Rantile tendencies.
I don’t know what it is about the internet that makes people feel free to be complete assholes, when, were they to act or speak like that in real life, I’d be more than seriously inclined to punch them in the mouth to shut them the fuck up. As you may recall, I am a paid member of Flickr, the photosharing website. I sometimes participate in some of the group forums there. In one group in particular there is a woman who is…well, there’s no polite way to put this…a complete bitch to any and all persons she takes even the slightest issue with. [Frankly, we'd like to call her a cunt, but that'd be very rude. And we're not like that. Cough. -- Ed.] Anyway, today I (firmly but diplomatically) called her on her behaviour towards someone who certainly didn’t deserve her bile and she, as she always does (with anyone), brushed it off unapologetically. What was I thinking? Why should she consider anything I or anyone else has to say? After all, she never has before. She’s superior, she’s right, we all suck, end of story, fuck off. Basically. And then off she went again, spewing more of her hatefulness. I know I shouldn’t let it bug me — she’s just some crotchety bitch with a superiority complex, whom I’ve never met (and, God help us all, never will). But she just perfectly illustrates the strange freedom people seem to feel when interacting on the internet — one that allows them to act like total jerkfucks towards others for no other reason than hey, there’s a layer of relative anonymity there. I don’t understand this. But it pisses me off enought that I’d like to gather all the people who act like that into a spaceship and fire it into the sun.
Will write more later when I’ve calmed down a bit.
February 6th, 2008 at 10:17 am
So what you’re saying is…you’d like to marry this chick, right?
February 6th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Possiblly. She’s really cute. I could therefore likely overlook the fact that she’s a demon from the bowels of Satan’s nightmares.
February 8th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Dude, I hear you. There’s a guy in the bird ID group who’s just a jerk, very condescending. Oops, I go the subspecies wrong, how could I possibly miss the difference in tail feathers? I must be a moron. He should just make his own ID group and be the only one allowed to comment. But I think he gets off correcting everyone else.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Many years ago there was a horrid woman who went by the name “Womandingo” in our writer’s group on AOL. She dominated the chat room and cut down everyone who didn’t agree with her, riding on the knowledge that she was awaiting her publishing date and thought that made her Queen Something. Her book then came out (she got a sweetheart deal with Harper Collins publishing house because she was a D.C. attorney married to a semi-known actor), and it bombed bigtime. Sold about 17 copies. And all the people she had bedeviled in the chat room wrote horrible reviews for her book on Amazon and B&N.com - which goes to show you better be nice to people while you’re waiting for your 15 minutes. It could turn out to be 15 seconds.