Membership in AAAAARGHSTOP is open to any Australian who has ever sighed audibly at a form. Below, our tiers, our roster (redacted, for their protection and ours), and - the part everyone actually scrolled down for - our cross-membership arrangements.
| Tier | Requirements | Benefits |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary Member | Attend one (1) meeting, or credibly claim to have | Voting rights, tea room access |
| Life Member | Ten years' continuous complaining about acronyms | Voting rights, tea room access, a badge that says LIFE MEMBER in Comic Sans (non-negotiable) |
| Honorary Life-Long Sufferer of Corporate Jargon | Survive one (1) all-hands meeting containing the phrase "let's take this offline to circle back on the synergies" | Our deepest sympathies |
| Cross-Member | Hold concurrent membership in a fellow Usenet-adjacent institution (see below) | A nod of recognition at conferences neither organisation actually holds |
Many of our most senior members hold concurrent, entirely coincidental membership in the Australian Chapter of the Lumber Cartel - the shadowy, deeply fictional consortium of timber interests that Usenet spammers spent the better part of a decade insisting was secretly funding anti-spam volunteers to protect paper mail from the email revolution.
As every anti-spam veteran knows: There Is No Lumber Cartel (TINLC). We are merely honoured to be counted among its entirely nonexistent membership, and to display its entirely nonexistent logo below with entirely nonexistent pride.
A significant fraction of our founding membership cut their teeth on news.admin.net-abuse.email - the newsgroup where the internet's spam wars were fought, one killfile and one cancelbot at a time, back when "block list" was two words and everybody had an opinion about open relays. If you know what a "make.money.fast" thread was, you may already qualify for membership. If you still have a MAPS RBL bumper sticker, you may already be a Life Member and simply haven't been informed.
Chairs meetings. Adjourns meetings. Occasionally holds meetings in between. Title inherited, not elected - the paperwork for an election was deemed too acronym-heavy to process.
First responder to field reports of "ATM Machine" signage. Carries a laminated card listing every redundant acronym known to humankind. Card is now on its third laminate.
Attends Cartel meetings that do not occur, at a venue that does not exist, and reports back with minutes that are, appropriately, entirely blank.
"I joined for the acronym-fighting. I stayed for the biscuits." - Anonymous Life Member, minutes of a meeting nobody can locate