eMeanness

This morning I read the inevitable mean-spirited responses to the mean-spirited posts I wrote a couple weeks ago.

Meanwhile, my friend L expresses nostalgia for the happy place the MoHosphere used to be before it degenerated into sophistry and rudeness.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post cites horribly rude internet commentary about Kanye West's mother, who died earlier this week, as an example of the cruelty and malice that electronic anonymity seems to bring out in people.

Meanwhile, another friend of mine has been receiving extremely rude comments on her blog, and to be fair she and I and other readers responded with rudeness, but now the rude commenter has resorted to making threats of physical violence, which crosses all sorts of social and legal lines.

So I spent today thinking of the response I'd write to Holly's rude response to my rude response to her rude response to my rude response to her rude attack on my character. FoxyJ has suggested it would be wiser of me to, if I feel the need to write the response, set it aside for a while before putting it anywhere public. I think Foxy is a wise person. It bothers me to leave untruths about me out there unrefuted, particularly when said untruths portray me as an enemy of values that are in fact very important to me, but unless I want to spend the rest of my life arguing with this woman then I'm going to have to eventually just leave some things unsaid. For the past several days I've been composing an essay about feminism and Mormonism and illiberal liberalism and ex-Mormonism, but I've decided to leave it alone until I'm sure my motivation is to say the things I want to say, not to express my frustration with Holly.

I will say, though, that I appreciate the comments of Rebecca and MoHoHawaii, who spoke in defense of my character on Holly's blog without taking sides in this feud. They both did an admirable job of respecting both me and Holly rather than jumping on Holly's Ben is a Misogynist bandwagon or my Holly is a Hater bandwagon. If more people (myself included) could respond so maturely to complex issues, the internet would be a nicer place for everyone.

An Open Letter to the Mindless Masses

Dear Masses,

I had an idea tonight.

What if, instead of everyone in America being football fans, we varied things up a bit? You know, some people could be into football and others could be into lacrosse and others could be into scuba diving and others could be into Parcheesi? Then maybe, just maybe, every time there's a stupid football game at stupid Husky Stadium they wouldn't have to close all the stupid streets I need to get to my stupid home! (Wait, scratch that last stupid.) And then, while we're at it, maybe we could get some funding at our universities for programs besides football--maybe, I don't know, something remotely related to education?

I dunno. Just an idea.

Love,

Mr. Fob

Support a Good Cause--It Only Takes 30 Seconds!

I am starting an online petition to make online petitions illegal. I'm doing this mainly because online petitions are stupid and no online petition in the history of online petitions has ever accomplished anything. As you can see below, I've already gotten several people to sign my petition, and you know that they're real people who really support this cause because their names are printed on an electronic form and no one would be devious enough to just write random names on an electronic form. What you need to do, dear reader, is copy this entire post into an email, add your name, and forward it to everyone in your address book, because of course everyone in your address book supports all the same social and political causes you do and absolutely loves to get online petitions forwarded from you. Then, magically, all the variant forms of this petition floating around in email land will make it back to me, and I'll compile the list of redundant names and forward it to my state representative, who will in turn have no choice but to concede to the authority of the online petition. Thank you for taking time to support this noble cause.

1. Ben Christensen
2. Mr. Fob
3. Joe Schmoe
4. John Doe
5. Janet Jackson
6. Your Mom
7. Humphrey Bogart
8. Bruce Wayne
9.

Inevitable

I think it's a stupid word. Few things are really inevitable, and in many cases the fact that you recognize something's likelihood is exactly what makes it evitable. More often than not I find the word becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and/or an excuse not to do hard things. This is a complicated world we live in, and people are complicated; if you think you've got human nature figured out to the point where you can declare the inevitability of any human action, you're painfully underselling the human race.