“Thou shalt not suffer a fool gladly, for anst thou dost, he shall surely breed, and thou shalt find thyself up to thine *** in fools.”
Some of y’all read and responded to my post about a dipwad who was too lazy, stupid or just plain inconsiderate in his approach to leaving an email list he’d subscribed to.
That’s all over, now. But it did prick me to look at something I’ve not checked into for some time: Email etiquette “rules”.
As to what I refer to as “tough love–or maybe not so loving” emails, this lil excerpt from an article on the subject caught my eye:
Am I flaming someone? (And what does “flaming” mean?)
Flaming is a virtual term for venting emotion online or sending inflammatory emails. * It is best to avoid flaming because it tends to create more conflict and tension. Flames are virtual food fights (Angell and Heslop) and are unproductive and injurious to the parties involved.
What you say cannot be taken back. Misinterpretations happen very easily in neutral emails because there is a lack of nonverbal expression to cue the recipient about your motives and intentions. You can imagine how much misinterpretation can occur when you are expressing frustration and/or anger.
Things to consider before venting in email:
Would I say this to this person’s face?
Am I putting the receiver in awkward position?
How would I feel if I got this email message?Usually, by the time you consider the above questions you will be calm enough to write your message with a different approach. Catching someone by surprise in a flaming message is a quick way to alienate your reader mainly because they will react with anger or embarrassment.
I have to admit that the first thought that crossed my mind was, “Why should I care if I anger or embarrass and even alienate a dumbass? Hey! That’s a win-win situation for me: anger/embarrass AND alienate? Maybe they’ll get miffed and GO AWAY!”
heh
Or maybe they’ll become angry and do even more to demonstrate what a dumbass they are so I can ridicule them even more.
That’d be a win-win-win sitch for me…
😉
Why should ANYONE have to “suffer a fool gladly” (or UNgladly for that matter)?
Rather, why not re-publish (and yea, verily, embellish) an oldie from before the days of the World Wide Web—not, of course, referring to you, dear reader…
You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. You are a canker. A sore that won’t go away. I would rather bathe with Hitler than be seen with you. You’re a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.
You are a bleating foal, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done. I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you.
You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?
You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You’re a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won’t have sex with you.
You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot. And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake?
You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile, one-handed, slack-jawed, drooling, meatslapper. On a good day you’re a half-wit. You remind me of drool.
You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go. You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go away.
Now, think about it for a second. Isn’t that a message you’d like to send some congresscritters from the polling booth? All in a spirit of good fun, of course, of course…
heh
MHWA.
Now, some folks feel that telling the truth to people who are offensive idiots is impolite. It may well be, but I view it as even more harmful to allow foolish, destructive behavior to continue unabated and unremarked on. When politicians, for example, are lying out of two sides of their face while prettending butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths (ex: Jean Fraud sKerry as poster boy for my personal No More Bullshit! campaign), why not send ’em a wee copy of The Ultimate Flame, tailored for their particular offensive behavior?
Why not?
Oh, that we truly could do so in the voting booth…
Making trouble (and LIKING it) at Freedom Watch (cos, after all, this did morph into a “political opinion” piece that qualifies as First Amendment speech in the classical understanding of the Founders and Framers… heh)