We’re done here.
For the most part, I have never apologized for any blog I read. Friends have questioned my friendship with Crabby, and I simply stood by my assertion that, although we had an interesting beginning, in the sense that I met him when he wrote a blog and said some things about me, over time, he and I have become friends. Not everyone shares my views or opinions on that front, and I completely respect that, just as I appreciate the fact that my friends are the sort who, at this point, do not project their own experiences with Crabby and other bloggers to whom I subscribe on me, as a reflection of my own views and opinions. I appreciate this.
Crabby is merely one example.
There are other bloggers people love to hate. The animosity has sometimes become so hostile that different bloggers begin to attack the readers by extension. I do tend to take exception to that. I like to read, and I like a variety of subjects. That doesn’t make me a brainless idiot. It makes me someone who likes to read different “genres” within the blogging community. Still, when I listen to the insults flung back and forth between different bloggers, even when they start to include the readers, I tend to brush it off as nothing more than a by-product of a hostile altercation. Who cares?
I see good things in people. Does that make me naive? No. I just think that, for the most part, everyone does have good qualities.
Which pisses me off even more when I feel that my support means nothing to that blogger, or when a blogger uses my tendencies to put some thought into a subject before expressing my ideas on various subject into an exploitative opportunity to call me an idiot. I take time out of my day to read a new blog. Sometimes I will even research the issue before responding, so I won’t put information in a comment that is incorrect and shows my ignorance. I think that the blogger deserves that much. Do I get to every blog to which I am subscribed every day? No, but when I do go in, I read. I think. And I comment.
And nothing bothers me more on the ’space than when I feel like a topic has been placed in the public area to elicit responses, to learn later that the blogger has been conducting some social experiment.
Blah, blah, blah.
Already starting to ramble, which really tends to happen when I am furious, so I guess my basic point is this:
(1) When you deliberately misrepresent yourself, or your life, in order to paint a picture for the reader and to obtain their feedback, you can bet that some people will give you an honest response. Period. Some responses might even be influenced based on readers’ experience with the issue addressed in the blog. And you know it.
(2) When you later come back and explain it was all a hypothetical, people will generally understand that. I know I have done that (sterilizing babies?).
(3) However, when you come back and ridicule the audience for not only taking your blog seriously, but then proceed to tell them that you think they are stupid and and that you are above it all with your superior sense of self-control? At that point, you have crossed a line. Not only will you alienate people who you deceived for entertainment purposes, but you attack them and their own experiences with absolutely no regard for others.
For what?
Shock value?
Scandal?
Entertainment?
Because you are a fucking dick who could not give two shits for anyone but yourself?
Nothing pisses me off more than when I defend another person publicly, only to later realize that the critics were essentially right in the first place.
Yeah, I do tend to take things seriously when they are presented in a serious manner. And I do tend to think better of people than I probably should. I am not sure I would like myself very much if that ever changes. The change I would rather make is to recognize that some people really are asshats, and to then cut my losses and move on.
I might have a higher threshold for pain than most, or maybe I just have a breaking point that is reached long after others’ have already been shattered long ago, but eventually I do get there. Usually, the person who is so heavily criticized is the person who most frequently pushes me over that line.
That happened today.
Wasn’t the first time, and it undoubtedly won’t be the last time, but at this point, I am done. Go exploit others for your own entertainment. I don’t need it.
And, yeah, I am pissed.
I have that right.
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