Tuesday, April 12, 2005
DISCLAIMER!
Does anyone have any insights on the psychological processes that have to take place for someone to want to insult a total stranger?
Because frankly, I'm at a bit of a loss. I never get the urge to seek people out and insult them. It just doesn't happen. Whether in person or on online, I have to be pretty intensively provoked in order to let loose on someone. Sure, I'll tell people to fuck off in real life. But they have to seek me out and harrass me first!
So tell me, from those of who are good at psychoanalysis, or who engage in these kinds of things themselves -- what is it that causes a person to launch an unprovoked attack on someone they've never met before and whom they know absolutely nothing about?
It's getting to me, though I know it shouldn't. I seriously considered shutting down my blog permanently this morning, because I'm just not getting the support, encouragement, and mature discussion out of it that I used to. Some of my regular readers have been great. But I've been picking up an awful lot of slime lately, and frankly it smells of the sewer it came from.
I got a paper cut this morning as I was leaving the house to go to my exam, and I nearly cried. It reminded me of this show I was watching on TV on the weekend where a girl heard a random guy on the street tell her she was a 'ho,' and she let it get to her to the point where she came home and started cutting up her stomach with a razor blade. At the time I thought "damn, that's fucked up! What a little thing to get so worked up about!" and yet at the moment where I was seriously perturbed by online jabs and a little paper cut, it suddenly made a lot of sense to me. I'm only human, and I can only endure so much.
I sometimes feel I don't know who my friends are. Some people, obviously, are constants, and I never doubt their loyalty, but there are a few I really wonder about.
I've decided to keep writing, but I want to make one thing abundantly clear: I WILL NOT TOLERATE INSULTS ON MY BLOG! Soooooo simple, yet apparently so hard for people to understand. I really don't care what your reasons are, be they political, personal, or totally random -- DO NOT RESORT TO CHEAP INSULTS!
I will never go to someone's blog with the express purpose of insulting them, and as such I will not allow it on mine. I don't mind swearing (hell, I encourage it!), blasphemy, sexual language or innuendo, dirty jokes, controversial remarks, dissent, disagreement, or intellectual discussion, but I refuse to accept offensive words directed at anyone on this blog -- whether they're posting or commenting, whether they know me, or think they know me, or whatever.
Like a gas station in the middle of a desert, I will have to rely on the honour system. I'm not going to threaten anyone with anything, but I will let you know that I do adhere to certain rules of decency on here, and I expect you to do the same.
Lastly, I'd like to extend my profound gratitude to all those people who read my blog in good faith and leave intelligent commentary. Thank you for being nice to me. I don't know what it is in my writing that attracts such malevolence and unwarranted attacks, but I do want to thank those of you have have refrained from engaging in that sort of behaviour.
I have to go back to studying now, and there's really not much more I feel like saying.
Happy April 12th.
-N
