Creepy people
Mar. 1st, 2004 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j4Okay, now, I'm used to people indulging in flirtatious (and at times obscene) banter on newsgroups. I don't mind people making comments about bits of my body, items of my underwear, and so on, particularly if those comments are funny. If the wordplay's good, anything goes.
But there's one person on uk.misc who is pissing me off. He's clearly only about 18 so I suppose he'll grow out of it, but he's made a couple of comments about removing my knickers and "rummaging around in my bra" which just make me feel really uncomfortable. I think if I got on with him in other threads -- if I felt he was a friend, or at least a generally decent person -- then I wouldn't object, though I still wouldn't think he was being particularly funny. But he's certainly not a friend (I've already got into one argument with him about cars -- he believes cars should be as fast as possible; he believes that he should be allowed to pay only one lot of road tax for 2 cars; he also believes that the size/power of the car has no effect on the cost of insurance) and when he's not shouting about how big his cock^H^H^H^Hcar is, he's quoting 20-page posts and only adding "ROTFPMSL!!!!" at the end. In other words, he's a wanker.
The problem is, I don't feel I can object on the group (and I certainly don't feel I can respond the way I want to, i.e. something along the lines of "fuck off, you top-posting wankfisted teenage sleazemonkey") without everybody else calling me a hypocrite, and/or telling me that if I can't take the good-natured banter I should get out of the group.
I don't like killfiling individuals but I suspect it's the only thing to do; but it makes me feel as though I've failed -- I don't want to react to something so stupid, something that basically amounts to a small boy sniggering at rude words. But I still feel uncomfortable with it.
Maybe I'm just overreacting.
But there's one person on uk.misc who is pissing me off. He's clearly only about 18 so I suppose he'll grow out of it, but he's made a couple of comments about removing my knickers and "rummaging around in my bra" which just make me feel really uncomfortable. I think if I got on with him in other threads -- if I felt he was a friend, or at least a generally decent person -- then I wouldn't object, though I still wouldn't think he was being particularly funny. But he's certainly not a friend (I've already got into one argument with him about cars -- he believes cars should be as fast as possible; he believes that he should be allowed to pay only one lot of road tax for 2 cars; he also believes that the size/power of the car has no effect on the cost of insurance) and when he's not shouting about how big his cock^H^H^H^Hcar is, he's quoting 20-page posts and only adding "ROTFPMSL!!!!" at the end. In other words, he's a wanker.
The problem is, I don't feel I can object on the group (and I certainly don't feel I can respond the way I want to, i.e. something along the lines of "fuck off, you top-posting wankfisted teenage sleazemonkey") without everybody else calling me a hypocrite, and/or telling me that if I can't take the good-natured banter I should get out of the group.
I don't like killfiling individuals but I suspect it's the only thing to do; but it makes me feel as though I've failed -- I don't want to react to something so stupid, something that basically amounts to a small boy sniggering at rude words. But I still feel uncomfortable with it.
Maybe I'm just overreacting.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-01 08:48 am (UTC)I tried to resist ranting at him, because I generally try not to get into slanging matches with small boys any more; but I've been fairly snippy in some of my replies to him so far & I think if the choice is between killfiling him and having a fullscale flamewar then I'll just have to killfile.
*nod* - fullscale flamewars are generally best avoided - except when I'm cross and need to rant, when I head over to uk.legal;-)
Hm, I suspect he'd take it as encouragement, to be honest. And I don't want to have sexual banter with people who make me feel dirty. It's something I do with people I like and trust.
Ah OK. Have you thought about taking pity on him/pleading to his good nature and emailing him telling him this? I don't know whether it's worth it, but maybe it'd make you feel less guilty about killfiling him if you'd given him an explicit last chance?
Because I've made plenty of apparently-similar comments to other people (k425 will tell you that I'm utterly shameless in some of the things I've said to her! -- though I hope she'd tell me straight away if she minded) and it would look like hypocrisy to somebody who didn't understand that friends can get away with things that strangers can't.
But surely someone who doesn't understand that the boundaries are different for strangers than they are for friends is fairly high on the fuckwittedness scale?
Also, I've had my wrists slapped before now on uk.misc for making the same mistake -- I took the piss out of somebody who everybody takes the piss out of (and I didn't think I'd done it maliciously, I thought it was only banter, he doesn't normally seem to object) and I got told that I was nasty and vicious and unfair for doing so.
*nods* - these things happen. Are you on speaking terms with him now? I'd have thought that he'll have long since forgotten/forgiven that incident.
It would be even more hypocritical for me to object to somebody else only being as fuckwitted as me. :-/
It would, but I think that he's probably gone far beyond what you did (grr - you've got me all intrigued; I'll have to go in search of uk.misc this evening;-))
Even if you don't feel you can criticise his sexual banter, there's no reason not to put down his top posting/other breaches of netiquette.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-01 09:58 am (UTC)I hadn't thought of that, because it just doesn't seem to be the way misc works... I doubt if he'd take any notice, anyway; but maybe that's just me giving him a bad name and hanging him.
But surely someone who doesn't understand that the boundaries are different for strangers than they are for friends is fairly high on the fuckwittedness scale?
Well, I dunno. Not realising that the boundaries are different, maybe; but then it's harder to tell on news than IRL, I think, where you stand in relation to somebody -- whether you are considered a "friend" or not. Some people don't believe it's possible to be "friends" with somebody they've never met in real life; some people make friends quicker than others anyway, etc.
Are you on speaking terms with him now? I'd have thought that he'll have long since forgotten/forgiven that incident.
No idea -- he never said anything about it, it was the rest of them who had a go at me for it. I apologised to him, got no reply, he carried on posting without apparently being bothered, though he's been quieter recently (sufficiently far after the incident that I doubt it's connected). Still feel guilty, still feel certain that one miscreant (if not more) hates me as a result, but what more can I do than apologise & not do it again?
Even if you don't feel you can criticise his sexual banter, there's no reason not to put down his top posting/other breaches of netiquette.
Oh, I do that. I'm on much less shaky ground thinking that top-posters are evil, than thinking I have a right to tell people to stop talking about my knickers. That's usenet for you, though.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-01 11:22 am (UTC)I understand where you're coming from as OxIRC included similar banter and there was at least one regular that I'd have rather not had involved. I never found a way to prevent it. IT was a major case of whichever 'geek social fallacy' is it that says 'Thou Shalt Never Leave Anyone Out, Even If You All Dislike Them.'
If the killfile would help, I think you should use it. If there are reasons why that would not help, or would make you feel bad in other ways, then a message conveying the idea that, whoever else may make flirty/sexy/etc comments about you, He May Not, might work.
I hope you get it sorted in a way that makes you comfortable. You don't have to put up with it.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-02 02:23 am (UTC)The Alex thing? It's a strange sort of arena, that. One can - has to be, sometimes - very blunt with him. There's a fine line, though, and some people thought you went over. I think the people who told you off for it rather overdid it. My advice would be to excise the entire incident from your memory banks, I doubt anybody else (Alex included) thinks about it at all anymore.
You fit fine with the miscreants. Alex fits as well as he can, and better then he used to.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-02 07:36 am (UTC)I've just googled back to one of my first encounters with Alex - I had quoted a green-ink letter from the local paper, making it abundantly clear it was a quote, and he had interpreted it as being written by me. Here's the result:
He's still making the same excuses for not reading things properly today - I don't accept his deafness as an excuse, he seems to be pretty intelligent and basically a good person, but he's got an extremely irritating habit of not thinking at all about things and then shrugging his shoulders and saying "I'm fucked up, what do you expect?"
Chris Eilbeck, Giles Todd, Rod Begbie and someone called "Dom" also contributed to that thread. "Dom" - hat sounds like a pseudonym to me.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-03 11:47 am (UTC)Hey, them were t'days!
S'funny - Alex is the one miscreant out of that lot that I haven't met (apart from Giles, and I will get round to a visit, dude!) and yet I genuinely like the guy.
He's honest. What more d'you want?