I propose to solve the monos problem once and for all.
Let’s face it: Chipa has made a mistake when setting up this forum. She laid out hints how to find it through learning Hungarian (first but optional) and then Moxos, but she left it accessible to the search-engine spiders. Hence the monos infestation. I propose to make a new forum that will only be available to registered users. Registration will be granted after an interview in Moxos.
We can even add another language or two, to exclude monos who actually speak Moxos as their native language, as well as
linguists who might have learned it with traditional methods. I suggest the Koryak language, as there are enough video resources online to pick it up from, and few enough people that speak it. Please feel free to suggest others - I don’t want all the suggestions to come from me. Reply if you are interested in splitting off in this way. If there is enough interest, I’ll take care of creating a new forum.
monos
Re: monos
I think if Chipa made the forum accessible to monos it's because she wanted to. She wanted to make a place where we would be able to find each other, but she did not want to create a closed community. Chipa actually wanted to liberate us from all the communities, not to create a new one. Then of course if you want to split off and add another community to the world of communities then you are free to do so.notse wrote: Thu Jun 12, 2025 3:33 pm I propose to solve the monos problem once and for all.
Let’s face it: Chipa has made a mistake when setting up this forum. She laid out hints how to find it through learning Hungarian (first but optional) and then Moxos, but she left it accessible to the search-engine spiders. Hence the monos infestation. I propose to make a new forum that will only be available to registered users. Registration will be granted after an interview in Moxos.
We can even add another language or two, to exclude monos who actually speak Moxos as their native language, as well as
linguists who might have learned it with traditional methods. I suggest the Koryak language, as there are enough video resources online to pick it up from, and few enough people that speak it. Please feel free to suggest others - I don’t want all the suggestions to come from me. Reply if you are interested in splitting off in this way. If there is enough interest, I’ll take care of creating a new forum.
Re: monos
I don't care about the monos, but I think we do need to make a community. It doesn't have to be a secret or a gated one. It can be open. What's the point of making a community closed anyway? Let's think about this. If you make the entrance harder, you are forcing new members to invest their time and effort. That makes them less willing to leave. It's a useful feature but it's a trade-off, as you may be leaving out some potentially good members. Also, you are risking concentrating too much on selecting members and forgetting what the community is actually for.
So why do we need a new group? First of all, to satisfy our own need to belong. Let's face it, we are human as much as everyone else, and we have the same needs. Unless you subscribe to the OHF crap, we'd need some real community with all its attributes. If you don't have sex then you better at least masturbate. Every doctor will tell you that. But we won't just be a wanker group. We'd be a support group for the people that liberated themselves from all the rest of the groups. I think it's a noble enough group-defining ideology, if you know what I mean.
So let's start with the group attributes that we'd need.
For a cultural corpus, obviously, we have Chipa's papers. It's enough for a start. The apocrypha we are creating right here on this forum.
What else? How about our own language?
So why do we need a new group? First of all, to satisfy our own need to belong. Let's face it, we are human as much as everyone else, and we have the same needs. Unless you subscribe to the OHF crap, we'd need some real community with all its attributes. If you don't have sex then you better at least masturbate. Every doctor will tell you that. But we won't just be a wanker group. We'd be a support group for the people that liberated themselves from all the rest of the groups. I think it's a noble enough group-defining ideology, if you know what I mean.
So let's start with the group attributes that we'd need.
For a cultural corpus, obviously, we have Chipa's papers. It's enough for a start. The apocrypha we are creating right here on this forum.
What else? How about our own language?
Re: monos
IMHO there's no point hurrying to create a new group. Let's first start by cataloging the attributes. Then we can see what we need. I tried to collect here all the group-defining attributes I could think of. Groups are forming around any of these, but usually they need more than one.
- Language. This is the obvious one, which brought us here in the first place. It doesn't have to be a \\ completely different language or even a dialect. A jargon, like a professional jargon, accents or intonations can be used at least as a start.
- Permanent body mods. This is the most obvious group-branding. Tattoos, piercing, scarring, circumcision (male and female) are some examples. Some body mods are applied to children, often to one sex only; others may be applied at initiation (adolescence or whenever one joins), or both. Extreme examples of children body-mods: foot shaping for girls in China or skull-shaping in Andean cultures. Of course, we are not at this level yet.
- Dress and temporary body mods, like died hair. These kind of attributes are the most flimsy, but also the most flashy. Can be used as a provocation to entice the ire of other groups around. Since these are easy to get rid of, they can only be used in conjunction with other attributes.
- Cultural corpus. Texts, songs, dances, ideas, etc. I would put leaders in the same category. Groups often form around a leader, but a leader dies and the group has to live. So I would say, leaders are useful as focal points of forming a cultural corpus. Then they die and become a part of the said corpus, in the form of a legend. By extension, I'd lump in ancestor worship as well.
- Dietary restrictions. Halal, kosher, vegan, gluten-free are examples.
- Rituals. I'm thinking of those rituals that are performed every day and take a lot of time. These are clearly \\ group-defining elements but I'm not quite sure what purpose they serve.
- anything else??
- Language. This is the obvious one, which brought us here in the first place. It doesn't have to be a \\ completely different language or even a dialect. A jargon, like a professional jargon, accents or intonations can be used at least as a start.
- Permanent body mods. This is the most obvious group-branding. Tattoos, piercing, scarring, circumcision (male and female) are some examples. Some body mods are applied to children, often to one sex only; others may be applied at initiation (adolescence or whenever one joins), or both. Extreme examples of children body-mods: foot shaping for girls in China or skull-shaping in Andean cultures. Of course, we are not at this level yet.
- Dress and temporary body mods, like died hair. These kind of attributes are the most flimsy, but also the most flashy. Can be used as a provocation to entice the ire of other groups around. Since these are easy to get rid of, they can only be used in conjunction with other attributes.
- Cultural corpus. Texts, songs, dances, ideas, etc. I would put leaders in the same category. Groups often form around a leader, but a leader dies and the group has to live. So I would say, leaders are useful as focal points of forming a cultural corpus. Then they die and become a part of the said corpus, in the form of a legend. By extension, I'd lump in ancestor worship as well.
- Dietary restrictions. Halal, kosher, vegan, gluten-free are examples.
- Rituals. I'm thinking of those rituals that are performed every day and take a lot of time. These are clearly \\ group-defining elements but I'm not quite sure what purpose they serve.
- anything else??
Re: monos
Pretty good list right there, Rinchi.
Re the last two points: rituals and dietary restrictions. I'd put them into a subgroup: investment-based attributes. Actually, I'd divide all the attributes into subgroups: branding-based, investment-based and mixed ones. With branding-based it is clear what they are for. Now, investment-based attributes are based, well, on investment. The more you invest in a group the more reluctant you are to leave, so the resources you spend on a group bind you to it. Investment may be wealth-based, like paying a tax, time-based, or other. For example, performing rituals means spending time on a group-defining activity, so you can see it as investing your time in the group. Even if you are performing your rituals alone, you are still "investing" your time. Dietary restrictions I would put in the same category. You are not spending money or time, but you are making a little self-sacrifice -- not eating something you could have liked to, which can be seen as an investment in the same sense as spending time on a ritual is. Cultural corpus is both a branding attribute and an investment one. Branding for the same reasons as a language is a branding attribute, and investment because you spend a lot of time learning it.
Re the last two points: rituals and dietary restrictions. I'd put them into a subgroup: investment-based attributes. Actually, I'd divide all the attributes into subgroups: branding-based, investment-based and mixed ones. With branding-based it is clear what they are for. Now, investment-based attributes are based, well, on investment. The more you invest in a group the more reluctant you are to leave, so the resources you spend on a group bind you to it. Investment may be wealth-based, like paying a tax, time-based, or other. For example, performing rituals means spending time on a group-defining activity, so you can see it as investing your time in the group. Even if you are performing your rituals alone, you are still "investing" your time. Dietary restrictions I would put in the same category. You are not spending money or time, but you are making a little self-sacrifice -- not eating something you could have liked to, which can be seen as an investment in the same sense as spending time on a ritual is. Cultural corpus is both a branding attribute and an investment one. Branding for the same reasons as a language is a branding attribute, and investment because you spend a lot of time learning it.
Re: monos
ok if restrictions are mini-sacrifices, then what about taboo words? Those words that you can't say, some of which are even filtered on this forum. Let me try, by the way, to see which are filtered: damn, shit, f---, n---. Let's see how many get filtered out when this post is made (my guess: one or two). Which words are taboo of course depends on the society (the group) and changes with time. Anyway - what does one sacrifice by not using them? Nothing. There's no investment, from what I can see. It's not like not eating something you would have liked to, or not having sex on certain days on which you would have wanted to.
What they do provide is an attack surface: someone can mark their dissent with the group by using the taboo words publicly. It is more suitable for attacks from the inside then for attacks from the outside: one can hardly imagine, say, the French, insulting the English using English taboo words. But for a fledgling dissident group they are very useful; so, taboo words facilitate dissent and thus group reproduction. If we are trying to categorize group attributes, I would bundle taboo words with all the ostentatious attributes like dress, hair styles and tattoos (what Rinchi here called branding-based). I'd rather call this category provocative attributes.
What they do provide is an attack surface: someone can mark their dissent with the group by using the taboo words publicly. It is more suitable for attacks from the inside then for attacks from the outside: one can hardly imagine, say, the French, insulting the English using English taboo words. But for a fledgling dissident group they are very useful; so, taboo words facilitate dissent and thus group reproduction. If we are trying to categorize group attributes, I would bundle taboo words with all the ostentatious attributes like dress, hair styles and tattoos (what Rinchi here called branding-based). I'd rather call this category provocative attributes.
Re: monos
you guys with your lists are missing the point. Or maybe you are all OHFers? Then say so. Identify yourselves.
The point is that all these attributes are worthless without one main thing: the enemy.
No enemy - no group identity.
As always, if you want to understand group behavior, look at adolescents. Adolescents try to differentiate themselves from the society they belong to. But they are unhappy. Their songs are sad. Their behavior is self-harming. Why are they unhappy? Because for all the efforts they make to provoke the society, asking it to punish them, they are only recognized as kids. Their behavior is only identified as an adolescent rebellion. The society does not give them any recognition as a group. If they are chastised, they are chastised individually, not as a group. All they are asking for is one attribute to be identified by. Everyone with an earring should be punished. Or everyone with blue hair. Or everyone who listens to jazz. That would create a group. So, they create a bunch of ostentatious attributes and offer them all to the environment, to the big group around them, to choose from. They are asking the environment, the society around them to take any one of these attributes as an offensive identity. If the society, or some other existing group, takes a single one, then the rest may be discarded. The group identity will be formed around the one chosen by the enemy. Call them punks. Use just that one word as a derogatory denomination. They will form a group identity around that single word.
To put it differently, you cannot create a group yourself. You need an enemy to do it for you.
The point is that all these attributes are worthless without one main thing: the enemy.
No enemy - no group identity.
As always, if you want to understand group behavior, look at adolescents. Adolescents try to differentiate themselves from the society they belong to. But they are unhappy. Their songs are sad. Their behavior is self-harming. Why are they unhappy? Because for all the efforts they make to provoke the society, asking it to punish them, they are only recognized as kids. Their behavior is only identified as an adolescent rebellion. The society does not give them any recognition as a group. If they are chastised, they are chastised individually, not as a group. All they are asking for is one attribute to be identified by. Everyone with an earring should be punished. Or everyone with blue hair. Or everyone who listens to jazz. That would create a group. So, they create a bunch of ostentatious attributes and offer them all to the environment, to the big group around them, to choose from. They are asking the environment, the society around them to take any one of these attributes as an offensive identity. If the society, or some other existing group, takes a single one, then the rest may be discarded. The group identity will be formed around the one chosen by the enemy. Call them punks. Use just that one word as a derogatory denomination. They will form a group identity around that single word.
To put it differently, you cannot create a group yourself. You need an enemy to do it for you.