Posted mainly to remind myself of a conversation some months ago.

[randomness]

From D-squared Digest, months ago:

If I have one piece of advice to give after years of frequenting the most troll-heavy regions of the ninternet, it's this: Never underestimate the proportion of your readership who are housebound or suffering from serious mental or physical illness. In an absolutely frightening proportion of cases, when you find yourself asking the question "Jeez, does this guy ever leave the house?", the answer would make you weep. In an absolutely frightening proportion of cases, when someone makes a comment like "god, why don't you just get a life/get a girlfriend/get a job?", they are making a suggestion that is roughly as unrealistic as ordering their enemy to sprout wings and fly. Why is the internet such a mean place? Because so many of the people writing on it are in more or less constant pain. Why do people take things so seriously on the internet? Because for so many of them, it is their only source of human contact.

Comments

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

wow.

Thank you for re-posting this. It is incredibly helpful to remember and think about.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I didn't quote the whole post, which goes on to talk about how the poster feels like we all should have more sympathy, and that his blog's popularity suffered because he didn't.

(I think he's being too hard on himself as his blog seems quite popular enough to me with a quite readable comment section.)

[doctordidj.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Truth hurts.

[colinmac.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of William Gibson's bit in Idoru:

"[Slitscan's audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections."

[bedfull-o-books.livejournal.com]

Holy crap that's hilarious.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

That also serves to remind me why I don't get along with ever so many of my geek brethren, because neither they nor I can keep their tempers long enough to fucking behave.

But I might be having a cranky day. There are a lot of geeks with whom I _do_ get along.

[rfrancis]

Eh, I'm in near-constant pain and rarely leave the house except for work, and I still don't give a crap. :)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

You have more social outlets than the trolls.

[allessindra.livejournal.com]

As someone who's in nearly constant pain, held in check by meds, and rarely gets out of the house, I'll note that I have a husband, and boyfriends over the internet, and other parts of a life.

then again, I don't inhabit the troll-infested portions of the internet.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

then again, I don't inhabit the troll-infested portions of the internet.

And this says a lot for your good sense, I'd think.