I think this about sums it up
Elaine: I will never understand people.
Jerry: They’re the worst!
Back from the beyond
I think this about sums it up
Elaine: I will never understand people.
Jerry: They’re the worst!
© 2025 words mean things
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I feel so lame for not just walking away from that. Tormenting Andrea for fun was all well and good, but once one of her fans decided to take it outside the net, it became obvious that those people are even more ignorant and hypocritical than I would have ever imagined. I should have just gone silent, but instead I sank to their level. I feel dirty.
I’m with you and Jim on this, Andrea. I want the Internet to quit sucking. My lament has been why do some people just suck the joy out of living and want everyone else to be as miserable as they are. And, when we’re not, they do their utmost to make us miserable. They argue for the sake of argument and their circular logic is unfathomable. There are so many comment sections that I know the “trolls” and just scroll through. However, the trolls have become so abundant as of late, I rarely even go to comments anymore. Just another right that is being taken away from some of us. It seems there really are those who only want free speech for themselves and noone else.
Posted by: Kathy on June 15, 2003 04:02 PM
What planet is she from?
And why do you guys keep messing with her? You know she’s clearly unstable. No good could possible come from interacting with her. None.
Tuesday: I’ve been wondering the same thing myself. Why do I keep going to Andrea’s and MDT’s sites, when I know all they do is “angry up my blood”?
I think part of it is my hindbrain is feeling cornered. I feel this administration, hell this society, wants to squeeze me out of existence. And so when I see Republi-Bot minions like these spreading their hatred and ignorance of things I hold dear (and attacking my friends), it gets my back up like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I feel this tide-like impulse to strike back the only way I know how, which is through words.
I also feel a tiny bit better right after I do it, but that feeling is fleeting. I know it’s just spitting in the ocean. I need to stop spitting; the ocean doesn’t notice.
Okay, I’m in on this. I’ve left my one comment for Sparky and Adam and anyone with half a brain. Let’s hope Sparky gets some more harassing phone calls and can sue Andrea and have her wages garnered for the rest of her life.
When driving on the freeway, if someone is being rude and dangerous and irresponsible, do you get into it with them, flipping _them_ off and racing ahead recklessly to block _their_ car and screaming at _them_ in your rear-view mirror?
Nah. Grown-ups learn pretty quickly that that’s not a good strategy, if for no other reason than because you really don’t know that the person in the other car isn’t crazy enough to keep on escalating it to the point where you’re going to end up regretting that you got involved with them in the first place.
It’s natural to get pissed at someone like Andrea; she’s pushing all those buttons as hard as she can, and when you give in and start interacting with her via her comments she just ramps it up to the next level, and keeps on doing so. Even though it’s not likely to ever reach the level of scary road rage, it’s a game, and a game you’re playing on her playing field. It’s just not worth it.
It’s sad to see someone whose ego is so fragile that she has to use her weblog’s comments to shore it up, inciting people to disagree with her, then flaming them and deleting their comments and encouraging her supporters to harrass them by phone. The woman could really benefit from professional help.
So don’t get into it with her. Take that emotional energy and convert it to something useful. What if I took the time I just spent posting on her site (a comment I can reliably predict will be deleted within the hour), and then posting about it here, and instead walked up to two or three houses on my block with blank voter-registration forms, encouraging my neighbors to register and vote, if they aren’t doing so already, and talking with them, to the extent they were willing to do so, about what’s going on in our country these days?
Damn, that’s not a bad idea. I think maybe I’ll do that.
It’s so _easy_ to sit at my computer and play out a fantasy in which I’m Nobly Battling the Forces of Evil by going tap-tap-tap on the keyboard. That’s why people like me (and Andrea) do it. Actually going door-to-door in my own neighborhood is _way_ harder than that. It’s also way more likely to actually bring about a positive change, both in me and in the larger world I tell myself I want to transform.
I just wanted to take a moment to agree with your comments, John Callendar, both here and on the site in question. It is ridiculous to me how quickly one these days is branded a troll, coward or flaming liberal simply because an alternate point of view is brought to what should be a mature, adult conversation about real life issues. While the drama of the posting of publicly accessible information (whois, et al) may be good for hits and even, in a way, understandable from a “website marketing” point of view, the continuing commentary from other visitors bashing Sparky is remarkably childish.
It just makes me wonder where all this hatred is brewed. How can people who do not even know each other and who cannot reasonably comment on the intentions or life choices of another make such negative and derogatory speech?
I like pie.
____________
I go now.
That is such a good point John!
Even though it’s not likely to ever reach the level of scary road rage
There is always a first for everything. RememberJenny Jones and that guy that killed the other guy for having a crush on him?
Unfortunately, some people have no concept of when they have taken it too far until they are behind bars. The fact that someone called Sparky should send off all kinds of warning bells. That is just fucked up! And I would seriously report that to the police. There are laws against just such a thing.
Sad to say, but eventually, someone will take it too far and someone else will wind up dead; all over a stupid blog. Please try not to be the first, OK? I kinda like you guys 🙂
That’s not to say live your entire online life in fear, but please understand this person. She is battling her own personal demons. She creates a trap for unsuspecting people to fall into and then you personify her demons. She can’t deal with themwhile they are in her head but it makes sense to her if she perceives them as actual people. It really has nothing to do with you guys. It could be anyone. You’re just pawns in her own twisted nightmare.
The best way you could ever help her is to not let her do that to you.
absolutely right on John. I said this yesterday in another comment, but I’ll say it here again. Why plant an idea in the sand where the waves endlessly wash it away, when you can move to higher ground and see it take root?
People like her are just a constant wave of rhetoric crashing on shore, endlessly. No words will ever change that. And notice how when you are at the beach, the crashing waves become background noise, the endless drone that you begin to zone out. It’s there, but no one is really listening to it.
You may not like where this country, culture is, or where it’s headed, but I don’t believe she’s sitting on the fat part of the bell curve. Normal people going about they’re lives with intentions to do the best they can that day, and interact with others in a way that is not disrespectful, demeaning, and rude are not flocking to her website and getting all hyped up. She is one person with a blog, with a small handful of yes-men(and women). Don’t give her more credit than she deserves for steering our society in one direction or another!
Isn’t it like making her out to be a 400lb. monster, when in reality, she’s an annoying fly that you could simply shooo out the window? -or if you choose, swat down with an old newspaper? As John said, if you talk with a few of your neighbors, i.e. normal people, I doubt you’ll find that her rhetoric has reached them directly, and that you are far from being squeezed out of existance.
These are all really interesting analyses, and I think everyone here is more correct than not, but as I was reading about her demons and her issues, the phrase “Don’t try your amateur psychoanalysis on me. EVER.” kept popping into my head and making me giggle.
Well, I’ve received two more calls today, one silence and one hangup. Joy.
For the record, my intended role in this was never about nobly battling the forces of evil. Unlike the various liberal posters attempting to earnestly express reasonable opinions, I really was a troll just swearing at her to piss her off. Nothing noble about that. I chose to do it because I watched her flaming people and it pissed me off and I knew there was no point in reasoning with her. I just didn’t anticipate the levels of ignorance, hatred, and hypocrisy I would encounter.
Unfortunately, I do think that more of the American people are like the readers of that site than the readers of this site. There’s evidence for it all around. I wouldn’t want to take those voter registration forms to my neighbors… what if I gave them to the person or persons who are calling me? Sure, they’ve got a right to vote, but my time would be better spent masturbating than enabling them to influence anything.
Excellent point, John! And I find Andrea’s ambiguity, by linking to your personal page in reference to your children and then backpeddling by saying she meant no ill, to be disturbing and creepy.
Speaking of creepy and distubing, oh Sparky! It’s weird how I’m actually surprised and not surprised at the same time about those calls you’re now receiving. That, too, is disturbing and creepy.
Heh. Well, having canvassed for the California League of Conservation Voters for a month or so right after graduating from school, before getting a semi-real job, I don’t think it’s that dangerous, at least not in neighborhoods that aren’t inherently dangerous to begin with. But that was a while ago; maybe things have gotten worse since then.
The two main lessons I learned from that experience were:
1) Cold sales are really, really hard, and I really, really suck at it.
2) The hardest part about canvassing door-to-door is deciding to do it. Once you get over that initial fear factor, it’s basically no different than trick or treating at Halloween, except that the candy-to-knocks ratio is considerably lower (at least it was for me — see lesson #1).
If I’m correct in understanding you to be responding to what I said, let me clarify that I’m not wary of any level of personal danger as a result of canvassing, I’m just saying that the average American isn’t someone I want to encourage to vote, honestly. I’m sure that will be an unpopular opinion.
Oh, gotcha. Yeah, I misinterpreted.
I actually had a similar discussion with my friend ymatt over my effort to make the people in the mud I hang out in register and vote. He pointed out that I wasn’t focusing on people who would vote _correctly_.
After thinking about it, though, I think I’m okay with just encouraging randomly selected people to register and vote. Yeah, some of them will vote “wrong”, as interpreted from the point of view of my individual agenda. But I think I still win, for the following reasons:
* Having once registered and voted, they are embarking on a path that over time will, I think, make them more-informed citizens who are more likely to vote “right”.
* I might actually be wrong myself (it’s happened before – *gasp*). In that case, having these other folks in the pool who will use their common sense to overrule my wrong vote is a good thing.
* In the end, I’m more interested in growing a crop of committed, informed, actively-participating voters than I am in achieving any particular outcome. The good guys/bad guys pendulum swings back and forth, but having (or not having) a civil society is something that, over the long haul, will be more important in terms of what kind of country my children (there they are cropping up again; pesky littlte buggers) get to live in.
Or at least, that’s how I view things at the moment. I’m Joe Inclusion these days.
I like pie
It’s fun to mess with her.
Indeed.