pinback wrote:I'm laughing at the "superior intellect".
Now you're quoting James T. Kirk at me?
Ben, you are a very angry man. You have a well of anger that goes very, very deep and is always just waiting to come out. I find that very sad.
You seem to enjoy spewing venom at even the slightest opportunity. You really
like it. I wonder why that is.
Unlike you, I'm going to be mindful of what I say. My first instinct is to flame you to a radioactive cinder. But I'm not. I refuse to continue the cycle of negativity that you've started. You flame me, I flame you back, you flame me back, everyone else on the board jumps in, and it's a massive storm of negativity and hate that makes everyone feel bad. All from your one little post. So I'm forgoing the insults.
You begged me to come back here. You promised it would be civilized. You promised to behave. You promised ICJ would, and he, at least, has acted maturely and lived up to it and that's been pleasant. Kudos to ICJ. I have to admit, I had serious doubts about how long you, who fly off the handle so easily, would be able to keep it up. I am sorry that I was right. I didn't want to be.
What brought on this massive outpouring of hateful language? What unforgivable insult could I have used that has made you so very angry? Hmm. Let's see, what did I do? Did I kick your dog? Fuck your girlfriend? Call your mother a whore? Steal all your money?
No. I said 1) that Tiger Woods seemed like a nice guy; 2) That I don't have a lot of respect for professional athletes, and 3) that I didn't think the way they ended the tournament was a good one. Which one of those, exactly, has made you so very angry? Which one has reduced you to such sputtering of epithets? I think you like Tiger Woods, so I doubt it was the first thing. The second thing was a general statement having nothing to do with you and TW only tangentially (after I already said something nice about him). And the third this has nothing to do with you, either, yet you seem to have takes it as personally as if I kicked you in the balls. Why do you have such an incendiary reaction to something so stupid?
You know, the insults of Herr Wurm and The Clown don't affect me in the slightest. I don't even notice. I read right past them. It's just the useless wind of a couple random internet strangers who don't know the first thing about me. Now, your insults - they don't bother me, either, but after enough time it gets annoying. It's like having someone shoot Nerf darts at you all day. They don't hurt, but eventually you feel like saying "Hey, do you
mind?"
I dunno, call me a romantic, call me a dreamer, but I had been under the impression that we had been friends for 15 years. Over the course of those years we've had a lot of fun times in person, but most of the time it's only via the internet due to your irrational fear of the telephone. And when I think back, I can only remember a very few occasions when I ever insulted you, and most of them were here on this board during your previous campaign against me. But you call me an asshole or some other insult basically several times a week. And you know, I give you some leeway, but I'm really starting to get tired of it. It makes me ask myself "why do I bother?"
In all that time, I think you've said exactly one nice thing to me, and then only because I challenged you to, to see if it was even possible for you. Now, I don't expect my friends to blow smoke up my ass or flatter me. You aren't required to say nice things. But - call me traditional - I kind of feel that friends don't spend most of their time viciously insulting each other for no reason. In fact they actually stick up for each other - sometimes even when they think their friend is in the wrong. Because, you know - that's what friends do. At least, that's what all my other friends do.
I could understand this outburst if I had behaved horribly. If I had started insulting you first, said something really nasty about you or someone else, or actually done anything wrong at all. But the only thing I did was express opinions that you don't share about topics which have nothing to do with you personally. So did I deserve the way you're treating me? Absolutely not. Frankly, you owe me a huge and public apology, though I certainly won't hold my breath waiting for it. I'm sure this message will be met with more insults. Despite your promises, you took the very first possibility, the most paper-thin of all excuses, and started attacking me.
Ben, I feel you've acted very badly. I feel you've treated me very badly. I feel you've broken your promise to
not do exactly what you are doing. In the course of two weeks you went from effusively thanking me for being here and saying my posts were "the best on the board", to nasty insults. I feel I've been the victim of a bait-and-switch. So I'm not into sports. I'm allowed to have that opinion without getting all this abuse for it. I didn't say anything bad about anyone, let alone anyone here, let alone you personally. Unless the person who decided how to end the tournament was a personal friend of yours, you have zero reason to be so abusive.
You've become a source of negativity. As I explained, I don't want that. There are a million places I can go if I want to insult and be insulted. I was kind of hoping this would be a fun place if you could just restrain your temper. But sadly, if anyone needs an anger management course, it's you. It's too bad all those books you read on psychology and philosophy appear to not have helped you one bit. You still have zero control.
Well, I will show you what mindfulness is. I am making a conscious effort to not continue a cycle of negativity. I am forgoing my right to blast right back. But I feel sorry for you. All that anger just below the surface must really eat you up inside. As I often say, "Your punishment is being you" - an angry, unhappy person. That much is obvious despite your protestations to the contrary. Happy people don't carry around so much unfocused rage. I may be a bitter curmudgeon much of the time, but I at least make an effort to treat my friends like friends and not convenient targets for taking out my anger on.
So I think that, once again, my time here is done. I don't see the situation improving in the future. I guess it was fun for a week and a half, which is more than I expected. But I'm trying to think of a reason to stay and I can't.
When I send this message, I'm going to delete my JC bookmark. If you really think you can change your ways, act like a civilized human being and a friend, then post a public apology here that's as sincere as your insults were, and send me a link. If I think you really mean it, maybe I'll reconsider. But I strongly doubt that. You aren't the apologizing type, and I know you'd never swallow your pride enough to do so in front of everyone here. So I don't expect to be back. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you have the capability to value friendship, if you even understand what that word means.
ICJ, I can see why you're upset that every new person gets chased off the board. I had just hoped that maybe Ben wouldn't be one of them. "I guess I picked bad day to quit being a cynic and expecting the worst from people."
For once, I'm not pleased at how right I was.
I'm sure this message will be met with a storm of jeers from most of the people here. You may want to save your time - I will never see them.
