The Question
Eternal
There's a troubling disconnect that happens online in that you can never tell who's playing to the medium and who sincerely wishes ill of others. I think I told Chup more than a few times to throw himself headfirst down a flight of concrete steps. But I'd have been pretty fucking wrecked if he had actually gone and done it, because for fuck's sake, who would take that literally? Maybe it's down to a culture that has forgotten -- or in some cases refuses to acknowledge -- that there is a huge chasm of difference between saying awful things and doing awful things.
Ridiculing somebody, for example, is different from starting a damaging rumor about them is different from starting a rumor about them so utterly absurd that it could only be considered surrealist comedy.
If I laugh at Dinner for being a Californian, that's one thing. If I start a rumor that he puts on a rubber monster claw from a Halloween costume and masturbates to cooking shows, that's totally absurd and just funny. I'd be hard pressed to start a rumor that he was the one who had committed an unsolved bank robbery, though. Laughing at somebody and "swatting" them are in totally different categories of assholery. The difference between Saying and Doing.
Ridiculing somebody, for example, is different from starting a damaging rumor about them is different from starting a rumor about them so utterly absurd that it could only be considered surrealist comedy.
If I laugh at Dinner for being a Californian, that's one thing. If I start a rumor that he puts on a rubber monster claw from a Halloween costume and masturbates to cooking shows, that's totally absurd and just funny. I'd be hard pressed to start a rumor that he was the one who had committed an unsolved bank robbery, though. Laughing at somebody and "swatting" them are in totally different categories of assholery. The difference between Saying and Doing.