You know, I'm kind of an old school geek. I cut my teeth on a Vic 20, had Pong when it was a complete console game (not just some cartridge for your fancy-pants Atari 2600), and I had a Bitnet account long before this whole inter-tubey thing came out that these kids are playing around with today. And as much as technology has changed over the years and improved the speed, reach and content of the digital tribe, one thing will always remain the same: virtual anonymity lets some people be fucking assholes for no reason other than to amuse themselves.
So, I posted a Mumm a few minutes ago asking what I thought was a legitimate question, which seems to have been mistake number one in this place. I got some genuine feedback, which helped with my curiosity and I appreciate everyone that took the time to express some real thought into what they said. And I'm not really bothered by the random pictures or unrelated comments, although seems a waste of time to put in your two cents worth when it doesn't add anything; maybe it's just the need to be seen, which the internet seems to both foster and nurture in many people (myself included at times). And the couple of people that seemed to take offense at the question as if I was asking them personally. WTF? It's not like I hit you up with some random A/S/L bullshit.
But the thing I will never understand is the drive in some people to be shitty for their own amusement. I've thought this on reading other MUMMs, it's not just sour grapes because people are doing it to me. Hell, I fully expected it, and in this case people didn't let me down. Comment after comment that people took the time to write, letting me know how stupid my question was or how lame I am or how I'm obviously a pathetic, lonely soul trolling for sex chat. If I wanted that I'm pretty sure I could work that out in a less hostile environment. And the weird thing is, I expected to get some potentially ugly comments from women (since the MUMM was about women), but all the shit came from guys. Weird. And what's worse is they are doing it to each other. Someone left me a comment that that completely disagreed with me and I appreciated her input so much that I was going to thank her, then I saw that some dick head insulted her and now I feel like I should apologize to her because she got accosted on my MUMM! Why do people do it?
Back in the good old days there were some pretty intense Flame wars floating around every news group I belonged to, even the hippy-trippy New Age ones where people were supposed to be all love and flowers and progressive, but it seems like since the floodgates of connectivity have opened, the I know, it's FUBAR, I shouldn't expect a lot, not like you can see on those high brow sites like live journal. And I'm about as misanthropic as they come, so I certainly don't think we should all hold hands and sing Kumbaya to move the world into a better place. "People are bastard coated bastards with a bastard filling" (bling to the first person that can name that quote). I just don't know why people insist on being ugly to each other rather than just leave people the fuck alone.
So in the end I've read enough MUMMs to know it would happen and can't say I'm at all surprised by how people are shitty to amuse themselves (yes, Nida, I opened that door, knowing what was back there), but I can still say it confuses me why that's amusing. As communication gets easier, it seems we have less and less to say of any merit. I just can't imagine Newton and Leibniz hashing out their war over Calculus with comments like "u really have no clue do u?". Not to compare anything that goes on in FUBAR to Netwon and Leibniz, but you know what I mean.
Perhaps we should all come together in our own separate corners and have a world wide Ice Cream Anti-Social.
