From: ms@dream.hb.north.de (Martin Schroeder)
Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet
Subject: [alt.fan.neil-gaiman] Re: non existant books (was Re: R.I.P. Bill Burroughs)
Date: 7 Oct 1997 14:58:07 +0200

Subject: Re: non existant books (was Re: R.I.P. Bill Burroughs) 
From: tomscud@umich.edu (Thomas R Scudder)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.neil-gaiman, rec.arts.books, alt.religion.kibology

Wei-Hwa Huang (whuang@ugcs.caltech.edu) postulated:
: This is very close to the idea of a self-referential book, which is
: rather interesting as well.

And, of course, there's the self-referential newsgroup post.

Such a post could be made in response to another post, in such a way
that it appeared to be on-topic, and even responding to the earlier
post's ideas.  Nevertheless, the self-referential post would consist
of nothing but an explanation of itself, with reference to nothing
but itself.

A typical self-referential post would consist of four paragraphs, not
counting the included material from the earlier post.  The first would
be a very brief, one-sentence paragraph introducing the idea of the
self-referential post.  The second would be an elaboration of the first,
explaining in broad outlines the intent and execution of such a post.
The third would detail the structure of such a post on a
paragraph-by-paragraph basis.  The fourth and final paragraph would serve
as a summary of the post, including a self-deprecating judgement on its
own worth.

A self-referential post could, if pulled off with sufficient alacrity,
be an exercise in rather dry humor, although the idea could very easily be
beaten into the ground.  Most likely, it would be a waste of everyone
concerned's time, considering that, by definition, it would have no
content and no connection to anything outside itself.