Categories: It Happened to Me

What a punkass

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.

Joey deVilla

View Comments

  • I thought it was "bitch". You know, how the girl that sleeps with everyone is a "slut" but the girl who sleeps with everyone but you is a "bitch".

  • Quite true.

    "Slut" as "sour grapes" is more along the lines of "Oh well, she was a slut anyway", or "the problem with women these days is that they prefer slutdom to relationships."

  • Well, his comment was a classic (and ineffective) online pick-up attempt. I'm guessing he posted the comment, then checked her main page and realized she was seeing someone - and his negative comments are a way of covering his ass for when she doesn't match his expressed interest.

    "Yeah, well, I don't like you anyway, so there!"

    heh.

    - Stacy

  • Regardless of whether she was seeing anyone or not he should have enough common sense to not post such a comment in a semi-public forum (read: linked by more than one site [even if the one site has a considerable readership]). Let's just hope he doesn't kiss his mother with that kind of mouth... er typing(?)

  • what I also find mildly amusing is that the guy doesn't eve have a comments feature. I wonder if he's gotten himself into this type of shit before and doesn't want to have it happen again.

  • This polite in public rude online is maybe something to do with community.

    You can disagree with someone in your community, but they are still part of that community, so there is some level of mutual respect.

    So in a meatspace, a meeting is a confirmation of the community, so internal emnity is put aside for the feeling of community.

    Just a thought.

Recent Posts

Let the ritual humilation begin!

There’s a good chance you’ve seen this photo by now: Pictured seated from left to…

10 hours ago

Sunday picdump for November 17, 2024

Here’s a collection of interesting memes, pictures, an cartoons floating around the internet that I…

2 days ago

U.S. post-election post #7: Don’t worry, it’ll trickle down…

Tap to see the source. This is yesterday’s daily New Yorker cartoon, created by Brendan…

7 days ago

U.S. post-election post #6: One key election is still undecided…

C’mon, let it not be Asians this time. Last time was pretty bad. Here’s the…

1 week ago

U.S. post-election post #5: Come bend the arc with me!

Jon Stewart’s right, and we’ve been here before. Where we are now, I’ve been before…

1 week ago

Veteran’s Day, Remembrance Day, and “In Flanders Fields”

Poppies thrive in overturned soil, which is why they bloom in battlefields. I’m in the…

1 week ago