Part of my morning ritual is to check The Redhead's blog and see what my special lady has written. One of entries today points to some guy who writes out her full name in his blog and then writes:

i wrote a comment on one of her wishes for men . she sounded interesting, but now i'm thinking a bit of a slut, and her personality type seems to explain it--enfj, like aimee.

It's that comparison at the end that explains everything: what we have here is displaced anger combined with ungentlemanly behaviour. "Slut" is a guy's classic "sour grapes" remark about a girl. As a DJ at a popular campus pub, I heard that all the time from guys who'd been snubbed and were retreating from the dance floor to the comfort of their beer.

It's also Penny Arcade's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory in action:



It's dirt easy to write something about a stranger online, but another thing to say it in a face-to-face situation. One of the best examples of this I can think of was at LinuxWorld Expo NYC 2000, during Jon Katz's appearance at the Slashdot booth. Slashdotters had made a hobby of excoriating Katz online, but in meatspace, everyone was polite and showed deference. I got to chat with him after his presentation, and he said that that sort of thing happened all the time: he was treated rudely online, but nicely in real life.

I think The Redhead's list of what she wanted in a guy both interested him (she's into geeks) and spooked him (she stated out loud what she wants in a man, and she's quite frank about her dating experiences in her blog). Personally, I like the Redhead's openness -- it's one of the things I love about her. To borrow a phrase from Maya Angelou, she's the kind of person who grabs life by the hand and says "You're with me, kid. Let's go!"

A quick scan of his blog reveals what seems to be a guy who likes to think about things who had a little bit of a lapse in etiquette. I think that this was more tactlessness than malice. We all make a faux pas every now and again; let's let him off with a slap on the wrist (this blog entry) and move on.

I'll close with this: Dude, don't you ever call my girlfriend a slut again. Not if you wish to continue converting oxygen into carbon dioxide.