1. Intro/Disclaimer
2. Sources of Information
3. Clique?
4. The Troll
5. Our Friend, Mr. Spoiler Space
6. Threadmarkers
7. x-no-archive
8. People, Objects, and Deities
9. Words
10. The Four Seasons of rmt-a
11. ToriCon Info

This is a Survival Guide (hence the title). It is intended as an introduction to the quirks of rmt-a. As such, it is not a complete immersion in the waters of rmt-a, nor is it a FAQ (in the traditional sense), or an introduction to Usenet in general. Well, it is. Sort of. It’s more of a bite size portion of rmt-a, rather than those king-sized, overpriced rmt-a’s you get at movie theaters. Anyway, I make no guarantees that this is even remotely complete or up-to-date. I do, however, thrive on input, so if you have anything you think needs added, changed, or other, I’m just an email address away, at sg@aonifer.mailshell.com. By the way, rmt-a is rec.music.tori-amos. Anyway...

You came in here expecting to see stuff about Tori. You didn’t expect to see all these people discussing, well, everything else. It seems pretty cool, but gosh! Everyone seems to know each other and they keep using all these weird words and the subjects have these weird, cryptic letters in them. WTF?! It’s like clique-city in here! Well, actually, it’s not. We welcome new people like crazy. I wouldn’t be surprised if half of the frequent posters here have been around for less than a year. Besides, would I bother even writing this if we were trying to keep people out? I didn’t think so.

To be sure, you should probably lurk for a while, until you get a feel for the group. If you have a specific question about Tori or her music, it would be a good idea to check the Tori Amos FAQ before you post it. There are a lot of questions that come up really often around here, and if your question is one of them, it’s often much easier and faster for you to look it up in the FAQ rather than waiting around for someone to post the answer. Not to mention we appreciate it when newbies read the FAQ - a lot of people have put a lot of time and effort into its creation and maintenance. Finally, if you’re really new to Usenet, check out news.newusers.questions and news.announce.newusers. But other than that, we don’t (usually) bite.

So you’re reading along and you see a subject along the lines of "Tori SUX, D00D!" Well, you’re curious, so you read it. It says something like:

Tori sux and u all smell funny!
WaReZ R K3WL, D00D!

Well, this won’t do! You must retort! Well, before you fire off a 300 line post detailing why Tori doesn’t suck and why you don’t smell funny at all (or maybe why you do) and why the poster is not a K3WL D00D, you should probably know that this is almost certainly a troll. What that means is that the poster wants you to reply. You see, trolls (people who troll, aka trollers) thrive on attention. They need it to survive and become powerful and eventually take over the universe. To achieve this, they post trolls (a post that is meant to trick lots of people into replying) to try to troll (the act of tricking people into replying). If they get enough people to reply, they become powerful demons (or daemons) and take over the entire universe (or your cpu). We don’t want this. So please, do your part to save the universe (and your cpu). Ignore trolls.

In short, trolls want attention. Don’t give trolls what they want. Ignore them.

While we are free to discuss anything we want, some subjects are a little too sensitive for some people to handle. Also, it’s considered impolite to give out the ending of a book or a movie. So that’s why we have the spoiler space. Basically, it’s just a bunch of blank lines longer than a full screen placed before your actual post (24 lines is a full screen on most monitors. 40-45 just to make sure. 3000 is probably overkill). You should probably also mention that you’ve inserted a spoiler space and why. Some topics that probably deserve spoiler spaces include (but are not limited to):
rape
miscarriages
cutting/self mutilation
book/movie endings

Basically, if you think the subject is a sensitive one, it won’t hurt to insert a spoiler space.

So what are all these -I-s and -R-s and crap? Well, they’re threadmarkers. People on rmt-a have a tendency to post on subjects that have little or nothing to do with rmt-a. In an effort to make Tori-info gathering easier, (and info gathering in general), a system of threadmarkers has been introduced. The following are examples of correct and incorrect threadmarkers:

As you can see (or maybe not) the only correct format is a dash followed by a capital letter followed by a dash. All other ways are wrong, WRONG, I SAY! Also, if the topic of a thread changes (say from relevant to irrelevant), please change the threadmarker, and if you reply to a post without a threadmarker, don’t be afraid to add one.

Why does it matter?

It matters because of the way filters and watchfiles work. People who set their filters and watchfiles to sort thru messages write their filters based on this, and if you mark your message (or leave an incorrect thread marker in a follow-up) the filters simply won’t work.

Okay, so what are they?

Notes

An easy way to remember -O- is that “o” can be thought of to stand for “opinion.”

FS is commonly used to mark “For Sale” posts. This is not an official threadmarker, but you may see it occasionally in rmt-a.

Sometimes people don’t want certain posts to appear in Usenet archives such as Google. The way this is done is with the x-no-archive header. If, for some reason, you don’t want a certain post to be archived, put the line:

x-no-archive: yes

in the header of your post. If you don’t know how to add something to the header, you can put the x-no-archive: yes as the first line of your post, followed by a blank line. It will not work if it isn’t the very first line!

If you are replying to a post with x-no-archive in it, please remove any quotes before the x-no-archive. Make sure it’s the first line in the post and that there’s a blank line following it.

• rmt-a: Short for rec.music.tori-amos, which is the newsgroup you’re reading about.
• Invisible Pink Unicorn (IPU): I finally got a good definition for this (thanks, Aimee): She was invented in alt.atheism in a futile attempt to show maurauding fundies how their conversion attempts are perceived there. This resulted in the creation of an entire theology and a good chunk of holy writings relating to the IPU. The most controversial issue within IPUism is the apparent contradiction between the attributes invisible and pink. One school insists that invisible is a shade of pink (indeed, the most beautiful shade of pink), and the other opines that invisible pinkness is a holy mystery which should be accepted on faith (much like the Christian concept of trinity). As a member of the latter school has said, "We know She is invisible because we’ve never seen Her, and we have faith that She is pink." In rmt-a the IPU is most often referred to as a substitute for mention of other gods in certain expressions. For instance: "Thank the IPU Tori came to my town on her last tour!"
• The Javajunkies: Basically it’s a bunch of people who like coffee. For more info see the rmt-a Underground page.
• The rmt-a life: Rmt-a’s own communal social life. The idea is that you check the life out for a weekend or so and then return it (like a library), but people usually just take it and give it back whenever. Right now, we only have one, but an order has been place for more. Due to backorders, however, it is unclear when the new lives will arrive.
• Go me dance: That little jig one must dance when they have done something really cool. Similar to the cabbage patch dance football players do on touchdowns.
• Asparagus: It’s green. It’s a vegetable. It has been the subject of many wars in rmt-a. It has been the weapon of choice in many wars. Please, know your asparagus.
• Peanut Butter: Again, it has been the subject of many wars (OK, maybe small battles) in rmt-a, not so much pb itself as its existence in the form of either creamy or crunchy. While the author chooses not to take sides, it will be noted that there is an empty jar of crunchy on his desk at the moment.

No one is a perfect typist, the author of this document being a prime example. While it is not nice to make fun of bad spelling, accidental typos are not really bad spelling, more like accidents, so they are fair game. A few of these typos have managed to enter the standard jargon of many rmt-a regulars, with special meanings of their own. As a rule, definitions of these words are to be determined by either the person who committed the typo (first choice) or the first person to catch it (second choice). Failing those, it’s an open market.

• higs: This is perhaps the most important of the rmt-a vocabulary. A “hig” is defined as “a fluffy hug.” Higs are to be applied liberally to those rmt-aers who are feeling down, feeling good, or just plain like higs. In short, everyone.
• smae: A delicacy which is especially good when barbecued. Ingredients vary, from penguin to beef to vegetarian. No beefalo, though. Each rmt-a member makes a unique flavor. Not sure why, they just turn out that way.
• furrfu: A noise of exasperation used frequently in response to exasperatingly cryptic situations.

Just like any other temperate ecosystem, rmt-a has four seasons. These are topics that seem to come up over and over and over and over and over and over...well, you get the point (not that we don’t like talking about them. Otherwise they wouldn’t come up over and over and over and over...)

• Kate Bush season
• Trent Reznor season
• hair-color season
• is-she-gay season

In addition to that, there are also some religion storms that pop up every now and then.

From the ToriCon FAQ:

ToriCon is a gathering of toriphiles, especially those from rmt-a, and their friends, lovers, and hostages.

All information about upcoming ToriCon will be posted to rec.music.tori-amos under the -G- header and also sent to people who have signed up for the mailing list. The mailing list doesn’t get any extra or privileged information, but is good for those who either have problem newsfeeds or can’t/don’t keep up with rmta. Email toricon-owner@con.rmta.org if you have any questions or if you’d like to be added to or dropped from the mailing list. A current copy of the FAQ can always be had by sending mail to toricon-faq@con.rmta.org.