Alternatively titled “We Don’t Comment and Neither Should You” or “Facebooking Lawyering: Never A Good Idea” (See “The Sequel: Facebook Evangelizing, Even Worse”)
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| Unless you look like this. |
First of all, don’t you think we should be in charge of writing titles for theses? Just take a quick pass through our Archives and tell us we wouldn’t be great at that. Unfortunately, this is a relatively recent skill, and we’ve turned in more papers than we’d like to admit with just “Title” typed in at the top, waiting for a burst of creativity that never came. How sad. However, let’s turn from the emotional problems of our academic past, and focus instead on the topic of today’s article: things people get really goddamn upset about on the internet that they wouldn’t dream of touching in person.
What’s that you say? “But Anya, Paul, isn’t that list absolutely endless? Isn’t the anonymity of the internet almost wholly responsible for the slow decay of modern society? Haven’t we all agreed that that’s how the kids these days are bullying each other?” Yes, sure, the internet is a double edged sword, the one ring to rule them all, with great power comes great responsibility. But we’re not here to tackle those kind of topics. Those literally are thesis material (holla Master’s students! We’re here if you need us, drop us a line if you need a title, or want this one), and we’re more the sort to make mocking lists.
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| Per usual, our realm of expertise is specific. |
As people who spend a fair amount of time online (like WAY too much), we’re pretty experienced in the ways of online forums/comments sections/etc. As people who exist, we’re totally guilty of confirmation bias, in that we seek out articles and sites and discussions that support our beliefs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our strongest beliefs are centered squarely on some of the most controversial issues, which means a guaranteed load of bullshit by the time we get to the comments section. YAY.
Things like women’s rights, abortion, gay marriage, and whether or not we should care about the Royal Baby are things we expect to be hot button issues, with vitriolic fights between the right and the correct. You can visit any page that so much as mentions these issues, and read a series of tired arguments and quickly devolves into name calling. In fact, like fights with our parents, we might as well not even have them anymore, since we’re freakishly good and predicting exactly how the conversation will go, down to the turns of phrase.
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| “And then she’s going to make passive aggressive comments about your life decisions.” |
But there are other, stranger forces at work here. There are things on the internet that make people into monsters, tear relationships asunder, turn perfectly normal (?) people into vicious trolls the likes of which the undersides of bridges have never seen. Why people choose to be so personally offended about things that are so obviously none of their business is really surprising to us...haha but really. If you’ve read much of this blog at all, you’ll have noticed that we’re pretty sassy and pretty hard on the general public. We just so badly want to everyone to get it together and be decent to each other! And no matter how snarky we seem when we’re taking out our fury on our poor little keyboards, we assure you that we are actually very pleasant in person. Sure, we have our fair share of anonymous internet fury, but we’re not directing it at specific people, demanding their ritual sacrifice for having naturally blonde hair or following the paleo diet.
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| But we would totes turn some of them into rats. |
We’re not firing off emails to our legislators full of incomprehensible punctuation and a very evident lack of research on the topic at hand. We’re not leaving nasty reviews on Yelp because we don’t understand basic veterinary medicine (holla at the lady who was mad that she spent money on antibiotics and her kitten got better so she “obviously didn’t need them”!) or restaurant etiquette (holla at the guy who had passive aggressive fights with a three year old and seated himself next to us at breakfast last weekend!). As much as humankind tends to drive us crazy, we do operate under the premise “innocent until proven guilty and then also benefit of the doubt in case you’re having an especially bad day”.
Here are the things we have found that the denizens of the internet cannot read about without instantly turning into dickheads of epic proportions:
1) Vegetarianism (or Vegans, or really any kind of specific diet)
If we have to read “PETA = People Eating Tasty Animals” or the pseudo science of why meat protein is actually essential to our diets one more time, it will be just another day. Or how STUPID the Paleo diet is because OUR ANCESTORS ACTUALLY ATE X,Y,Z AND EVOLUTION GUYZ”. On the flip side “I will be laughing as all of you meat eaters die horrific deaths from heart attacks and cancer because I will never get sick or go to tell because of my respect for LYFE”. Stop the diet shaming! At least on the internet.
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| You’re all this guy. |
We’re sorry everyone is so goddamn annoying, but shut.the.fuck.up. Eat what you’re going to eat, don’t eat what you’re not, and stop making everyone’s life decisions about you. WHY DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE PUTTING INTO THEIR BODIES? Literally we could not give two shits about strangers using heroin, why would we get on their dicks about carbs?
2) Talking during movies
Yes, we shit you not, the number of casual death threats over talking during movies is actually astronomical. Anya is a movie talker, and will never stop doing that. Her inability to stay silent during movies is something everyone around her has to either enjoy or put up with. HOWEVER, she would never do that shit in a movie theater unless it was empty or full of people that were being so inconsiderate that her “movie talking” morphs into “Can you honestly please shut the fuck up?” to the teenagers behind her. No one likes a loudmouth at the movies, let alone the cell phone answerers, the shriekers, and the children crying. Does that mean we have to summarily execute these people? No. Calm the fuck down and just get management to throw them out the movie.
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| Unless it’s this hot mess, then loud scoffing is allowed. |
(To be fair, this type of inconsiderate behavior is often not an isolated trait, and if these people are just generally breaking the unspoken social contract, we support execution).
3) Breast feeding in public/any type of parenting shit
“If you’re not a mother you CAN’T POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND” “I give no shits about your feelings, this is a NATURAL PROCESS OF FOODZ FOR MY BAAAAABY”, etc. Unfortunately, the Great Kate Wait has given rise to the number of articles about our least favorite thing: children. Doubly unfortunate: the mommy bloggers are out in force, reading these articles and showing their “tiger stripes” or “mama bear instincts” by being incredibly judgmental and shitty to everyone who is not a parent/wants to go out to eat in a child free environment once in a goddamn while. Let us just say, they are setting a terrific example for the next generation of entitled, self obsessed, the entire world must bow down before my very specific preferences assholes they’re raising. THANKS.
We know this list could be endless...what ridiculous shit have you seen on the internet that made you go “really?”?
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