From: "Jörg W Mittag" <JoergWMittag+Ruby@...>
Date: 2010-07-09T21:00:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Happy Intransition Day!

Intransition wrote:
> However, he did a really crappy thing. He abandoned this community,
> without a word, without a thought. He deleted all his projects, lock,
> stock and barrel.  Perhaps he understood that archives of his work
> would be revived. Perhaps he thought by vanishing it would provide
> even more drive for others to carry on his projects. But we can only
> speculate on such motives. On the face of it he was simply a jerk. At
> least when Zed left he honestly spoke his mind and told us why; at
> least he promised continued minimal support to the project he was
> leaving. But _why did no such honorable thing. He gave us no closure.
> Why _why he left is a mystery and it will probably always remain so.
> And yet, despite this dick behavior, despite out-and-out abandoning
> the entire ruby community, _why is honored with a "Ruby Holiday".

Interesting. I never thought about it as a "dick behavior". But then,
I never thought about _why as an online *persona*, I thought about
_why as a piece of online *performance art*. And it is in the very
nature of performance art that (unlike all other art) it only lasts as
long as the performance. And the very abrupt end of said performance
was actually itself an integral part of the performance; after all, we
know how much _why loved the meta and what could be more meta than
making the end of the performance a piece of performance art in
itself?

jwm