Flashback first. Let’s go back to the fall of 1997. About then, I was a college sophomore, sitting in a really cool psychology class. This class was about online communities, and it was as close to blending psychology and the Internet as you can get. I won’t really go into it, because it’s irrelevant. That you know it was a psychology computer class will suffice.
Professor wants us to get to know what’s out there in cyberspace as much as possible. We’re given quick lessons into e-mail, newsgroups, and the Internet via search engines. We also learned some basic HTML (which I knew anyway). He designs the course so that we can eventually upload all our classwork onto the school server, for all to see. Great idea, great way to teach us the Internet and everything.
Professor also does research in the road rage phenomenon, so the class gets to study road rage as well, only our resources are whatever we find on the Internet. It’s only logical, and it’s a great way to meld psych and the Internet.
So our first major assignment was to research newsgroups that talked about road rage. We had to find ten newsgroups postings, and write what we thought about it, what we thought it was trying to tell us, reactions to it, its significance, etc. Basically, a newsgroup posting reaction paper. We had to include the posting, and then submit it all as an HTML file and upload it to the server.
So that is what I did. Uploaded it, life went on, I passed the class with a B, and went on to graduate with my BA. Here I am today.
Until yesterday.
Yesterday, I got this e-mail:
Where to begin, where to begin…
Dumbass. Prick. Idiot.
He was so busy in his litigation plans that one fact slipped right over his tiny little head: I didn’t write the friggin’ article.
What happened is this: I found an interesting newsgroup posting. This newsgroup posting included a news article from a mainland paper that described several incidents that likely involved road rage. One such incident was this fellow. Apparently he had been arrested (the article plainly said this) for reckless driving. In the article, he had not commented, and his lawyer had been queried about road rage and denied much knowledge of such a thing.
I then followed this posting with my own comments. I did not mention this guy at all in my comments.
Had this dickwad actually read my report, he would have seen that I was simply commenting on the posting. Yet, he sends me that e-mail.
Of course I took this seriously. He was accusing me of libel, threatening to sic his pit bull attorney on me. Like that happens to me everyday. I took it as seriously as I would take a death threat. What choice did I have?
I contacted Professor and sought his help. Professor obliged my request to take down the report (which, by the way, screws up his own work, as successive generations of that clas often refer back to previous semesters’ work). Professor even offered to reply to the bastard for me. I declined. I had things to say to this arrogant putz.
I wanted to tell him to get his head out of his ass and actually read things carefully. I wanted to tell him to stop playing with himself and think before he sends out e-mail threats. I wanted him to go blow his lawyer rather than using him to threaten people. I wanted him to kiss my ass, above all. I wanted to reply with an e-mail that said,“Fuck off, weenie-boy.”
But I didn’t, couldn’t. I told him that things were taken care of. It took A LOT of effort to be cordial.
Bastard. I hope he really was arrested, and was thrown in the slammer with every flavor of pervert and bastard out there with him.
As if that didn’t piss me off enough, this morning, he sends me another e-mail:
WTF?! A smiley? I’ll show you how a smiley is used, you shmuck:
Hope that clears things up for you.
Okay, I’m feeling MUCH better.
