News of the death of Will Smith does the rounds - again.
Messages of condolence and OMGWTF are following close behind.
I can't make up my mind which is funnier - the news itself, the "Farewell Fresh Prince" messages or how shitty they're all getting trying to convince everyone that he's not actually dead at Smith's official website.
Will Smith :: Messages
It's the 2nd time in as many months that Will Smith has died.
I would so love to be a fly on the wall when someone does it and then finds out it's true.
OMG You killed Will Smith! You bastards!
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
When shit happens...
Call /b/
Now don't get all shitty with me for posting this here. I didn't make it, the Anonymous post message is bodgy and yada yada yada.
The news of the postings to the board has surfaced and one news site carrying the story of the posting of messages and images like the one above has already been taken down.
Or at least, it had been when I tried to have a look at it.
http://www.planetblacksburg.com/2007/04/sick_internet_joke_or_real_thing.php
This one is still up...
http://www.thestar.com/StarPM/article/204030
Well, you can see for yourself exactly what the "sick internet joke" was and yes, it was a joke.
Sick?
Fuck off.
The following screed may not be terribly eloquent in form, but in feeling it's louder than the sum of its words. (Caps in original.)
THIS IS THE SHIT WHAT US MEDIA WANTS
THEY ARE CELEBRATING ON THIS INCIDENT
THIS IS SELLING MILLIONS
FUCK YOUR "RIGHTS" TO BUY WEAPONS NEXT TO VEGETABLES AND MILK.
NO WEAPONS - NO SHOOTINGS
FUCK YOU
Who are you to wave your finger? So full of it.
Eyeballs deep in muddy waters Fuckin' hypocrite.
Liar, lawyer, mirror, show me.
What's the difference?
Do you think it's too soon to laugh at the latest tragedy? If so, how long do you think we should wait? A week? A month? A year? Never? Perhaps you might be generous enough to allow individuals to decide for themselves if, when and how they choose to deal with Cho Seung-Hui's actions.
There are some who are ridiculing the man and his actions already. Those same people are angry at the concept of going to a grocery store to buy milk, vegetables and a Glock 9mm.
The media are picking over Cho's dorm room, his classmates' myspace pictures of the victims, his writings - you name it. They're circling like vultures looking for the latest bit of soft underbelly to splat before the eyeballs of those with the ad-buying budgets.
The news items are screaming that Cho wrote "violent plays". FFS, didn't they go see The Matrix? Full Metal Jacket? Shakespeare wrote violent plays!
Now, you tell me what's sick: The picture at the top or the "respected" media outlets falling all over themselves for that exclusive bit of information about Cho Seung-Hui?
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Addendum to something...
I was intending to have my last word on Kathy "Helen Darville/Demidenko" Sierra by mentioning one of the comments left on her blog which was "IMMA KILL YOU" repeated about 30 times and signed by Sage@desu.com because it's another meme and it really is bloody funny.
I know I've typed that somewhere before, maybe here but unsuccessfully or perhaps on one of my other blogs. (I'm only updating 3 now, not 5 and the other 2 are friends only.) Or it may be here and visible, I haven't scrounged thoroughly enough.
The reason I'm bringing it up is because her stupid story has assumed a halflife of its own and grown bigger than any of the people involved, indeed bigger than all involved combined.
That IMMA KILL YOU meme made me laugh embarrassingly loudly because the other places I've seen that meme posted almost to the point of it being annoying have as much regard for "codes of conduct" or "internet decorum" or any other Sunday School brand of niceness as a plague of locusts has for the people whose crops they're destroying, thereby consigning those people to slow death by starvation.
Those people who post that sort of thing are people I admire for their boundless creativity, their indomitable joie de vivre, and their unspoken creed that if you take yourself seriously on the internet, you are essentially, an idiot waiting to become an hero. And being an hero is another meme upon which the likes of Scoble and the "Curtail the Lawl" deadhearted cronies would frown for ever.
*Edit* I can't wait, it's just too funny to resist. Sleep can wait...
I know I've typed that somewhere before, maybe here but unsuccessfully or perhaps on one of my other blogs. (I'm only updating 3 now, not 5 and the other 2 are friends only.) Or it may be here and visible, I haven't scrounged thoroughly enough.
The reason I'm bringing it up is because her stupid story has assumed a halflife of its own and grown bigger than any of the people involved, indeed bigger than all involved combined.
That IMMA KILL YOU meme made me laugh embarrassingly loudly because the other places I've seen that meme posted almost to the point of it being annoying have as much regard for "codes of conduct" or "internet decorum" or any other Sunday School brand of niceness as a plague of locusts has for the people whose crops they're destroying, thereby consigning those people to slow death by starvation.
Those people who post that sort of thing are people I admire for their boundless creativity, their indomitable joie de vivre, and their unspoken creed that if you take yourself seriously on the internet, you are essentially, an idiot waiting to become an hero. And being an hero is another meme upon which the likes of Scoble and the "Curtail the Lawl" deadhearted cronies would frown for ever.
*Edit* I can't wait, it's just too funny to resist. Sleep can wait...
These might be old news to you, I don't care. You might find them offensive, I care even less. In fact, if they do offend you, I win.
Do you get it yet?
That picture of the cocaktoo in the linkages bit is still my favourite one of all though. I love it because of its unreasonableness. An unreasonableness which reflects the attitude of those who created it and continue to post it. The Anonymous army whose sole reason for being on the internet is to make a mockery of everything at which they can point a mouse. They live to offend the sensibilities, to eliminate boundaries without breaking the law (well, not too much anyway) and to make their world a bigger place where the price of admission is your ability to laugh at yourself.
Those other pictures are just samples of what goes on where I like to hang out.
The removal of all the all the incriminating evidence is annoying to them. If you can't provide links or pictures, as far as they're concerned, it didn't happen. To do what Kathy Sierra did, if they cared enough to bother with her - which obviously at least one did - well, she's lucky she didn't provoke a full on feeding frenzy. But once the Kathy Sierra Meme gets going...
LOL WUT!
The removal of all the all the incriminating evidence is annoying to them. If you can't provide links or pictures, as far as they're concerned, it didn't happen. To do what Kathy Sierra did, if they cared enough to bother with her - which obviously at least one did - well, she's lucky she didn't provoke a full on feeding frenzy. But once the Kathy Sierra Meme gets going...
LOL WUT!
Will Kathy Sierra Darville become An Hero?
Are we offended yet?
Are we feeling threatened yet?
Or is it clear there is no threat, no intention of being threatening, it's just pushing those boundaries, the limits on the freedom to think of these things and share them with like minded people for the purpose at laughing at (Heaven forbid) anything and everything including ourselves.
If you still don't get the idea...
Monday, April 16, 2007
The curse of the hanging blog
Right click, blog this!
Yes that's how I managed to get this 'update', for want of a better word, to happen.
I know I'm not the only one having a hard time logging into Blogger either. What I want to know is what the hell Google did to the place when they made it more betterer because the old Blogger was doing pretty damn well for the 6 years I've been using it and the instant Google bought it, things have been going wrong.
Can't log in, can log in but can't post, can post but can't publish... wtf!
Out of beta and into the hanging screen of blogless death.
Anyway, now that I'm here in spirit if not in physical presence, what I wanted to blog about was a report in today's Boston Globe about playgrounds.
Yes, playgrounds.
On the third page of the report, the following paragraph appears...
"And in the past 11 years, working with tens of thousands of volunteers and various corporate partners, the nonprofit organization KaBOOM! has built nearly 1,200 playgrounds all over North America, using a collaborative method in which local children help design the playgrounds that are going up in their neighborhoods."
Eliciting input from children to help design playgrounds?
Strikes me as being similar to asking an obese person to construct a slimmer's dietary regimen.
I'm curious to know what sort of input kids might have had in designing playgrounds.
Page 4 has the best info in the whole article though.
Gems like the following...
"According to psychologists and specialists in early childhood education, to be valuable, play needs to be creative, but there also has to be an element of danger."
"When they play, kids make their own rules -- then they have to negotiate to get others to follow them. In sports, adults make and enforce the rules for them."
"To a young child," Hart says, "the idea of a playground is ridiculous in the first place. The whole idea of being taken to a place to play is almost an oxymoron. Children want to play everywhere."
Roger Hart is director of the Children's Environments Research Group at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
When my mother wanted me to teach her how to use Photoshop, I told her to get a photograph and mess around with it. I told her to play with it until she got bored playing with it. That was 18 months ago and she's still not bored, but I have to admit I'm bored shitless of getting photoshopped pictures of her holiday snaps of Europe in my inbox.
What do most of us do on the internet? We play in it. We bump into each other and gets cuts and scrapes and bruises - and some people get bullied and take their modems and mice and go and play somewhere else.
What are the internet ogres trying to do to it? Stifle that rambunctiousness and make it a safe place to play, but more importantly to them - wait for it - to do business.
There's money to be made out of the internet and in online businesses - hadn't you heard?
But what kind of businesses open their doors in a playground? Particularly one which doesn't like the imposition of restrictions?
The smart ones operate in proximity to the playground and shore up their Windows against accidental or deliberate breakage stemming from activity going on in the playground. (Ok, rotten pun. Get over it.)
The even smarter ones learn how to operate as an adjunct to the playground and get as involved in its activities as it is practicable to do so.
Now, where have I heard THAT before?
Whilst watching my screen do nothing tonight, I noticed at the bottom that my Spybot S&D was preventing bad sites from loading. You know, those sites that drop tracking cookies on your hard drive? Never used to get those with the old blogger.
These new owners have messed around trying to turn this bit of the playground I've called my own for 6 years into yet another shopfront. In the past, I was offered the option to upgrade to a paid account where better features and tools would be available. Now, I'm being subjected to tracking cookies and my software is getting indigestion and preventing me from continued usage of the old free product. Mostly.
Perhaps getting kids to help with the design of playgrounds is less like fatties doing diet menus than it is like asking the sales department to design a better internet.
The answer, as became apparent in the Boston Globe story, was to take as much design out of the playground and let the users decide for themselves why they want that place to play at all and the answer was - to be creative. Provide sand and water and a place where the two could be mixed and let the kids sort out the rest.
Yes that's how I managed to get this 'update', for want of a better word, to happen.
I know I'm not the only one having a hard time logging into Blogger either. What I want to know is what the hell Google did to the place when they made it more betterer because the old Blogger was doing pretty damn well for the 6 years I've been using it and the instant Google bought it, things have been going wrong.
Can't log in, can log in but can't post, can post but can't publish... wtf!
Out of beta and into the hanging screen of blogless death.
Anyway, now that I'm here in spirit if not in physical presence, what I wanted to blog about was a report in today's Boston Globe about playgrounds.
Yes, playgrounds.
On the third page of the report, the following paragraph appears...
"And in the past 11 years, working with tens of thousands of volunteers and various corporate partners, the nonprofit organization KaBOOM! has built nearly 1,200 playgrounds all over North America, using a collaborative method in which local children help design the playgrounds that are going up in their neighborhoods."
Eliciting input from children to help design playgrounds?
Strikes me as being similar to asking an obese person to construct a slimmer's dietary regimen.
I'm curious to know what sort of input kids might have had in designing playgrounds.
Page 4 has the best info in the whole article though.
Gems like the following...
"According to psychologists and specialists in early childhood education, to be valuable, play needs to be creative, but there also has to be an element of danger."
"When they play, kids make their own rules -- then they have to negotiate to get others to follow them. In sports, adults make and enforce the rules for them."
"To a young child," Hart says, "the idea of a playground is ridiculous in the first place. The whole idea of being taken to a place to play is almost an oxymoron. Children want to play everywhere."
Roger Hart is director of the Children's Environments Research Group at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
When my mother wanted me to teach her how to use Photoshop, I told her to get a photograph and mess around with it. I told her to play with it until she got bored playing with it. That was 18 months ago and she's still not bored, but I have to admit I'm bored shitless of getting photoshopped pictures of her holiday snaps of Europe in my inbox.
What do most of us do on the internet? We play in it. We bump into each other and gets cuts and scrapes and bruises - and some people get bullied and take their modems and mice and go and play somewhere else.
What are the internet ogres trying to do to it? Stifle that rambunctiousness and make it a safe place to play, but more importantly to them - wait for it - to do business.
There's money to be made out of the internet and in online businesses - hadn't you heard?
But what kind of businesses open their doors in a playground? Particularly one which doesn't like the imposition of restrictions?
The smart ones operate in proximity to the playground and shore up their Windows against accidental or deliberate breakage stemming from activity going on in the playground. (Ok, rotten pun. Get over it.)
The even smarter ones learn how to operate as an adjunct to the playground and get as involved in its activities as it is practicable to do so.
Now, where have I heard THAT before?
Whilst watching my screen do nothing tonight, I noticed at the bottom that my Spybot S&D was preventing bad sites from loading. You know, those sites that drop tracking cookies on your hard drive? Never used to get those with the old blogger.
These new owners have messed around trying to turn this bit of the playground I've called my own for 6 years into yet another shopfront. In the past, I was offered the option to upgrade to a paid account where better features and tools would be available. Now, I'm being subjected to tracking cookies and my software is getting indigestion and preventing me from continued usage of the old free product. Mostly.
Perhaps getting kids to help with the design of playgrounds is less like fatties doing diet menus than it is like asking the sales department to design a better internet.
The answer, as became apparent in the Boston Globe story, was to take as much design out of the playground and let the users decide for themselves why they want that place to play at all and the answer was - to be creative. Provide sand and water and a place where the two could be mixed and let the kids sort out the rest.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Bert steps up to the plate.
Now that our side has got its act together and started supporting the people we like so they don't have to, so too has Bert Bates started going in to bat for Kathy Sierra.
He's doing almost a job on Joey's blog. (I have to ask Joey for permission to link there before I make it public.) Bert is studiously ignoring those who pose too difficult questions for him. I was offended by one particular comment he made about victims and perpetrators and was about to comment on it but I got distracted and opened a Church of Scientology link put up by one of the kids in my IM window. Xenu.org if you're interested.
Shelley Powers has started getting vocal about it in her own way too and she is one woman I'd rather not get offside. I've seen her blog mentioned by Chris Locke but it's been about a year, maybe longer, since I've looked at it.
Why did I bring up Scientology here?
Because, apparently, if you become what the Scientologists call an "SP" or Suppressive Person, any member of the CoS has the right to stop you any way they can - including murder.
See the parallels?
He's doing almost a job on Joey's blog. (I have to ask Joey for permission to link there before I make it public.) Bert is studiously ignoring those who pose too difficult questions for him. I was offended by one particular comment he made about victims and perpetrators and was about to comment on it but I got distracted and opened a Church of Scientology link put up by one of the kids in my IM window. Xenu.org if you're interested.
Shelley Powers has started getting vocal about it in her own way too and she is one woman I'd rather not get offside. I've seen her blog mentioned by Chris Locke but it's been about a year, maybe longer, since I've looked at it.
Why did I bring up Scientology here?
Because, apparently, if you become what the Scientologists call an "SP" or Suppressive Person, any member of the CoS has the right to stop you any way they can - including murder.
See the parallels?
Saturday, April 07, 2007
On blogging
Despite the fact I find them nauseatingly folksy and over simplistic - not to mention befuddled and somewhat mind-bogglingly dull to read, that Sierra woman's blog is a comfort for people against whom I have no grudges so I left a positive message there.
I still won't be completely satisfied unless she apologises to Chris Locke, Frank Paynter, Jeneane Sessum and Alan Herrell for the damage she caused their reputations, though it is highly satisfying to see how well they've managed to restore their own good names through their own efforts. Perhaps endorsement or positive acknowledgement from Kathy Sierra might actually be a bad thing.
In the next week or so, I suspect the full nature of her bullshit will come out in blogland, by which time it'll be beyond yawn material for the likes of CNN.
In other news Luma Mufleh was out of her office this week on a team building retreat. You remember Luma Mufleh? You remember any team building retreats? I do. They were mostly a waste of time. They seemed to me to be about merging differences to create cohesion within a team when my idea of having a good team about me was being able to rely on everyone else to do their jobs so I could concentrate on doing mine. Thus, as far as I was concerned, the cleaner was as important to me as my boss so I made a point of making things easier on the cleaner as well.
I don't care about special circumstances or divergent interests and abilities of which some boffin says I should be mindful. All I care about is being able to do my job as well as it can be done. If someone isn't pulling their weight, I don't want to have to deal with it, I don't want to have to find out why, and I sure as shit don't want to compromise my work to accomodate them.
If the whole system isn't working satisfactorily, I'm not going to try to change it. I'm going to talk about it with my workmates, guage their attitudes to it, then if enough people hate the way the system has been established, I'll just leave and find another job. If management can't handle the six degrees of separation between marketing and production, that's someone else's problem and I won't be back on Monday to fix it up.
Team building? Bite my crusties.
I suspect Luma Mufleh's team building retreat won't be an exercise in marketing and management though. Come to think of it, I suspect the team building isn't for her at all, but rather for the soccer teams she founded. I'll send her an email and find out how it all went and hopefully I'll have something besides yet another hot air fest to add to the pot of gold at the end of the corporate rainbow. If Luma tells me it was "interesting but not entirely relevant" I'll be disheartened but aware of another warpath to tread at some time in the future. If it were team building for the soccer teams, it could have been a brilliant exercise. I haven't found out yet if she has a blog or just posts relevant updates on the website. Slackness on my part.
Speaking of teams, I've made it off the front page of messages at Liars Team HQ. Second time in 5 months they've found something else to talk about that isn't me. They're talking about what they had for lunch, posting pictures of plants that look like sex organs, youtube links and other such purely intellectual subjects as vaginas and song lyrics.
A couple of days ago, they were as busy as ants taking my stuff out of context, putting their sexual slants on everything, posting anonymous comments here and generally being pathetic. I mean, talking of drawing long bows, the creep whose address and phone number one of the kids found for me is now suggesting I like Chris Locke because his alter ego is Rageboy.
See the little highlighted bit with the arrow pointing to it? He's suggesting I thought Chris Locke was 12 and jerked off over him.
As yet another counterpoint, here's a bit of a conversation I had with one of the teenagers earlier today...
[14:11] Seth: I need to go to bed, but I have one question before I go. I just want a simple answer. Do you think that my generation has the power to change the world as it is? Does not ever generation have the ability to change the world? Simple answer for tonight..if you really want to explain a lot emails always open or we can talk more tomorrow...and I'vee be able to explain my math work.
[14:12] Rat: Simple answer - no.
[14:13] Rat: But your generation can open the way for change.
[14:13] Seth: itersting..food for thought while I sleep.
[14:13] Seth: later Paul
The Liars Team will duly jump all over this and turn it into something it isn't and something I'm not - because that's what they do.
Even though I'm not the day's hot topic over there, this crap has been going on for 5 months. They congratulate themselves like a Dubya cabinet meeting as if they're making the slightest difference to the overall problem - which, incidentally, they haven't even defined for themselves beyond broad concepts yet - and they make the occasional raid on this blog posting out of context and bullshit comments.
If you have a blog and allow comments, that's what blogging is all about.
The smart bloggers delete the comments that have no value either as abuse or as positive feedback. If you get thousands of comments, as Kathy Sierra did, don't have them appear as an appendix to the actual blog entry, but open in a new browser window. Let your readers argue the point for you.
Create passionate users - even if they do all look like they're on crack.
I was going to copypasta a few snippets from Sierra's undead blog and post them here as examples of how being on crack might appear to people who read blogs but I'm over it already.
One of the seven principles of blogging should have been "don't just blog for the sake of blogging and if you do, don't spin it out and don't add unsophisticated graphics and don't have those unsophisticated graphics disconnected from the subject of the blog entry and each other and don't use jargon and... oh fuck it... just don't blog for the sake of blogging."
If Luma Mufleh blogged regularly, nobody interested in life for its own sake would ever bother reading Kathy Sierra's blog again.
I still won't be completely satisfied unless she apologises to Chris Locke, Frank Paynter, Jeneane Sessum and Alan Herrell for the damage she caused their reputations, though it is highly satisfying to see how well they've managed to restore their own good names through their own efforts. Perhaps endorsement or positive acknowledgement from Kathy Sierra might actually be a bad thing.
In the next week or so, I suspect the full nature of her bullshit will come out in blogland, by which time it'll be beyond yawn material for the likes of CNN.
In other news Luma Mufleh was out of her office this week on a team building retreat. You remember Luma Mufleh? You remember any team building retreats? I do. They were mostly a waste of time. They seemed to me to be about merging differences to create cohesion within a team when my idea of having a good team about me was being able to rely on everyone else to do their jobs so I could concentrate on doing mine. Thus, as far as I was concerned, the cleaner was as important to me as my boss so I made a point of making things easier on the cleaner as well.
I don't care about special circumstances or divergent interests and abilities of which some boffin says I should be mindful. All I care about is being able to do my job as well as it can be done. If someone isn't pulling their weight, I don't want to have to deal with it, I don't want to have to find out why, and I sure as shit don't want to compromise my work to accomodate them.
If the whole system isn't working satisfactorily, I'm not going to try to change it. I'm going to talk about it with my workmates, guage their attitudes to it, then if enough people hate the way the system has been established, I'll just leave and find another job. If management can't handle the six degrees of separation between marketing and production, that's someone else's problem and I won't be back on Monday to fix it up.
Team building? Bite my crusties.
I suspect Luma Mufleh's team building retreat won't be an exercise in marketing and management though. Come to think of it, I suspect the team building isn't for her at all, but rather for the soccer teams she founded. I'll send her an email and find out how it all went and hopefully I'll have something besides yet another hot air fest to add to the pot of gold at the end of the corporate rainbow. If Luma tells me it was "interesting but not entirely relevant" I'll be disheartened but aware of another warpath to tread at some time in the future. If it were team building for the soccer teams, it could have been a brilliant exercise. I haven't found out yet if she has a blog or just posts relevant updates on the website. Slackness on my part.
Speaking of teams, I've made it off the front page of messages at Liars Team HQ. Second time in 5 months they've found something else to talk about that isn't me. They're talking about what they had for lunch, posting pictures of plants that look like sex organs, youtube links and other such purely intellectual subjects as vaginas and song lyrics.
A couple of days ago, they were as busy as ants taking my stuff out of context, putting their sexual slants on everything, posting anonymous comments here and generally being pathetic. I mean, talking of drawing long bows, the creep whose address and phone number one of the kids found for me is now suggesting I like Chris Locke because his alter ego is Rageboy.
See the little highlighted bit with the arrow pointing to it? He's suggesting I thought Chris Locke was 12 and jerked off over him.As yet another counterpoint, here's a bit of a conversation I had with one of the teenagers earlier today...
[14:11] Seth: I need to go to bed, but I have one question before I go. I just want a simple answer. Do you think that my generation has the power to change the world as it is? Does not ever generation have the ability to change the world? Simple answer for tonight..if you really want to explain a lot emails always open or we can talk more tomorrow...and I'vee be able to explain my math work.
[14:12] Rat: Simple answer - no.
[14:13] Rat: But your generation can open the way for change.
[14:13] Seth: itersting..food for thought while I sleep.
[14:13] Seth: later Paul
The Liars Team will duly jump all over this and turn it into something it isn't and something I'm not - because that's what they do.
Even though I'm not the day's hot topic over there, this crap has been going on for 5 months. They congratulate themselves like a Dubya cabinet meeting as if they're making the slightest difference to the overall problem - which, incidentally, they haven't even defined for themselves beyond broad concepts yet - and they make the occasional raid on this blog posting out of context and bullshit comments.
If you have a blog and allow comments, that's what blogging is all about.
The smart bloggers delete the comments that have no value either as abuse or as positive feedback. If you get thousands of comments, as Kathy Sierra did, don't have them appear as an appendix to the actual blog entry, but open in a new browser window. Let your readers argue the point for you.
Create passionate users - even if they do all look like they're on crack.
I was going to copypasta a few snippets from Sierra's undead blog and post them here as examples of how being on crack might appear to people who read blogs but I'm over it already.
One of the seven principles of blogging should have been "don't just blog for the sake of blogging and if you do, don't spin it out and don't add unsophisticated graphics and don't have those unsophisticated graphics disconnected from the subject of the blog entry and each other and don't use jargon and... oh fuck it... just don't blog for the sake of blogging."
If Luma Mufleh blogged regularly, nobody interested in life for its own sake would ever bother reading Kathy Sierra's blog again.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Some people do send me nice emails from time to time...
My most recent (today) was an appreciative acknowledgement of parliamentary success in a bill pertaining to young drivers.
I still don't know on which side of the political spectrum Mr Hill is, but I'd vote for him if he were running in my electorate.
Details at autoboston.com which I really should be doing more about but I'm finding the 30 odd spam messages it gets everyday more than just a little disheartening and distracting.
I still don't know on which side of the political spectrum Mr Hill is, but I'd vote for him if he were running in my electorate.
Details at autoboston.com which I really should be doing more about but I'm finding the 30 odd spam messages it gets everyday more than just a little disheartening and distracting.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Truth vs Misogyny.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UQ6IxYaD774
The interview on CNN.
Doesn't Chris look FUCKING AWESOME!
I so wanna have that man's babies, you have no idea.
(I dropped that in for the Liars Team so they would have something else over which to go into their usual fit of uninformed ecstacy - see, there's context here of which the entire planet with the exception of Chris and I are unaware. It 's a joke I had with RB more than a year ago. But let them have their fun, their lives are so empty without me. I even prompted them to get their own blogger ids. It's so cute.)
To memer, thanks for your considered input. I got it, even if "someone" didn't.
To Sarah, I still haven't the first clue what you're on about but as long as you're enjoying it, it's all good. (You're still 2-0 down in group im windows, though.)
I wanted to address this shady notion of misogyny on the internet in this post. Without dredging up links all over the place and quoting every female blogger I can find who knows what's going on, I just wanted to let any of them know that it is by no means some peculiarly male trait to cast aspersions at members of the opposite sex because they happen to be female.
Being male, I get accused of wanting to tap everything on two legs, if not everything that's living and breathing. Those who know me well enough know beyond any shadow of doubt that I'm just not interested. Those who care even know what it was that made procreative recreational activity less important to me than studying the nature of amoeba at the bottom of the ocean.
Last night, some silly troll, a 27/f/VA wanted to cyber with me.
The conversation went something like this...
"You're there!"
"yes, I'm here, despite the hour of the day..."
"Wanna cyber with me?"
"I don't cyber."
"I'm sitting between your legs now, stroking your manhood."
"I don't cyber. It's like phone sex on serious tranquilisers."
"I'm unzipping your fly now and taking out your dick."
"You don't get it do you. I don't cyber..."
"I'm stroking you to hardness now...."
"Oh I get it. You're not a real person, you're a sexchat bot."
"What's a bot?"
And so it went on...
Now, at the risk of breeching a confidence, here's a bit of conversation I had with one of the youngsters...
[00:31] Seth: Hey Paul
[00:31] Rat: Hi Seth
[00:31] Seth: I'm forgetting, hows your math skills?
[00:32] Rat: at your level, probably questionable, but I'll have a crack at anything you've got.
[00:33] Rat: Knowing how things are though, we could probably work through a difficult problem together.
[00:33] Seth: :)
[00:33] Seth: ok..its saturday and I jsut can't seem to get this to work...its basic algebra..
[00:33] Seth: I just need to simplify these three equations into one
[00:33] Seth: and well I'm jsut not getting it done
[00:33] Seth: I'm trying to make it so I can have oen equaiton to graph.
[00:34] Rat: ok, algebra isn't too difficult.. lemme have it.
[00:34] Rat: algebra is philosophy in maths. I'm fairly good at philosophy.[00:35] Seth: equation 1. Fd= (.5) * (1000) * (v^2) * (.004516) * (.5) equation 2. v = N / 1.6
[00:35] Seth: equaiton 3 = N = 28-Fd
[00:35] Seth: Perferably I'd like to get it in terms of V..so v = blah blah blah[00:36] Seth: (and please leave the .5, 1000, and all..don't simplfy those by multiplying..)
What we ended up working out was the equations were incorrect because the value of v was meant to be a variable which could be expressed as formula without upsetting the validity of any of the equations. After working that much out, I think he was able to solve the whole problem. He sent me a video of the outcome of the practical experiment.
Here's a quick quiz...
Which of these two conversations was started by an intelligent person and which was not?
Which of these two conversations was sex based and which was not?
Which of the two conversations was started by someone motivated by thoughts of sex?
What sort of bullshit will the Liars Team make of all this? (That's a no brainer.)
The point I'm making here is that this sort of thing is not only not isolated, it's also not restricted to males being pesty, aggressive and/or unpleasant towards females. It goes both ways and it's just as unpleasant for guys who aren't interested in this sort of thing as it is for women who aren't interested.
As for threats of death and rape against Kathy Sierra, neither of which I really believe, btw, (not based on the evidence she gave to CNN which, I would have thought would have been the most compelling she could provide. It was as compelling as a presidential testimony before a grand jury), how about when women make unfounded allegations of rape and threats of violence against innocent men?
What about women threatening men? Faked chatlogs being produced as evidence of harrassment to vilify some poor sod who isn't even aware of what's going on until Mr Plod kicks his front door in. What about women who lie their arses off about men every chance they get? What about women who make all sorts of other claims about those men? What about women playing on the preconception/generalisation that all men are always on the lookout to get their willies wet?
Poor Kathy Sierra got a fright. Then what she did had the potential to ruin the careers of four people who weren't responsible for sending nasty emails, posting nasty messages on her blog, putting up nasty pictures - which, I'm not ashamed to say, I thought were highly amusing. And just to clarify my position on the all revealing email, I wasn't exactly disappointed to see it.
Now then, we can't get those responsible to apologise for what they did because we don't know who they were. But we do know what Kathy Sierra did and I know what women often do and why isn't there any sort of massive media coverage of all the shit women throw at men on the internet?
If all you arse-monkeys want to establish some sort of standard for internet or blog conduct, how about you establish one that isn't preceded by the word "DOUBLE" first.
The interview on CNN.
Doesn't Chris look FUCKING AWESOME!
I so wanna have that man's babies, you have no idea.
(I dropped that in for the Liars Team so they would have something else over which to go into their usual fit of uninformed ecstacy - see, there's context here of which the entire planet with the exception of Chris and I are unaware. It 's a joke I had with RB more than a year ago. But let them have their fun, their lives are so empty without me. I even prompted them to get their own blogger ids. It's so cute.)
To memer, thanks for your considered input. I got it, even if "someone" didn't.
To Sarah, I still haven't the first clue what you're on about but as long as you're enjoying it, it's all good. (You're still 2-0 down in group im windows, though.)
I wanted to address this shady notion of misogyny on the internet in this post. Without dredging up links all over the place and quoting every female blogger I can find who knows what's going on, I just wanted to let any of them know that it is by no means some peculiarly male trait to cast aspersions at members of the opposite sex because they happen to be female.
Being male, I get accused of wanting to tap everything on two legs, if not everything that's living and breathing. Those who know me well enough know beyond any shadow of doubt that I'm just not interested. Those who care even know what it was that made procreative recreational activity less important to me than studying the nature of amoeba at the bottom of the ocean.
Last night, some silly troll, a 27/f/VA wanted to cyber with me.
The conversation went something like this...
"You're there!"
"yes, I'm here, despite the hour of the day..."
"Wanna cyber with me?"
"I don't cyber."
"I'm sitting between your legs now, stroking your manhood."
"I don't cyber. It's like phone sex on serious tranquilisers."
"I'm unzipping your fly now and taking out your dick."
"You don't get it do you. I don't cyber..."
"I'm stroking you to hardness now...."
"Oh I get it. You're not a real person, you're a sexchat bot."
"What's a bot?"
And so it went on...
Now, at the risk of breeching a confidence, here's a bit of conversation I had with one of the youngsters...
[00:31] Seth: Hey Paul
[00:31] Rat: Hi Seth
[00:31] Seth: I'm forgetting, hows your math skills?
[00:32] Rat: at your level, probably questionable, but I'll have a crack at anything you've got.
[00:33] Rat: Knowing how things are though, we could probably work through a difficult problem together.
[00:33] Seth: :)
[00:33] Seth: ok..its saturday and I jsut can't seem to get this to work...its basic algebra..
[00:33] Seth: I just need to simplify these three equations into one
[00:33] Seth: and well I'm jsut not getting it done
[00:33] Seth: I'm trying to make it so I can have oen equaiton to graph.
[00:34] Rat: ok, algebra isn't too difficult.. lemme have it.
[00:34] Rat: algebra is philosophy in maths. I'm fairly good at philosophy.[00:35] Seth: equation 1. Fd= (.5) * (1000) * (v^2) * (.004516) * (.5) equation 2. v = N / 1.6
[00:35] Seth: equaiton 3 = N = 28-Fd
[00:35] Seth: Perferably I'd like to get it in terms of V..so v = blah blah blah[00:36] Seth: (and please leave the .5, 1000, and all..don't simplfy those by multiplying..)
What we ended up working out was the equations were incorrect because the value of v was meant to be a variable which could be expressed as formula without upsetting the validity of any of the equations. After working that much out, I think he was able to solve the whole problem. He sent me a video of the outcome of the practical experiment.
Here's a quick quiz...
Which of these two conversations was started by an intelligent person and which was not?
Which of these two conversations was sex based and which was not?
Which of the two conversations was started by someone motivated by thoughts of sex?
What sort of bullshit will the Liars Team make of all this? (That's a no brainer.)
The point I'm making here is that this sort of thing is not only not isolated, it's also not restricted to males being pesty, aggressive and/or unpleasant towards females. It goes both ways and it's just as unpleasant for guys who aren't interested in this sort of thing as it is for women who aren't interested.
As for threats of death and rape against Kathy Sierra, neither of which I really believe, btw, (not based on the evidence she gave to CNN which, I would have thought would have been the most compelling she could provide. It was as compelling as a presidential testimony before a grand jury), how about when women make unfounded allegations of rape and threats of violence against innocent men?
What about women threatening men? Faked chatlogs being produced as evidence of harrassment to vilify some poor sod who isn't even aware of what's going on until Mr Plod kicks his front door in. What about women who lie their arses off about men every chance they get? What about women who make all sorts of other claims about those men? What about women playing on the preconception/generalisation that all men are always on the lookout to get their willies wet?
Poor Kathy Sierra got a fright. Then what she did had the potential to ruin the careers of four people who weren't responsible for sending nasty emails, posting nasty messages on her blog, putting up nasty pictures - which, I'm not ashamed to say, I thought were highly amusing. And just to clarify my position on the all revealing email, I wasn't exactly disappointed to see it.
Now then, we can't get those responsible to apologise for what they did because we don't know who they were. But we do know what Kathy Sierra did and I know what women often do and why isn't there any sort of massive media coverage of all the shit women throw at men on the internet?
If all you arse-monkeys want to establish some sort of standard for internet or blog conduct, how about you establish one that isn't preceded by the word "DOUBLE" first.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Beaten by the LOL.
I've heard the radio interview which can be found at
http://a.abclocal.go.com/three/kgo/032907_cyber_talk.mp3
and I wasn't really impressed. To be honest, I wasn't even very convinced. But I'll put that down to my having become instantly biased against Kathy Sierra.
For starters, she acknowledged in the interview that the police have told her there really isn't anything they can do - which confirms what I said would turn out to be the case a couple of days ago, though civil action is still a possibility, but I'd advise against that - she's made one huge mistake, she doesn't need to compound it with another.
She has also acknowledged that the threats she has been receiving have been sent following her speaking engagements, which puts meankids and unclebobism right out of the frame as instigators of those threats.
The people who sent her those threats and disclosed her private details probably did troll both meankids and unclebob and the head lemur, it seems, has been hacked right up and down, so genuine haterz of Kathy Sierra would thereby have had posting ability on both sites.
Contrary to what one anonymous coward has said in reply on this blog, it is almost universally acknowledged that Frank Paynter took down meankids before the shit hit the fan properly and Chris Locke took down unclebobism before wordpress 404'd the domain.
Anyway, I've seen the message which basically splatters Kathy's life for the last 7 years culminating in her address, phone number and social security number and sad to say, that message is in the wild now and I've seen 9 pages of google returns with that same message. It's right out there and I'm not linking to it or repeating any part of it for others to google it.
I was emailed links to two websites which have the message and found more after googling bits of it.
The person who emailed those links to me knows what I think about it.
I daresay Kathy herself has seen that message and she knows whether the information contained within it is true or not. If it is, I really don't know where she can go from here. If it isn't true - and I have no way to find out one way or another - then I would be inclined to try to find the person or people who created it and posted it.
Kathy says she doesn't understand why people would be so upset with her...
I find that hard to believe, especially since it's been spelled out for her. People don't like her books. They don't like the condescending, childish and amateurish way she presents her expertise which is itself somewhat questionable. It's a shame that she didn't stick to what she knows best and refrain from the sort of hucksterism which rankles with netizens.
She might be a perfectly acceptable java programmer and might also be a terrific teacher of java programming and even web design. But she's not the Martha Stewart of the tech blog scene no matter how many sycophants give her to believe otherwise. She got found out, she didn't get the hints, pick up on the social clues or adjust her conduct accordingly.
She says she may start blogging again under an assumed name. It won't work. She should start blogging again just as she did before, acknowledge where she went wrong, just like Tara Hunt has done, apologise to those she unfairly besmirched and get on with what she does best, just blog that and give up on the guru image because she's not the one who should be conferring status on herself, that's for her readers to do.
If she starts blogging under an assumed name, those trolls who found out those details the first time will find them out again and out her. A pattern will be set and it really will be the end of her blogging career.
http://a.abclocal.go.com/three/kgo/032907_cyber_talk.mp3
and I wasn't really impressed. To be honest, I wasn't even very convinced. But I'll put that down to my having become instantly biased against Kathy Sierra.
For starters, she acknowledged in the interview that the police have told her there really isn't anything they can do - which confirms what I said would turn out to be the case a couple of days ago, though civil action is still a possibility, but I'd advise against that - she's made one huge mistake, she doesn't need to compound it with another.
She has also acknowledged that the threats she has been receiving have been sent following her speaking engagements, which puts meankids and unclebobism right out of the frame as instigators of those threats.
The people who sent her those threats and disclosed her private details probably did troll both meankids and unclebob and the head lemur, it seems, has been hacked right up and down, so genuine haterz of Kathy Sierra would thereby have had posting ability on both sites.
Contrary to what one anonymous coward has said in reply on this blog, it is almost universally acknowledged that Frank Paynter took down meankids before the shit hit the fan properly and Chris Locke took down unclebobism before wordpress 404'd the domain.
Anyway, I've seen the message which basically splatters Kathy's life for the last 7 years culminating in her address, phone number and social security number and sad to say, that message is in the wild now and I've seen 9 pages of google returns with that same message. It's right out there and I'm not linking to it or repeating any part of it for others to google it.
I was emailed links to two websites which have the message and found more after googling bits of it.
The person who emailed those links to me knows what I think about it.
I daresay Kathy herself has seen that message and she knows whether the information contained within it is true or not. If it is, I really don't know where she can go from here. If it isn't true - and I have no way to find out one way or another - then I would be inclined to try to find the person or people who created it and posted it.
Kathy says she doesn't understand why people would be so upset with her...
I find that hard to believe, especially since it's been spelled out for her. People don't like her books. They don't like the condescending, childish and amateurish way she presents her expertise which is itself somewhat questionable. It's a shame that she didn't stick to what she knows best and refrain from the sort of hucksterism which rankles with netizens.
She might be a perfectly acceptable java programmer and might also be a terrific teacher of java programming and even web design. But she's not the Martha Stewart of the tech blog scene no matter how many sycophants give her to believe otherwise. She got found out, she didn't get the hints, pick up on the social clues or adjust her conduct accordingly.
She says she may start blogging again under an assumed name. It won't work. She should start blogging again just as she did before, acknowledge where she went wrong, just like Tara Hunt has done, apologise to those she unfairly besmirched and get on with what she does best, just blog that and give up on the guru image because she's not the one who should be conferring status on herself, that's for her readers to do.
If she starts blogging under an assumed name, those trolls who found out those details the first time will find them out again and out her. A pattern will be set and it really will be the end of her blogging career.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Another kick in the guts for women...
... but will they recognise it as such?
That's the question!
The feminist bloc of bloggers is plugging the misogynist line like there's no tomorrow in this Kathy Sierra blarney and as far as I'm concerned, the first real misuse of the claim arrived on the BBC website I quoted on Tuesday (or thereabouts, I'm at least 10 hours ahead of the rest of the world in this blogging caper so what's my today is still yesterday for half of you reading this...)
Whenever it was, when it came out, it was a huge load of horseshit. When they pumped it the next day, it became a monument to that biggest of all mounds of horseshit, feminism.
Yes, ladies, feminism is horseshit.
Firstly, lumping all men into one category is exactly the same, in principle, as lumping all women into one category. We don't all hate women. You don't all hate men. That's furphy number 1.
Secondly, not one of you speaks for all of you, just as not one male speaks for all males. That's furphy number 2.
Those are big furphies, ladies. REALLY big.
The one with which I'm concerned though is when one person feels as if they're being victimised.
Leaving aside the contention that even if someone doesn't know they're being victimised they're still a victim (see Dubya as a case in point), because if I go into that, then it would be fair to say that every man, woman and child on the planet is a victim because someone, somewhere is saying nasty stuff about all of us. Almost all of the time, all of us don't give it a second thought so I'm not going to do so here.
But in the case of a person feeling as if they're a victim because of something that has been said in a place where it can be transmitted, copied, expanded, morphed, exaggerated and disclosed in places it was never intended to be disclosed, can a label of sexism be put on it?
There are people who have been blathering anti-ChatRat messages in their own little e-hovel for nigh on 5 months and until recently, I've been well up for the fight even though they have intentionally made victims out of other people, in one case, people I don't even know. Five women and three or four men have made me the biggest topic of negative conversation on their website since about November of last year.
Can I blame the women for being sexist - because I'm a male? Can I blame the men for anything because they're determined I'm a homosexual pedophile?
I could, but it would be horseshit.
Those women aren't being sexist. They just hate my guts. Those men aren't being anti-gay or even anti-pedophile (mores the pity), they're just following the lead of the women who aren't being sexist.
So, there's a core of 8 individuals plus the hangers-on who have spent months copying my words, taking them out of context, adding their own slants and spins and generally being as hateful as their meagre skills permit. They even thought it was a success when one of their number posted MySpace profiles of three teenagers - three innocent and uninvolved teenagers and two of whom I don't even know - in an msn community. Oh yes, that was a major score against Paul.
Who among them gave a second thought to those three kids?
Well, one of the other kids also took offense to what that slug of a man (pictured above) did and found out his home address, phone number and all sorts of other goodies about Trevor. What that kid does with the information is not for me to decide nor influence but I wouldn't want to be in Trevor's shoes.
This is all pertinent to the Kathy Sierra situation because she chose to take blogstuff off the net and into offline life. She also chose to play the misogyny card - a card which is not available to males for obvious reasons.
The parallel is that whilst I sit here and absorb accusation after innuendo after character assassination after lie - only if I were a woman could I possibly complain about the behaviour of the men involved as being on the basis of my being a woman. The fact that I'm not SHOULD prove beyond any doubt that regardless of Kathy Sierra's sex, she would have had to put up with what she got making it an issue of her output and behaviour, not one about her sex.
She's an idiotic parvenu and she is being called on it. That's not sexist. It's not misogynistic. It's a valid observation made for valid reasons.
Those people spouting their own brand of dishonesty and hatred towards me have their reasons and I know what they are. The women started it. Are they bullying me just because there are more than one of them in their website pretending to find what I'm doing worthy of their scorn?
No they are not bullying me. They are just being pathetic in their own little arena and if I don't make clickage upon their website, I can ignore them and get on with doing my own thing with people who enjoy spending their time with me.
Were they bullying me when they were all members of the same community of which I am a member? Still the answer is no because the little x in the top right corner was already when I was. Sure it's not pleasant when it happens, but the fact it can happen is what attracts such vast numbers of people to the internet. Out here, we can say what we want to say and actually have other people hear it.
If Kathy Sierra and those ultra lefty proles at the BBC and other media outlets have their way, even saying rude words will be an international criminal offence.
So Kathy - and all of you who support her - scream your guts out for more regulation. Stop the hatred on cyberspace and make it all a surreal bed of roses where all the fundamentalist Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and Taoists, Falun Gongs, Shi'ites, Amish, Buddhists and Carmelites can frolick with innocent abandon, safe in the knowledge that the internet shall be free from rude words, rude pictures and all nastiness of any kind.
Let Sesame Street set the guiding principles of all activity on this wilderness of cyberspace so nobody gets hurt or offended and only the nice people are allowed to be able to contribute.
Silence the complainers, the trouble makers, the finger pointers, the liars, the haters, the idiots, the nutbags and the loudmouths.
Punish people for speaking their minds. Punish them for saying the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time to the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
Let Kathy Sierra have her way and we'll revel in the freedom to post what we want, safe in the knowledge that nobody will say a nasty word about it or have anything negative to say to us.
Make the internet the biggest K-Mart in the history of everything everywhere (and give it a really big shoe department.)
Hang on a minute... just who are the complainers etc.?
Who decides what constitutes "wrong"?
What if two happy-happy joy-joy contributors post divergent happy-happy joy-joy material?
What if my mother doesn't like K-Mart?
Do feminists even know what their "cause" is anymore?
Have any feminists ever stopped to consider the implications of what their demands may mean?
There are a shitload of feminists out there right now all screaming "Misogyny on the internet" and that this male dominated domain of cyberspace means it's hard for women to have a voice and express their opinions because bands of roving misogynistic males constantly hurl abuse and sexist remarks at them.
The roar of ranting feminists is deafening.
It's actually quite frightening. Suppose 50 or 60 thousand feminists and the BBC make so much noise that governments decide it's time to put a stop to cyberbullying and enact laws to prevent it and actually start policing it.
Where then will be the freedoms for the tens or hundreds of millions of women out there like the women who have been attacking me consistently for the last 5 months? Who speaks up for those women? They're doing a fine job all by themselves. Start policing what people can and can't say on the internet then I'm sorry, but those women will surely suffer for it. (When they're not talking about me, they're talking about having group sex with everyone except Smokey the Bear - will that also have to stop?)
Do feminists think of these things before they pull out the misogyny horseshit tactic?
Here's your clue, ladies... you have your rights, you have your freedoms. Use them. Use them well and use them wisely because if you put those freedoms in the hands of others - and those others usually equates to men anyway because even women don't vote for women running for office - then you are going to lose those freedoms. And all of us have the choice to turn off our computers and conduct our businesses in the good old fashioned way so if you don't like cyberspace, don't join cyberspace.
I don't think I've ever seen a K Mart ad on the internet.
That's the question!
The feminist bloc of bloggers is plugging the misogynist line like there's no tomorrow in this Kathy Sierra blarney and as far as I'm concerned, the first real misuse of the claim arrived on the BBC website I quoted on Tuesday (or thereabouts, I'm at least 10 hours ahead of the rest of the world in this blogging caper so what's my today is still yesterday for half of you reading this...)
Whenever it was, when it came out, it was a huge load of horseshit. When they pumped it the next day, it became a monument to that biggest of all mounds of horseshit, feminism.
Yes, ladies, feminism is horseshit.
Firstly, lumping all men into one category is exactly the same, in principle, as lumping all women into one category. We don't all hate women. You don't all hate men. That's furphy number 1.
Secondly, not one of you speaks for all of you, just as not one male speaks for all males. That's furphy number 2.
Those are big furphies, ladies. REALLY big.
The one with which I'm concerned though is when one person feels as if they're being victimised.
Leaving aside the contention that even if someone doesn't know they're being victimised they're still a victim (see Dubya as a case in point), because if I go into that, then it would be fair to say that every man, woman and child on the planet is a victim because someone, somewhere is saying nasty stuff about all of us. Almost all of the time, all of us don't give it a second thought so I'm not going to do so here.
But in the case of a person feeling as if they're a victim because of something that has been said in a place where it can be transmitted, copied, expanded, morphed, exaggerated and disclosed in places it was never intended to be disclosed, can a label of sexism be put on it?
There are people who have been blathering anti-ChatRat messages in their own little e-hovel for nigh on 5 months and until recently, I've been well up for the fight even though they have intentionally made victims out of other people, in one case, people I don't even know. Five women and three or four men have made me the biggest topic of negative conversation on their website since about November of last year.
Can I blame the women for being sexist - because I'm a male? Can I blame the men for anything because they're determined I'm a homosexual pedophile?
I could, but it would be horseshit.
Those women aren't being sexist. They just hate my guts. Those men aren't being anti-gay or even anti-pedophile (mores the pity), they're just following the lead of the women who aren't being sexist.
So, there's a core of 8 individuals plus the hangers-on who have spent months copying my words, taking them out of context, adding their own slants and spins and generally being as hateful as their meagre skills permit. They even thought it was a success when one of their number posted MySpace profiles of three teenagers - three innocent and uninvolved teenagers and two of whom I don't even know - in an msn community. Oh yes, that was a major score against Paul.
Who among them gave a second thought to those three kids?
Well, one of the other kids also took offense to what that slug of a man (pictured above) did and found out his home address, phone number and all sorts of other goodies about Trevor. What that kid does with the information is not for me to decide nor influence but I wouldn't want to be in Trevor's shoes.
This is all pertinent to the Kathy Sierra situation because she chose to take blogstuff off the net and into offline life. She also chose to play the misogyny card - a card which is not available to males for obvious reasons.
The parallel is that whilst I sit here and absorb accusation after innuendo after character assassination after lie - only if I were a woman could I possibly complain about the behaviour of the men involved as being on the basis of my being a woman. The fact that I'm not SHOULD prove beyond any doubt that regardless of Kathy Sierra's sex, she would have had to put up with what she got making it an issue of her output and behaviour, not one about her sex.
She's an idiotic parvenu and she is being called on it. That's not sexist. It's not misogynistic. It's a valid observation made for valid reasons.
Those people spouting their own brand of dishonesty and hatred towards me have their reasons and I know what they are. The women started it. Are they bullying me just because there are more than one of them in their website pretending to find what I'm doing worthy of their scorn?
No they are not bullying me. They are just being pathetic in their own little arena and if I don't make clickage upon their website, I can ignore them and get on with doing my own thing with people who enjoy spending their time with me.
Were they bullying me when they were all members of the same community of which I am a member? Still the answer is no because the little x in the top right corner was already when I was. Sure it's not pleasant when it happens, but the fact it can happen is what attracts such vast numbers of people to the internet. Out here, we can say what we want to say and actually have other people hear it.
If Kathy Sierra and those ultra lefty proles at the BBC and other media outlets have their way, even saying rude words will be an international criminal offence.
So Kathy - and all of you who support her - scream your guts out for more regulation. Stop the hatred on cyberspace and make it all a surreal bed of roses where all the fundamentalist Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and Taoists, Falun Gongs, Shi'ites, Amish, Buddhists and Carmelites can frolick with innocent abandon, safe in the knowledge that the internet shall be free from rude words, rude pictures and all nastiness of any kind.
Let Sesame Street set the guiding principles of all activity on this wilderness of cyberspace so nobody gets hurt or offended and only the nice people are allowed to be able to contribute.
Silence the complainers, the trouble makers, the finger pointers, the liars, the haters, the idiots, the nutbags and the loudmouths.
Punish people for speaking their minds. Punish them for saying the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time to the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
Let Kathy Sierra have her way and we'll revel in the freedom to post what we want, safe in the knowledge that nobody will say a nasty word about it or have anything negative to say to us.
Make the internet the biggest K-Mart in the history of everything everywhere (and give it a really big shoe department.)
Hang on a minute... just who are the complainers etc.?
Who decides what constitutes "wrong"?
What if two happy-happy joy-joy contributors post divergent happy-happy joy-joy material?
What if my mother doesn't like K-Mart?
Do feminists even know what their "cause" is anymore?
Have any feminists ever stopped to consider the implications of what their demands may mean?
There are a shitload of feminists out there right now all screaming "Misogyny on the internet" and that this male dominated domain of cyberspace means it's hard for women to have a voice and express their opinions because bands of roving misogynistic males constantly hurl abuse and sexist remarks at them.
The roar of ranting feminists is deafening.
It's actually quite frightening. Suppose 50 or 60 thousand feminists and the BBC make so much noise that governments decide it's time to put a stop to cyberbullying and enact laws to prevent it and actually start policing it.
Where then will be the freedoms for the tens or hundreds of millions of women out there like the women who have been attacking me consistently for the last 5 months? Who speaks up for those women? They're doing a fine job all by themselves. Start policing what people can and can't say on the internet then I'm sorry, but those women will surely suffer for it. (When they're not talking about me, they're talking about having group sex with everyone except Smokey the Bear - will that also have to stop?)
Do feminists think of these things before they pull out the misogyny horseshit tactic?
Here's your clue, ladies... you have your rights, you have your freedoms. Use them. Use them well and use them wisely because if you put those freedoms in the hands of others - and those others usually equates to men anyway because even women don't vote for women running for office - then you are going to lose those freedoms. And all of us have the choice to turn off our computers and conduct our businesses in the good old fashioned way so if you don't like cyberspace, don't join cyberspace.
I don't think I've ever seen a K Mart ad on the internet.
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