09-21-04 @ 10:07 am EDT

This should just be some regular old-school blithering. I noticed that at least on Writing.com, the only place where I can read hits, my last Mackinac Island entry was not so popular, as it has gotten one hit so far while the entry immediately following, "Big Gay Rant," so far has three. Either a couple of people who checked out the first Mackinac entry found it dreadfully dull and just wanted to see what the most recent one was about, or the words "Big Gay Rant" drew the extra attention such words would normally draw online.

And I just spent entirely too much time hypothesizing about journal entries, I know.

Anyway. I just came online and the WC homepage says Over 276,466 members have joined and posted over 890,809 literary items. And I'm thinking, HUH? Just a few hours ago there were about 49,000 members and a HELL of a lot fewer than 890,000 items! I know this because they ALWAYS keep the registered author membership around 50,000 or below. And there's no way the site got THAT many new registered authors that fast. Maybe it's counting something it didn't count before (registered users?), or acting up; who knows.

What I want to know is: When Item #999999 is created, which should be in the near future...then what is everybody going to do? The bitem codes rely on a six-digit system, and 999999 is as high as it can go...so unless they start over with letters inserted, I have no clue how they're going to swing that one. I asked about this, quite a while back, but of course no answer was forthcoming. (That tends to happen when I post a valid concern about the future of the site...I was the first one to find out, after all, about item limits on upgradeds and the switchover from journals to "books" and the limits that entailed, because I was the first person they affected and no e-mail notice had been sent out ahead of time.)

BUT...that's some other entry somewhere else. What I really wanted to blither about was some other member on another website, a community I visit briefly every day, though I usually end up leaving it for months at a time. People ask and answer questions there but it's become so highly political that I find I have little to do. There's a message board section where people post as well and it's mostly politics though there are occasional jokes and personal notices and things...but mostly politics. It would not be so bad if like 95% of the people who post have no ability to interact civilly or to post without engaging in ad hominem attacks or overgeneralizations. I learned LONG ago to not even bother posting my own opinions, because chances are, people who disagree with you will not do so rationally.

Well anyway, one of the users there...I will call him TG, after his old username...is rabidly conservative, and seems to live to log online and post about ten times a day about what traitorous scum all liberals are, and how much Kerry sucks, and a billion other comments deriding gays and blacks and Jews and Latinos, etc. He tosses out racist jokes as if they are popcorn. (Bad metaphor, but my mind is ehh right now.) He is one of the biggest instigators of the "fights" which are constantly going on. (I put fights in quotes only because the webmaster disallowed personal attacks, but that does not mean people still manage to get them in. They would look at my entry and say I am being "oversensitive." But I can easily look at them and see all the logical fallacies they regularly commit when they "debate." But whatever.)

Well...TG's comments are a dime a dozen, with all the other like-minded people there, and everywhere else on the Web. Yet I found myself strongly tempted to reply to one today. I'm afraid I can only paraphrase because direct quoting is not usually a good idea in a personal journal. (I learned THAT the hard way, too.)

Pretty much, somebody argued against smoking and thought it was good that the government has taken steps against it. TG replied with something that struck me as so contradictory to his own stated beliefs that I REALLY itched to post something, and actually logged off feeling upset that I had to muzzle myself. (I get that way...the urge to have the last word. I can't STAND seeing illogic tossed around like it's logical. Sorry.) Basically, he argued AGAINST governmental intervention in smoking and stated it was not the government's right to protect us from ourselves (killing ourselves by smoking, in this case), and it is also not the government's place to decide what we are to be protected from.

Now TG is one of the biggest people you will find against the gay marriage thing, and even gay adoption--in his opinion, gays should be allowed nowhere NEAR kids. I will not comment...will not comment...see my last entry. *cough* In any case, I cannot believe he said this about the government's place to decide what to protect us from. How can he say that with a straight face after what he's said about gay marriage and gay adoption??

Why, according to him, is it NOT the government's place to protect us from smoking, but it IS the government's place to "protect us" from gays, gay marriage, and gay adoption? I was itching very, very badly to just step in there and ask him about this double standard he's just created, and ask him how on Earth he can expect anyone to take him seriously after making a comment like that.

And even in the event he were to say something like, "That's gays--this is smoking. It's two completely different things," he even covered MY base on that also--by then saying, "The government cracked down on smokers. Why don't they crack down on AIDS and fags then?" I. e., he JUST compared the two situations to each other as valid comparisons, by saying that since the government cracked down on smoking, it should also by rights crack down on "AIDS and fags" (his word, not mine). He CAN'T claim the two things are too different for comparison, because he just compared them himself, and blew up his own argument. If he thinks the government has no place in protecting us from smoking, then he should also think the government has no place in protecting us from gays and gay marriage/adoption. You cannot have it both ways. Even if you were to say smoking and gays don't compare...HE'S the one who compared them, not me; I didn't even have to.

I logged off and went offline instead. Probably the better idea. Still itching somewhat, though. I really hate it when people try to play rational and come across as...totally contradictory to themselves. And when they don't even appear to notice it.

Well, I logged off instead and thought about it, and wrote in TUGJOT. If it were any other person, this probably would not bother me as much. I would write them off as a bigoted, racist, homophobic jerk and leave it at that--such people can't be reasoned with.

The thing that bugs me is, I KNOW TG is not a total asshole, and I KNOW he is capable of intelligent thought. I've had my own share of contradictory experiences with him. There was one occasion when he was talking about gun control and he compared it to Kristallnacht or something. I commented that he was trivializing the Holocaust or something like that...I don't even know by now. And he responded by calling me an ANTI-SEMITE! Where the hell did THAT come from?? If anything I was standing UP for the Jews who had been persecuted, by complaining that he was trivializing what had happened to them--mass terror and mass genocide as compared to gun control! And for this *I* was called the anti-Semite?? I got really pissed off and demanded to know where he came up with that idea. I seem to remember he made some jokey comments that did not clarify the situation at all and just pissed me off even more. It ended up unresolved; I assumed he was just being a...excuse the language, but, a prick. That's really the only word I can think of to describe how I felt.

He also HIMSELF made homophobic, anti-Semitic comments about a Jewish member of the site (and this member, to the best of my limited knowledge, was not gay). So who was being anti-Semitic??

And I already mentioned his horrid overgeneralizations about liberals (every day, I swear, EVERY DAY he posts at least ONE thing mentioning how all or at least the great majority of liberals are stupid, traitorous, hateful scums), and his bigoted jokes about Latinos and blacks (his most recent one was something about telling all the blacks that Latinos taste like chicken or something...who knows, my humor obviously doesn't run that way), etc. etc. etc. He seems to have a standing grudge against basically every non-WASPy group there is.

Like I said, if that was all there was to the situation, I could easily detest him and just write him off as an ignorant dolt.

But I ALSO remember when the old site we all frequented crashed. He was not there at the time and I guess my e-mail was the only one he remembered. Why did he even have my e-mail? I have no idea, now that I think of it. *shrug* In any case maybe a month later I got an e-mail from him asking politely what had happened to the site. I had no clue why he had decided to ask ME of all people but I just as politely told him what had happened, and directed him to the Yahoo! Group where we were all hanging out in the meantime. He responded with a very nice thank you and also left me a guestbook message telling me I was a very talented writer. The end.

Now, unless he was being totally facetious and laughing at me behind his hand...which he could very well have been doing...then why would he say something like that? If he were a total asshole?

To this day I think I would rather prefer if he had not ever been nice to me, because this little act just leaves me very confused as to why, every day, he logs online and spews out such hateful stuff, when I KNOW he is capable of at least PRETENDING to be genteel. Like I said, he could have been faking being nice to me. But I did not get that feeling from him. And just as confusing, I do believe that he posts much of what he posts to rile people up, but at the same time, he's so consistent with it, I also get the feeling he means a lot of it, as well. At least, if he's faking hating all these people, he's doing a DAMN fine job of it. Nobody uses the word "raghead" as consistently as he, at least.

Even if he is a racist homophobic asshole, I fully believe he has the capability of approaching people on decent terms and interacting in a relatively normal way. Take a look, one moment he's calling me anti-Semitic and the next he's telling me I'm a talented writer. I do not get this guy at all. That's why I can't bring myself to detest him like all the others. And that's why his posts continue to confuse and conflict me. Even if he is a jerk, why does he never approach people using tact and courtesy as he did with me that one time? Instead of logging on every day and calling "all liberals" traitors, why doesn't he try to present a more reasoned argument, at least? I do not understand why, if he's trying to rile people up, he is so persistent about it, and why, if he is so bigoted, he feels the need to say so every single day, and why, if he has SOME shred of decency in him, he does not put THAT to work a little more often. It's probably not his life's goal to be liked by as many people as possible. But he was nice to me at least once. Why can't he be that way more often?

Granted, I'm not trying to change him, and I can't even tell him to his face anything I'm saying here--I could be way off in thinking he was being nice to me, maybe that was a trick too. I'll never understand trolls and such, but at least they make a little sense--they're consistently asinine. But this guy...he makes no sense to me. If he's not such a bad guy, then I don't see why he's such an asshole to everybody every day. And if he's as much of an asshole as he seems to be, then I really don't see why he had to be nice to me, just that once.

Things would be much simpler if he had always been a jerk to me, so I would not have to wonder WHY every day I see his posts. :/

I itch to step up to him and lay all my cards on the table and say, "Hey, TG; I'm a liberal. I'm for gay rights and all that jazz. You said I had talent once. Am I a traitorous scum, too?"

But I won't be doing that any time soon.

Hm, the site STILL says there are over 270,000 members and 890,000 items. Really don't understand that. Well, I had other things to talk about but I can't remember what they were, and I should at least try to start on an e-mail. Tar for now...