Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Victims

"As a species we are fundamentally insane."

I have been on many forums, many places online, I've traveled the net for far too long. But one "type" of person that still truly bothers me is the victim. They are easy to spot, they ask for advice or offer an opinion then whine about people being rude or "attacking" them, even when they are just interjecting their own views. This is typically compounded by them posting and "I'm leaving" message only to return a few days or weeks later to do it all over again. There is a good reason why these people still annoy me, because they lack respect for other people's views.

In real life it's hard to ignore things you don't like sometimes, people manage to find ways to corner you, though you still eventually learn to do just that. Online though, ignoring what you don't like is too easy, so easy that anyone who doesn't is looking for something to fight about (the troll), to regulate (the cop), or to whine about (the victim). Now the troll you just plain learn to ignore, and pretty quickly. The cop is a little more difficult to spot but when you do you learn to ignore as well. The victim however will vanish just long enough for you to forget then pops right back up letting you think they are new and lure you back into their trap just so they can whine more.

The victim is so hard to spot that sometimes even the moderators of a message board fail to see them for years, which usually results in a lot of reputations hurt by the posters who figure it out sooner. The reason for this is the victim is very good at hiding their true intent. Usually the advice they ask is very typical and convincing, their stories are often hard to see as having other purposes, but the end result is always the same. The hard thing is what to do with them. The typical response is to just say "bye" every time they pull the whining, but there is a better way, learn who they are and ignore them when they whine.

Ignoring them is also harder than ignoring other internet problems though, this is because of their story being so convincing you actually feel sorry for them each time. Many people will see no harm in the victims antics, but they do create a disruption in the web. Usually this disruption is between the other posters and moderators, or it may even generate flame wars between other posters as some who don't see the problem will fly to defend them. This is not the intent of the victim though it does happen.

To the "victim" posters who read this, keep this in mind, for your tiny amount of attention from others you are ruining it for others. Is this really worth being felt sorry for?

Monday, September 6, 2010

That Offends Me

I wander through forums, use to be a regular forum poster even a moderator, but one thing that still bothers me is the Dark Age notion that other people's, especially family's, opinions should dictate how a person behaves all the time. Now granted there are some social opinions that matter, like murder being wrong or violence without cause being wrong, but anything that does not directly effect other people is simply no one else's concern, period. How one dresses, for instance, is not your brother's business. So I started thinking more on the subject and this is what I came up with.

First, family is just a genetic link, you don't get to choose them anyway so really their opinion of you is less important than your own. That's all it is anyway, opinion. Who you date, how you dress, where you live, what you eat, what is right and wrong is all opinion. So your family should love you unconditionally, period, if they think less of a boy who wants to wear dresses they need to learn what love is. I have been through a lot in my life, and only half my family was there, the other half just judged. My response to the half that decided to judge me was I disowned them. Yep, half my family does not exist in my mind, I don't worry about them, I barely even think about them except in the odd case I encounter some other judgemental moron on the street.

It's actually pretty easy to disown family, really. People do it all the time for stupid reasons, why not do it for the right reasons now? All you do is STOP ACKNOWLEDGING THEM. Trust me, you can be happy with who you are, people don't have to live in misery anymore just because their family doesn't "approve" of their choices. Now here's the catch, everything, and I do mean everything, you do or any choice you make will offend someone. So worrying about what other people think is just stupid. Eat meat, half the world will think you are an animal abuser. Don't eat meat, the other half will think you're insane. Be gay, half the world will think you're a pervert. Be straight, the other half will think you're a breeder.

Now look at me, I'm a nonsexual, I hate sex. I don't think marriage should even exist, it's just legalized prostitution when you look at it really, you get paid to have a sexual servant. People will find that offensive, but I dimply don't care. Half my family thought I was insane because of it, funny huh, but it's true. Since I disowned them though, I'm happy. Even when I was living in a homeless shelter with nothing to my name, I was still happy, because I was happy with my own choices. Now I'm really happy with my life, or at least when clinical depression doesn't find some way to make me feel bad, but that's a different matter and I'm learning to combat it by reminding myself, I'm happier now than I have ever been.

Now friends, these are a different matter. People seem to fear being alone, so they try to please as many other people as they can just so they have friends. However, due to this false need friendship has lost all meaning, add in Failbook and such things and friendship has become nothing but a number. Those who have such an account, look at all the people who want to "friend" you on there, how many do you really know, in real life not just through messages? Can you be absolutely certain they are what they even say they are? I have one real friend, a few online friends, that's it. I like it that way. Even though I can't be certain of the online ones, we do have fun chatting and killing time when there is nothing to do in real life. My one real life friend, wouldn't care how I changed. We are friends because we get along.

The primary ingredient to a true friendship, just getting along. We disagree on a lot of things, our opinions do not match even half the time, but we enjoy each other's company and get along even when we disagree. The second most important ingredient to a true friend is being able to enjoy their real company (not online) in a situation where you can't get away from them for long periods of time. Why is this important? Because a friend is who you can turn to when you need a hug. Touchy feelly sounding but that's the real reason you need at least one friend. They don't have to stroke your ego and make you feel like you're perfect, they just need to be there when you are feeling bad.

Which leads to another important part of a friendship, honesty. A real friend tells you when your clothes are ugly, they don't always say you look great, even when you do. They are not suppose to think you are perfect, a real friend doesn't care if you are perfect in their eyes or not. So here's the thing, you will offend your family, that's unavoidable, and it's okay if you offend your friends. Really loving family will just accept you, and true friends will be there as long as you are. So stop worrying about offending people, live, you will find your lives far better for it. Think of all the time you waste thinking about if you would offend someone, that's a lot of wasted time. Think of all the missed opportunities you have had by avoiding things that would offend someone, it is often more than the opportunities taken with great success. The founding fathers of the US did not worry about offending anyone, if they had, the Brittish would still rule here. ;)

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Environmentalism Scares

I love nature ... always have, but I hate environmentalists. Why? They have turned everything about nature into a joke. Now when you say you like nature in anyway everyone looks at you like you are one of the environmentalist nut jobs. But here's the irony, it's all just another doomsday conspiracy, one in a million. Even taking religion out of the equation and people still can't stop these idiotic notions. There have been a lot of great debunkers on this subject already, one pointed out the myth of landfills being such a problem. Seriously, they are still so small that they don't even cover one state in the US if you combine every single one, so give that up already. Global warming? We're cooler than we were a few million years ago still ... and that warming period was natural. Sheesh, we can't stop it even if we tried.

Anyway, instead of posting all the evidence other debunkers have spent a great amount of time gathering I will avoid boring you with this redundancy and give you the easy logic to follow. Nature will always find a way to balance itself, usually through creating species that will do the work for it. One thing needed for evolution is hardships, and lots of them. The perfect species doesn't just appear, many challenges must be faced to weed out the imperfections and often species are driven extinct in this effort. But what happens when one species threatens all the others? The others evolve or die, yes, we see this in the eras that the dinosaurs ruled the planet. One of natures ultimate tests for life and likely the one that spurred out evolution in the first place. They to altered the environment and drove billions of species extinct over their reign.

Now, someone will say "but we use ...", something that sound really bad. Here's the catch to that, matter and energy cannot be destroyed or CREATED, so what we use already exists. We just change it's shape. Think about it, all the oil we use already exists, refining is just a purification process (to over simplify), and personally I would rather they use something from under the surface instead of the trees I love for fuel.

So while they are whining about some species of something becoming extinct they are forgetting the simple rules of nature, a species must evolve to survive all odds, or perish. Survival of the fittest isn't just a slogan for some game show, it's reality and natural. The truly strange thing is that humans have a lot more flaws than other species, so technically we shouldn't survive long anyway and we are our own worst enemy. We will never destroy all life on the planet, that is impossible. But we will destroy ourselves, and likely this is nature's plan for us from the start.

So here's the logic, we are not destroying or even damaging anything, we are in fact testing the latest evolutionary steps nature has made in it's attempt to make the perfect life forms. We haven't even changed the world a quarter of what the dinosaurs did, and they were created by nature. Why not stop worrying about the thing that created us and start worrying about ourselves more, as we over-breed we are going to run low on resources, we already are very close to that as it is. If there weren't so many of us on the planet, there would be more nature to explore. Just a thought.