TITLE:CODERS' MENTAL DISTURBS: THE EASY-INTRO SYNDROME (Propaganda 3) PALETTE:0223 0778 0898 0b89 3 CODERS' MENTAL DISTURBS: THE EASY-INTRO SYNDROME One of the socially most interesting aspects of the scene and its members is probably the brain damage often found in the mind of some coders. Scenology, the new science that is going to explain and explore all the multiple phenomena related to the scene, couldn't prevent itself from studying also this interesting and curious pathology. I'd take the occasion to remind you that Scenology is the ultimate and most powerful science human kind has ever conceived. The fact that actually its founder is 2Beppe1, my own pet-rat of which I'm very proud, is another business, also because I've reasons to believe that never in human history has appeared a mind so enlightened and brilliant and clever as Beppe's one. Anyway, you can read about Scenology and its overall structure in Abnormalia issue 3.14, here I just would like to reveal you the results of the deep and complex researches of the most important scenologists about the various mental disturbs that eventually occur to Amiga demos' coders. As you can easily imagine this field of study is incredibly huge, it has a great number of lateral and consequential studies about various particular cases (for example it has been widely studied the whole problem of the disturbs occurred to 2Lonestarr/Spaceballs1 after the realization of State of the Art, the literature about it is almost infinite and in another occasion we'll try to sum up the basic points). Due to obvious space and time limitations we can't fully get into the matter but that's not even the right place. Here I'm going to try to divulge and explain to the average scener the easiest and most accessible concepts of this research field, which enters in the overall Scenology subject of the Scener Psychology. The coder is a strange being, he likes to face columns of numbers on a screen for hours, every now and then he changes some of them, he writes few cryptic words and symbols and he gets furious when they don't succeed in showing a rotating cube. I would rather be surprised to notice that such bunch of numbers and symbols somehow manages to make a cube appear on a monitor, but that's just a personal point of view. The coder could be a clever being, when he is a very good and advanced one he is able to interact with reality thinking in his favorite programming language. More than once I saw a coder saying, in order to convince his legs to walk, that he had to move the pointer of his leg to some kind of stack, make an addition and then copy the result to the right address. Obviously he doesn't do that consciously, as you don't consciously think in your own language. So the logic schemes, and therefore the same thoughts and behaviours of a coder, are heavily influenced by assembly's logic (we are talking about demo coders, of course) but that's not a serious problem as long as it doesn't bump into unexpected obstacles. Of one of these obstacles we are going to talk. As the title of this article should have suggested you, we are going to discover the psychological and psychiatric reactions in the coder's mind when he finds out incredible problems in finishing a little intro which he considered absolutely easy to code. The problem is big, as the coder often boasts an over inflated ego which can hardly accept the idea of not being good in making something, especially if this something is considered easy. It's not a secret that every coder thinks to be much better than what he actually is. The logic processes and the hard meditations that bring him to solve a coding problem appear to him so original and unique that he suspects to be the only one in the globe to have reached so high peaks of thought. This can only boost the already over boosted ego of our coder bringing him to dangerous consequences. Just try to imagine what can happen to our Mr Coder when he thinks that, after having succeeded in making a glenz vector 4 pixels wider than the biggest one seen by him, there's nothing in the world that he cannot code. Proud of this conviction he says to the graphician of his group that there's nothing he could not do. Happy of the revelation the graphician suggests the design of a little BBS intro. The coder accepts the short work, even if he can't stop himself from declaring how such silly things could be made by beginners. If by chance he finds problems (in assembly problems and bugs reproduce themselves as horny bacteria) which he doesn't solve immediately the pathology could take place. At the beginning Dr.Coder smiles at the inconvenience drinking a coke, when he realizes that he is not succeeding in solving the problem (don't forget that the coder thinks always to be better than what he actually is, therefore the coding problems he thinks to be able to solve are always more difficult for him than expected. In other words he never solves a problem) he starts to fall into a dangerous state of depression. This is what we call 3"The Easy Intro Syndrome"1. Our coder, 2Colorbird1 for example, simply can't accept the idea of not finishing an intro which he considered easy. When he is cold and resolute he can actually, with proper debugging and deep and detached meditation, find the mistake, but sometimes a terrible process of auto annihilation takes place in his mind before he manages to find the solution. This is the beginning of the end. The coder screams and the screen, he swears, he howls, he tries to concentrate but concentration is gone. At this stage the situation is almost irreversible. Only sometimes the subject realizes that he's better to calm down and relax and try to think with detached and sober mind about the problem. When this doesn't happen, most of the times, the coder is gone. Depression turns into despair and then into apathy. He doesn't talk any more with his computer, he even stops to say sweet words to the monitor before going to sleep, he obviously doesn't drink or eat or sleep or defecate. The coder is less useful than a open door and sometimes he can have an infantile regression. In such terrible case the best thing you can expect from him is incontinence. The only way to save the howling bunch of meat from sure annihilation is to make him forget that he has ever been a coder. You have to whisper to the weeping mass that he, for a chance, could even go out and play football for five minutes, you could try to tell him to go to the cinema for a while or to open a book which is not the reference manual ("Alice in Wonderland" could be a proper beginning). In other words you have to make a slow patient work on his psyche, you must convince him that he could live also without watching for 13 hours a day a monitor. If you are patient and good enough you can save what remains of the coder. He won't scream any more "Guru!" in his nightmares and he won't make sex any more with the drive slot. Humanity would find a new disciple and the demo scene would lose a coder. Don't ask me who made the worst deal. That's, in easy and clear words, the Easy Intro syndrome. Of course the matter is far more serious than what it seems from my words, as they were intended to be divulging and light, but if you are interested in the specialistic literature about the subject you can consult: - 2"The Easy Intro Syndrome - Diagnosis and Prognosis"1. It's the Bible of the Easy Intro Syndrome. The most complete book (1576 pages) about the pathology. Reccomended the fifth edition, which has new and important informations previously unreleased. - "2The Easy Intro Syndrome - Diagnosis and Prognosis. The Sum Up"1. Divulging and easy sum up of the major opera. It has just 112 pages and many pictures. - 2"The Lonestarr Case. Easy Intro Syndrome?"1. It's an interesting article about a very controversial medical case. It has appeared in the Scenology Journal. That's all, before leaving you I would strongly like to remind you how dangerous and terrible The Easy Intro Syndrome could be. I hope you won't underrate its social risk. In the last year, according to authoritative statistics, at least 57 sure case have been occurred. Of these, 51 subjects have left the scene and joined a common social life (just try to imagine the risk of having 51 ex-coders in our society), 3 have decided to continue scene life swapping like hell (2Colorbird/Razor 19111 is supposed to be one of these), 1 is dead (he jumped from the window for the desperation, but according to somebody he was having an LSD trip) and 2 have been cured and have started to code again (the consequences on their psyche, anyway, have been terrible: They have decided to code diskmags). Important and famous cases of good coders who left the scene after an Easy Intro Syndrome attack are: 2Celebrandil and Azatoth of Phenomena1 (they had their crisis at the same time and for the same intro, only later it was discovered that the problem was a bug in their assembler); 2Slayer of Scoopex 1 (he found problems with a the World of Vodka presentantion intro, the trackmo was already finished); 2Buddha of Spreadpoint1 (after an hard E.I.S. attack he changed programming language and left the demo coding); 2Billy the kid of Skandal1 (he never succeeded in finishing any intro, his case is a particular version of the Syndrome).