Kamangir (Archer)

Che Guevara and I, Or the Miseries of a Moderator

Kamangir | April 30, 2007 | Category Iran

“Yes …! You have understood it correctly! I am in war with you! What are you going to do to me? Will you delete me? You cannot kill a person because a person’s name rises by death. What are you going to do to my ideas?”

These are not the last words of Che Guevara. This is a comment a user has written in Balatarin. Why? Because I, as a moderator, have deleted one of her friends’ account. Why? Because after one of his links was mistakenly deleted, by another moderator, he started bullying and posting irrelevant links. Why? Because it is built into our genes, as Iranians, to be suspicious about any structure and find ourselves being oppressed by “others”. Why? You have to be an Iranian to understand this.

The story is even stranger than that. After I banned another user, for creating four accounts, he wrote this comment in Kamangir,

It seems that you are confused and unpleased with my last behavior in linking to my own blog in Balatarin and voting it through several identifications. I agree you and think that it must not be repeated, but you know… my produced content on the net is not neither unmoral nor political…I am trying hard and work many hours a day to provide …the best possible quality reports…[but] my efforts are being left disregarded and ignored… I emailed you personally once and wanted you to dedicate your time…[and] address [my posts]… All my emails were been left unread and unanswered… in such circumstance, which way is ready for me to be passed along except I have to advertise my works without any aids?

It was quite simple if we were trying to maintain a pornographic source for Iranians. Even a let’s-have-fun website would find its way very easily. However, trying to start and maintain healthy discussion amongst the Iranians seems to be a very tough job. Balatarin has clearly addressed the rules regarding submitting a link. The fifth rule clearly asks the user to avoid submitting a link to content which is copied from other sources. Once I tried to diligently visualize what my understanding of that rule is. However, there are still links in Balatarin which violate the copyright. The question is, why do I care so much?

Let’s be frank; one of the main goals of any blogger is to be heard. That, partly, if not totally, means you need your counter to rise. However, you might tolerate, for the sake of your own happiness, some fake boost, including copying some hot stuff in your blog. Well, that’s your obvious right, I guess. If we open this door in Balatarin, that would mean producing layers of reproduction in Balatarin which then mean the importance of one link in Balatarin will degrade to half and even less. So, it is clearly stated in the laws that users can post anything they want, given that it is something they have produced themselves, or they have no reason for thinking the source has stolen the content from somewhere else.

Pursuing this “obvious and well-stated” policy inspired an angry user to cast a pornographic montage of my face a short while ago. My conclusion is, anarchism is an essential part of Iranians’ genes. A good way for measuring that is to ask the average Iranian about their idea of 9/11 or the Holocaust. Please do not understand me wrongfully. That does not mean that Iranians are doomed to be suspicious people. That is just the result of hundreds, if not thousands, of years of oppression and ineffective politics. A Persian proverb says “the one who is attacked by a snake is scared of a rope”.

People who have hated for a long time like to hate. We are unfortunately such complex machines that we find “proper” argument for anything. Just remember the time we all “believed” that the earth was flat. My understanding is, the only way to make people less arrogant and more easy-going is to give them stuff to enjoy their lives with. Thanks to the great lakes and the empty spaces, to my understanding, the average Canadian does not even have any idea what hatred means. Whilst, in our dry and crowded country, the beloved Iran, the best part of the daily life is to find another reason to draw a line between yourself and something you might even have no idea about.