How to Deal with Internet Asshats

Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one. – Callahan, The Dead Pool

When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical. – Unknown

As a person who has been playing around on the internet for awhile now, I can safely say that it is a pretty hostile place. There is a thing called “Keyboard Courage” that emboldens people to say things to others online that they would never say in person.

Personally, I think it’s because the person never has to suffer the consequences of their words. Although there are stories of people who have hunted down internet antagonizers in a quest to do them bodily harm, the vast majority of people who act like asshats never have to come face to face with the person they are talking shit to or about.

If you are the person who is being insulted, ridiculed, yelled at, or generally subjected to some of the nastiness found online, it can be very upsetting. I think this is partly because we expect people to behave in a civilized manner online and we are shocked when confronted with the reality that the internet is nothing more than a zoo populated by hairless monkeys hunched over their keyboards slinging digital poo at each other. I certainly was surprised the first time an internet asshat slung a virtual turd in my face.

Nail Polish, Gender Identity, and the Idiocracy

I’m convinced that my fellow Americans have gone insane. More specifically, the whole right wing conservative, anti-sex, anti-woman, anti-minority, and homophobic portion of the population that is taking up precious space in the media of late.

I’m pretty certain that most people in the United States are not like this. In fact, I would say that people in this group are a minority. But since they have such big mouths and their form of crazy is…well…crazy the media can’t help reporting on it because crazy gets people buying newspapers.

A week or two ago, J. Crew sent out a mailer that contained a picture of the company’s president, Jenna Lyons, with her son Beckett spending time together. The controversy? Jenna painted her son’s toenails hot pink.

To the extreme conservatives this was the equivalent of the Romans nailing Jesus to the cross, or calling a room full of black people the n-word, or going to lemonparty.com. The brouhaha that erupted over this picture was so ridiculous that it warped the word and made it redonkulous.

Will This Prevent Drunk Driving?

So this news article is talking about getting breathalyser devices installed into cars that will lock the ignition if the driver of the vehicle if the blood alcohol level is over a certain limit. I’ve noticed that I have a habit of denigrating noble causes so in the interest of keeping up the tradition, I’m going to frown a little bit at this initiative.

Drunk driving is an issue that needs to be dealt with. It is a one hundred percent preventable crime which only takes a little bit of common sense and responsibility on the part of the driver to keep from becoming a statistic. Last year about 40 percent of all traffic fatalities were alcohol related.

I think installing breathalysers in cars is a fantastic idea except for a couple of problems:

Redheads, The New Minority Group

Just when I think humanity could not get any more ridiculous, I find a news article that continues to affirm Albert Einstein’s sentiments that the depths of human stupidity are, in fact, infinite.

Apparently discriminating against people based on skin color, sex or sexual orientation just isn’t enough. So people in the British Isles are kicking it up a notch by harassing people with red hair.

Me No Likey This – Sponsored Themes Again

A couple of months ago, I blogged about some drama brewing over the rise of sponsored themes in the WordPress community. Since then I haven’t really kept on top of the issue as I’ve been busy working on other projects. Well about a week ago, word started circling the blogosphere that sponsored themes were now being removed from the Theme Viewer which came right after the announcement by Weblog Tools Collection that they will no longer be promoting sponsored themes on their website.

I wasn’t surprised. Matt Mullenweg had expressed that he did not like playing host to the sponsored themes on the Theme Viewer and, though he put it to a community vote (roll eyes here) I knew it would only be a matter of time before he just decided to do away with them completely. I’m not criticizing him for this particular move. Matt owns the domain for the Theme Viewer and pays the cost of hosting. Therefore he is free to do with his domain whatever he wants. A lot of people crying foul are trying to say that he doesn’t have the right to do that, however, that’s only because they don’t seem to understand that The One Who Owns The Website has the right to bring the hammer down.