Wednesday 21 May 2008

How to go too far

If you have a bad cold and want to annoy hundreds, nay thousands of people who know what influenza is truly like, announce you have the flu on a message board, i.e. sitting at your computer, in front of a bright screen, while complaining of a splitting headache, etc. Don’t forget to malign anyone who suggests you might be overplaying the sympathy card.

If you want to make someone very angry indeed, let people write vicious and unwarranted comments about them on your blog, and leave those comments there so your friends can put links to them on their own moronic blogs. Then, years later, even though that person chose to forget about the earlier incident, write something just as vicious and just as unwarranted about them. Don’t forget to deny having any friendly communication with them in the meantime, in case your friends think you are a hypocrite.

If you have already given birth to one healthy baby and want to insult hundreds, nay thousands of women who cannot have children, call yourself barren.

Congratulations! Now you can also call yourself a


Addendum: You need to do all of the above to qualify. Only one of those things is not enough. Sorry. WinterWheat

16 comments:

  1. Not sure I understand your point. I love your blog but this post has me scratching my head.

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  2. You know, Anon, my blog has two purposes: one is general (the world at large and its inequity); the other is personal (grrrr-ing about individuals who have annoyed me, or worse). The current post has to do with the latter and will be understood - if she ever sees it - by the intended slappee. I'm sure one of her 'friends' will point it out to her - that's what some friends are for.

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  3. aw what a beautiful cow, she has a lovely face. I'm curious about something though - why is a self-proclaimed feminist calling another woman " a cow?"



    boo. or shall I say, moo.
    "Got Hypocrisy?"

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  4. Yes, Anon 2 (I have temporarily suspended my ‘No Anonymous Comments’ policy so people who are too cowardly or too lazy to even bother choosing an identity can contribute their two cents to this post, which, as I said to Anon 1, does not really concern them), that cow is much too nice. I did look for an ‘ugly’ cow, but couldn’t find one. Calling such women ‘cows’ is an insult to cows, really.

    Since when does being a feminist mean that one has to accept everything women do without question. I don’t hate everything men do, nor am I enamoured of everything women do. It’s called trying to be objective. May I suggest you explore feminism a little more in depth. As the article in Wikipedia says, ‘Feminism comprises a number of movements, theories and philosophies that are concerned with issues of gender difference, that advocate equality for women, and that campaign for women’s rights and interests.’Nothing about turning a blind eye to their faults.

    Badly behaved women let the side down. I support honest human beings, whatever their sex.

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  5. Just to be clear-

    the anon poster was not me!

    I never tire of this blog: you have a gift for expressing yourself. I read the perfume board less often now that you post less.

    I wonder why " cow" came to be a derisive term. Maybe it needs more: miserable cow, stupid stinkin' cow, unspeakable cow-


    Sincerely,

    Carole

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  6. Oh, Carole, I never for one instant thought it might be you. I know you post as Anonymous, but you also always sign your name and, because of that, I've always posted your comments, haven't I? I'm sorry you got lumped in the vast Anon mess.

    No idea why that poor animal has such a bad press. It's such a gentle creature. Any of the adjectives you suggest would be very apt.

    Thank you for being such a good and faithful friend. :-)

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  7. Jeebers. Who on earth are you talking about, Bela?

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  8. Ah, Homer, that would be telling. ;-)

    Actually, judging by my counter (which gives me details of who has been reading my blog), I can say that quite a few people know who the slappee is. You don't - and you haven't missed much.

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  9. It's not just cows who get a bad press - what have female dogs (and occasionally horses, come to think of it) done to deserve being used in such a negative sense too? I can't really think of equivalents used for men - it seems to be more common to question their parentage, or worse.

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  10. bela, I have no idea about the history leading up to this, but is this not a bit beneath you really, especially as the poor woman you are writing about seems to have been feeling ill because she had just had a miscarriage?

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  11. I don't really follow either. This just seems rather melodramatic and gratuitously nasty to me - especially if you think what GSE says is even slightly likely to be the case.

    Attachment is the root of a lot of misery. You'd probably feel a lot better in general if you could just rise above getting *this* upset about random people on the internet.

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  12. I don’t know either, S, and it would be nice if there were some genderless alternatives.

    What I find curious sometimes is when a cow (the animal) is referred to as ‘he’. I have seen several editions of The Antiques Roadshow where someone has brought an object or a painting representing a cow and when the expert has said, ‘He is so well done, etc.’. He? It’s a cow; it’s got big udders; it couldn’t be more female! LOL!

    GSE, obviously you know whom I’m talking about. I won’t publish the link to the post (dated Aug 2005) in which I was abused very badly by one of that person’s commenters (who doesn’t know me at all and with whom I have never exchanged a single word). If you don’t want to go and see for yourself, you will have to trust me that I did in fact show incredible restraint in the face of provocation, and for a very long time.

    The whole point this time was that she complained of something trivial, while suffering from something worse. However, as she says herself on her blog, no one knew the real reason for her ‘poor me’ post on the message board. Obviously, she felt she hadn’t had enough sympathy (she posted nine more ‘poor me’ posts subsequently, still trying to get the sympathy she wasn’t getting and still not saying what the real matter was). She chose to blame me (and someone else) for it. If she'd told us what she was going through, I would have been just as sympathetic as anyone else, of course, I would. But that was a dirty trick that came on the end of a long list of dirty tricks.

    L, since you know even less about the subject than GSE, I would have thought you might want to remain silent about it. You want to see ‘gratuitously nasty’? I can send you the link I mentioned above.

    ‘Attachment is the root of a lot of misery.’? What misery? I’m feeling absolutely fine, thanks very much. I have said it before, but I’ll say it again: this blog – which is my personal platform – is devoted to things that annoy me (that’s one of the ways I get them out of my system) and I will carry on selecting my own targets. If ‘random people on the internet’, as you call them, insult me and play games with me, I will respond.

    I am showing quite a lot of restraint right now...

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  13. I personally am very much in favour of 'poor me-ing' as anyone who reads my blog will know full well.

    Swine is predominantly an insult for men, isn't it? Ditto warthog, although you don't see that one much. How about snake?

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  14. LOL! I usually don't mind either (and I'm sure I've posted my share of them), but I can't bear people playing games. Just tell the b***** truth so others can react in the correct way.

    Snake would have been very appropriate in this instance. I should have used it. Oh, well, next time. ;-)

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  15. I think the point is this.

    Person A goes 'I've got flu, I'm miserable and ill.'

    Person X goes 'Well, it's probably just a bad cold, because real flu is when you can't raise your head off the pillow, and there you are typing.' Person B (for Bela) adds 'Yes, I've had flu and it's not possible to do anything, is it?'

    Instead of answering there, Person A then goes to her blog and writes what nasty people X and B are for being so unsympathetic because actually A is suffering from something really dreadful that she didn't mention. She (A) actually puts 'And what they didn't know is...' without seeing that that is actually the point. A also writes 'I do just have a bad cold, but I'm feeling as ill as if I had flu because of the dreadful other thing I'm going through right now.'

    All A had to do, to get the sympathy she wanted and deserved, was say at the start 'I've got a horrible cold and I'm also having a very traumatic time regarding something private which is making it feel 10 times worse.' She didn't even have to say what it was.

    Then persons X and B would not have put themselves in the position of being wrong-footed.

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  16. I appreciate the right to control one's own blog, but it confuses me slightly when people can't accept anything but commentary from mindless Yes posters. The subject of your post 'how to..' posted on her own blog an intersting familial situation, and having my own tricky similiar situations in the past, I responded. I respected her stance, but questioned (and I was civil, sympathetic to the situation) an action of hers with a simple suggestion, saying that if a difficult choice were to be made regarding the situation favoring one family member over another there would be no shame in it. The response? A swift deleting of my post. I was actually speaking from personal experience, as well, in giving my suggestion to her!

    I usually try not to take sides, but it appears to me that the subject of your post isn't being fair in a) simply not being honest about situations in their quest for sympathy (as in the 'flu') - my question there - if it's too personal and you need to play with the real reason for sympathy online, why post at all?

    and b) that one shouldn't mistake apparent blog-soul baring as open arms for opinions outside of the usual Yes crowd.

    I can't stand Yes men (and women).

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