate-filled member of our mixed up community, partially responsible for the mess we're in now, but because you highlighted one of the main issues we Iranians have - our lack of respect for one another!

The episode you mentioned during the Googoosh concert has happened to all of us in some shape or form.  I believe most of it has to do with self discipline and upbringing. A lot of us may be educated on the outside, but we are ignorant on the inside...hope that makes sense. I have had my fair share of "exchange" with A-hab who claims to be a university..."porfosssor", but his behavior,as you noted, is a great example of who we are and why we need to change.

We Iranians claim we are experts in and know everything, but when it comes to solutions, we fall flat on our faces.

Afterall - we have allowed a bunch of anti nationalist fucks to rule over us, to rape us, murder us, steal our treasures and violate us for 1400, I mean 31 years....

____________

IRAN FIRST

____________

handled with care

i must say that i've been treated very nicely on ic, considering i've said some provocative things myself. i do concede that there may be a 'politeness barrier' because of my background.

i'll have you know that in my local jungle i can be quite unladylike, both in face to face and in cyber discourse. however, i always try to carefully hear/interpret the person with whom i am exchanging opinions, and keep an open mind. 

modifying and developing one's view, making it more complex, is not always disloyalty to one's stand.

who knows? maybe my experience of participating on ic, where i make an extra effort to self-moderate, may turn me into a more civil interlocutor in my local queue for hot-dogs, to borrow onlyiran's image.

yolanda, i'm also addicted, a human weakness, but one i have learned to accept. with age, we mellow and forgive ourselves a bit.

OnlyIran:

Simply, you are wrong.

It is not for me to wanting to prove it to you to go and pull my comments and do a statistic as what portion is about Iran or otherwise. If you are truly interested, take a look for yourself pull my last 20 or 30 comments, if you were still right, come and call me a liar and if that was true, then I will accept and apologies. Fair enough?

However, the main reason that I say you are wrong lies in that you expect me to have the same priorities/focus/ view as you do and even that is only based on your perception and not reality, again check for yourself. I don't call you names for not having the same priorities as I have.

I say this not to mean that I am any better then you or any others for that matter, I surely have my own set of faults and short comings. But if we are to preach, it may not be a bad idea to do a bit of a house cleaning first. Again, myself included.

Mehrdad

P.S. I took a note in "myself" portion in the blog and that is why I responded since it seemed sincere and honest.

......

Hi! OnlyIran,

 I read this article last year, people rank Iran as the 4th friendliest nation on planet Earth:

//opentravel.com/blogs/5-friendliest-nations-on-planet-earth/

I am not sure if Iranians rank #4 as the friendliest bloggers in Cyberspace. As you know, internet is a totally different ball game! I see a lot of heated debates on IC, the exchange is quite hostile and unfriendly...... I think the primary reason is that people are very passionate about the homeland......the secondary reason is that some people have a lot of free time and are a little addicted to IC. I hope I did not hurt people's feeling by saying that......it is just my personal observation....I am addicted to IC a little, too :O)...there are a lot of nice people on IC who really want Iran to become better and freer! It is why they debate a lot!

Mehrdad

Two things: first, I do see myself as part of the community, and part of the problem.  That's why I said "ourselves" as opposed to "yourselves".

Second, you are distorting my views.  I actually have no problems with your views on Israel.  As I have always said, I really don't like Israel and I think that it commits crimes against humanity and that it's an apartheid state.  Read my last blog and you will see.  

What I do have a problem with is people who call themselves Iranians, but  put the interest of Palestine--or any other country for that matter--above the interest of Iranians.  And looking at your posts and comments, it appears at least that you are more concerned about the welfare of Palestinians than Iranians.  For example, you have many posts about things happening to Palestinians and Iraqis (someone being shot, a house being destroyed, etc.) but you do not have even a single post  about all the atrocities that have been taking place in Iran for the last year.  Am I wrong?  If so, please show me, and others, the posts.

HG & Yolanda

I do think that it has something to do with the internet and anonymity.  But I also think that we do have a double standard when it comes to dealing with our own people and dealing with others.  I have seen it in business dealings as well.  That is why I am sorry to say that I try not to have Iranian customers.  At some point, they become too demanding and they also like to haggle over prices, etc.  I don't believe that this is unique to our community, either.  I had a Syrian friend who refused to take on any Arab clients.  He said that they "khosh-o-besh" (he used the Farsi expressions, very funny actually) with you too much (he meant it as B.S.), demand too much and, at the end of the day don;t even take you seriously because they think  that the American guy is better because-just because you speak the same language as them--they must not know anything.

I do agree with HG, though that using the good'ol Captain as a measure for everyone else is a bit of a stretch.  But, like I said, I have seen other instances.

Thanks for the comments. 

Well, here I find myself

Well, here I find myself reading your blog and actually agreeing with it, I think that is the first.

Similar example to your experience in the Googoosh concert that I have seen is when I visited Iran a few years back. In Amsterdam, all Iranians that waiting to get on the plane were behaving as we expect and see outside of Iran.. Waiting their turns when there is a queue, once arrived in Tehran vast majority of them would push & climb each others head just to get ahead on person at the passport check. I wondered then… are they the same people that were in the same plane we all boarded in Amsterdam?

But then again, Mr. OnlyIran, you may want to take look inward before criticizing others. I have been subject to your insult many times with no reason at all with the exception that you don't agree with my view points towards Israelis. Feel free to call me names if that makes you feel better. we will see if that is a reflection on you or me.

Mehrdad

good blog onlyiran.  i

good blog onlyiran.  i agree with yolanda on the explanation of people's rude behavior on the web.  it's mainly the anonymity that the web provides.  even when riding cars, people are more rude to each other than if they were sitting in adjacent tables in a diner.  i try not to be rude, but on average, i think i'm more rude on this site than in real person (actually, i'm just slightly more obnoxious).

having said that, i don't think your reasoning is without merit.  we do behave differently in our culture than in the west.  although, this can be said with many nationalities.  forming a line is one of them.  having an air about yourself is another.  having an opinion about something you have no clue about... that's actually a talent. you can observe many of these phenomena in mexico.  for example, people won't take me as seriously in sandals than shoes whether i'm in mexico or iran.  but here in the u.s., no one cares if i'm wearing sandals or not.

our dear captain could be very polite and then rude and vindictive the next minute.  that's a generic condition of people from many cultures: passive aggressive behavior.  so you're partly right on your diagnosis but generalizing all of us based on captain ayhab's behavior is a stretch.

.......

Thank you for your blog. I think the reason the people behave the way you described is because we are on Internet and we operate under the fake name. I ran into 5 Iranians in my life....they are all very polite to me....(They give other people hard time once a while LOL!)....They are more polite than average people.