An open letter/rant.

08 Apr 2009 21:31

Afterdawn can be a great place. The idea that people can share their knowledge with each other and serve as a resource for each other in the forums and guides is great. We first came across Afterdawn as the home of Mp3 Lizard and a great place for music. When Afterdawn started giving us a place to make profile pages, we happily jumped on board that. I've been able to use my page to promote JJ's music, share my photos and periodically blog about all sorts of things that matter to me.

The downside of Afterdawn mirrors the downside of the internet as a whole. Sometimes you have children or immature adults who think that just because the internet is more anonymous than being in person, that they can use it to try to project false images of themselves, to harm people and their computers or to be needlessly rude to strangers just because.

I�ve had a hell of a last few days in which different people who fall into each of these categories have added unwanted stress to my life. I just finally got online again after days of tech support dealing with a malware attack on my system, only to find in my weekly email from Afterdawn that two new comments had been posted to my pictures. Well, I like comments. I love photography and I love sharing my pictures. I realize that my today�s standards, my camera is not that great anymore and I�m not trying to claim to be any kind of professional but I don�t put them up unless there�s something I enjoyed about the event, the person or about how the picture looked. They made me smile and I share them in the hopes that they�ll make you smile too. So humor the old lady. Remember what your mother told you or should have told you. If you can�t say anything nice, don�t say anything at all.

I know I�m older than a lot of you and I don�t care. I�m 46. And damn proud of it. I have gray hairs. I�m not trying to fool people with camera tricks and lighting into thinking I�m still in my early teens. I hated the way the other children tried to use their looks or some other meaningless accident of luck or nature to try to claim superiority back in junior high and it isn�t any prettier in grownups than it was in children. I also don�t think much of anyone who would attack me by burying nasty foulmouthed false comments not in the shoutbox or someplace easy to find but had to hide the comment three years back in my pictures. Furthermore, they chose to put them on a beautiful page with a picture of my daughter. This picture comes from a special day when she and I had a great mother/daughter drive down the California coast. The memories are special. Taking a dump on that page isn�t. It just makes the person or persons who did it look bad.

I realize that �shayetiff� probably just went around doing this to a lot of people randomly on April fool�s day and I�m sure they thought they were being really funny. And yes, I do have a sense of humor and I could have just deleted the comments. But it�s the whole idea that a friend and I had discussed on the first. There is a huge difference between friendly, kind hearted humor and the way some people hide behind �just kidding� or �April fools� as an excuse to say and do things that are just not right. Not funny. Put another way, freedom of speech is not the same thing as the freedom to be an ass to other people.

Dear �Shayetiff�

I don't know who you are but your idea of an April fool's joke isn't funny. When I got the email from Afterdawn notifying me that I had two new picture comments this week I had to search through three years of pictures to find it. If burying it deep within pages and pages of my pictures so I'd have to waste my time on a busy week searching for your comments wasn't bad enough, you chose to put them on a page with my daughter's picture. There are good people on Afterdawn but unfortunately, just because your parents bought you a computer doesn't mean you're mature enough to be allowed to use it. This week has been stressful enough without your foulmouthed contributions.

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User comments

by varnull @ 13 Apr 2009 12:20

another nub eh?.. *best scrappy doo voice* Let me at em!!

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