I hate you, "Are You Sure?" sign. But stay.

The BBQ Pit
1

I enjoy rants, and I enjoy ranting. There’s a strange beauty in a lingual evisceration, where anger and contempt for the target is living flesh upon a perfect skeleton of words, and the rant is the entire body moving in dance.

I’ve been applauded for penning good rants before–primarily off-board, in pre-SDMB hangouts, years past; I’m more of rant consumer than producer, these days. But back then, I felt pride at that applause, when it was received, and dismissal at the quieter suggestions that it wasn’t much to be proud of.

Events over the last few years in particular have been cause for me to reflect on this. My personal conclusion is that it’s healthier for me–for me, mind you, I’m not making any claims on what floats other boats, or can or should be used as flotation medium–to rein in my desires to. The reasons for this are the usual ones–as a reminder to myself that every pair of eyes reading text I may create are living eyes, belonging to living people with hopes and dreams, who, all told, are rather like me–they love love, they hate suffering, they believe some goofy things, they suffer through bouts of clumsiness physical and verbal and textual that sometimes causes pain, they’re pained by others. The usual reasons, which are cliched because they’re true.

It’s easy for me to forget about all this online, again for the usual reasons–it’s easier to be vicious when you’re not face to face with someone, and what’s flying back and forth is text, not tones of voice. Plus, I like ranting, and there are more opportunities to rant if you can more consistently forget about all that. So there’s internal pressure to do so.

One of the measures I’ve taken against that is this: on the upper edge of my home pc’s monitor is a strip of paper about ye long. On it are three words, in nice visible block letters:

Are You Sure?

I.e., am I sure that these are the words I want to be responsible for? Am I sure that the immediate pleasure of hurling this piece of snappy invective is going to be worth it? I may be sure that I don’t give a good goddamn if the immediate target thinks ill of me, when they do, for the indefinite future–but am I sure that I’m comfortable with the thought of unknown numbers of onlookers also thinking badly? Am I sure that the applause gained by a nicely-done bit of rant is worth having–when some of those rant-fanciers would be just as thrilled to see another’s finely-tuned piece of invective tear into me in the future the next month, week, day?

I was smirking to myself the day I fiddled with font settings and typed those three words, printed them out, scissored the relevant bit out of the paper and taped it up. Since then, it’s been increasingly humbling each time I’ve typed something out, or have started to, or have started to think about doing so, and those damnable big block letters on top of my monitor draw my peripheral sight–and so many times, I answer it, “No,” and hit the back key, leave to read something else, or just get up and take a walk. I can’t smirk ironically at it anymore, which makes me hate it–but I’m not taking it down for the world.

2

You know, I think this thread should be locked right now, and made into a sticky, even if the title IS hard to read.

Well done, Drastic.

3

I’m not sure. I went to law school and practiced personal injury law. If you’re sure, I can make you not sure, and if I can’t do it then I can introduce you to somebody who can make the end of the world look like a picnic.

I post anyway. I rant anyway. It’s not because I believe that in a few thousand years my words of wisdom will be taught in classrooms around the world, it’s not because I believe that I am the One True Voice, it’s because I have something to say at the time.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Let me repeat that, “I could be wrong”.

I could have a rant stored up inside of me that just needed to get out and Poster X provided the trigger, and when all is said and done and I have eviscerated that male chauvinist pig/Christian Fundamentalist/Fascist/Communist/pro-life/pro-choice/male/female/whatever for being what he or she is or for espousing the principles that they seemed to do, and left their entrails steaming on the ground, the next post could show me that “I WAS WRONG”.

When that happens, I could blame society, or I could rant and rave about what I REALLY meant when I said that horrible thing, or I could split hairs until we’re cutting air, or I could blame the mods, or I could just say I was wrong and that I’m sorry.

What is it about having a monitor in front of you that makes tht last option so terrible?

4

The title was an artifact of the start, when I intended to launch into a profanity-ridden tongue-in-cheek tirade against the sign. That form of it just weren’t coming, so I changed tack. After it did, I clumsified with the “but stay” business. :slight_smile:

Not terrible. Far less preferable to being wrong when calmer–because I find that kind of being wrong stems from a healthier place. But see the bit about different flotation mediums.

“Being sure” isn’t about “being right,” for me. It’s about full responsibility for what I say. It’s the same principle as not squeezing a trigger if you’re not sure you want to–it’s a separate issue from whether or not it’s right to fire a few rounds at a particular target.

It’s on the monitor because I find that people really frown if you try to glue it to their foreheads.

5

It’s not necessarily a terrible option, 2trew, but it can often entail certain pitfalls. The apology and retraction could pass unnoticed, for example. Or the apology might be ineptly offered, such that its sincerity might be in doubt.

F’rinstance, in a train wreck I read just today, (well, yesterday, now that the witching hour has passed, but no matter) a poster (A) made an invalid assertion about something another poster (B) had said, by substituting one word for another. When called on it, Poster A came back, offered a retraction and correction, and apologized. Several posts intervened between the assertion and the retraction, however, and, an objecive reader can be forgiven for believing that a few posters missed the retraction, because the assertion was still being complained about pages later.

Similarly, in the same thread, a poster (C) made a tasteless and unnecessary comment. Several posts later, without being asked to do so, the poster apologized for it and withdrew it. Accompanying the apology and withdrawal was a request that the moderator delete it. The moderator (quite properly, IMHO) declined to do so, and, hey presto! the sincerity of the apology was thrown into question.

Well, whatever. Drastic said his piece, and posted eloquently about what works for him, and why. It resonated quite poignantly with me. With you, obviously, not so much. And that’s okay, too.

Peace, out.

6

I read that thread in real time and I’m still glad that you mentioned poster © because otherwise I wouldn’t have had a friggin’ clue what you were talking about. I pity the poor thread resurrectors in months to come.

Drastic’s OP did resonate with me. I kill many more posts now than I did then. My point was that even if you do say something stupid (ie. you don’t hit that level of enlightenment) there’s no reason to defend it unto your death.

I’ve seen so many people, here as well as other places, keep fighting over that bone and let the anger spiral out until they were not only defending the stupid thing they said in the first place but attacking everyone who spoke against them and everyone else involved in the message board they’d posted the stupid thing on in the first place.

Be it unnoticed to start with or doubted in sincerity (another area of thought, since most of the online apologies I’ve seen tend to be of the “I’m sorry you’re too stupid to understand my point” variety (see Poster C’s current thread)) so few people even consider that a part of taking responsibility for your words might include the option of abandoning them and apologizing to the ones who were hurt by them.

Better not to have said them in the first place, aye, but if they do get out, you need options then as well.

7

Quite so. I guess we’ll just have to agree to . . . agree, then. :wink:

It’s getting late. Must sleep.