One bourbon, one scotch, and one mav

So I participate on the SA Forums. I’m hardly a celebrity but I really do enjoy the mentality there. Why? Drama is kept to an absolute minimum because people really don’t take it very seriously.

Recently I have taken to posting a fair amount on a certain new forum which I am reluctant to link to given the oh-so-typical drama sewer that seems to be developing there. For whatever reason, whenever I stray outside the normal realm of the hardcore geeks I know and love, things happen badly. I don’t understand why, although my present hypothesis is that geek humor and non-geek humor is completely different (read: non-geeky humans simply don’t comprehend geek humor. This would also explain why Friends exists and Family Guy got cancelled.) Stop reading here if you hate drama because I’m going to relive all the painful details because I’m fucking bored and feel like writing something. Blow me.

I happened to make one of my trademark Snappy Replies(tm), they usually follow the same format everywhere, like this:

a) exclamation
b) witty retort (Dammit, “Doctor, it hurts when I exist” was fucking funny.)
c) moral/conclusion/advice

The idea, amongst relatively intelligent people, is to:

a) act frustrated (I always do this, no matter what. I act frustrated walking to the kitchen to get a glass of water.)
b) break the ice, make everybody laugh
c) provide some useful advice

… and then the conversation should continue from there. Now I don’t know why but if you happen to fall into the wrong pit at the wrong moment, whomever you reply to will get really pissed off at you because for whatever reason the intent of the post goes completely over their head. At that point, one or more of these things will happen:

1) ( A++ FOR BULLET POINTS VARIATION LOL)
2) The poster will assume that you’re being mean or flaming
3) The poster will attempt to “make friends” with you, because you are obviously an evil, hunchbacked useless member of society that only comes out from your dark cave to stock up on cheese and soda and make the occasional post on the forum
4) The poster will get really pissed at you and spend the rest of their days trying to get you excised from the forum like a goddamn boil
BONUS 5) Other posters will jump into the fray and do either #3 or #4 because they will assume that either the poster in question will not do this thing or they just are nosy asshole pricks that think everybody’s business is their business.

This sort of thing never, ever ends well, because if the original poster was so thick-skulled that they mist the point of sections (a) and (b), then they never got to the really useful advice in section (c), and they probably will never read it or pay attention to it.

The sad part about this is that all of this fucking drama is taking place is that somebody, somewhere took a comment I made on a goddamn internet forum way too seriously. Okay, maybe the truly sad part is that I felt compelled to write a huge-ass post about it.

The message behind this, boys and girls, is as follows:
(HOLY PARENTHESES, BATMAN, IT’S ANOTHER LIST)

A) Never assume the person behind the keyboard hates you.
B) Try reading the whole goddamn post before you just respond out-of-hand.
C) If you’re going to participate please try and pay attention, that way you won’t waste your time or the time of those of us that actually attempt to generate some useful content.

Oh well, at least humanity’s not getting any dumber.