My aim is true.

03 October 2008

A Response

I’ve taken to reading blogs of people I don’t know. Well, one blog in particular. I don’t know this person but my sister’s husband went to high school with this lady. I know so much about this person (minus the regularity of her bowel) that I could walk up to her at her high school reunion and I could carry on a conversation with her about her daughter who was blessed in a miniature version of her mother’s wedding dress, how her husband is a professional golfer (I could Google his name and find his statistics), what kind of car she drives, and how much she enjoyed her last girl’s night out at Café Rio.

I was reading a post about Spencer’s new job as a math grader. There was an anonymous comment left there. Here is the text:

You might want to be careful what you post. Not everybody has the mathematical background that you currently have. To judge somebody as "stupid" is inconsiderate. Maybe the student doesn’t understand the concept and here you sit judging their knowledge. You have no right to call somebody stupid when you have no clue of their background in learning. You have no right to judge their competency in the subject when you have no clue the circumstances in their life at the moment. With the dreams and aspirations you have, you have an obligation to treat students with respect regardless of their intellect. How dare you judge the students based only on the assignments you see, and not the struggles in their life that you do not understand.

It seems to me that Anonymous’ opinion is coming from a very deep place inside. This is not where the issue lies with me. With me, the issue lies in the following text that was left by Burntacular after Anonymous poured their opinion into the void that is the internet:

Who the heck is sitting on their high horse reading your blog. If I remember correctly this is your blog right? If they have an opinion they should have their own blog!! Get a life you self righteous "stupid" person!

We are all entitled to our own opinions. That is our God given right (hell, I’m voting for Obama much to the chagrin to my mother and many other Mormon friends of mine). Anonymous has an opinion about the treatment of people we don’t know and will probably never meet. It looks like Burntacular has an opinion about the opinion of Anonymous. Now, since we are all human beings and are allowed to make choices and formulate our own views on everything is there some way we could get to a common ground on this whole “stupid” “high horse” “self righteous” issue? Senator Biden and Governor Palin did agree on homosexual marriage and Israel last night. So if a Democrat and a Republican can agree on national and international issues what’s keeping people from finding the same page on this?

Oh, it’s all in print. There is no tone in print.

6 Comments:

Blogger jeremy said...

Hmmm... sounds like something a stupid math student would say. Ok, not really.

There's one random blog that I read that's really good, I might have to share it with you sometime. But I usually refrain from commenting because if I did, I would be the only one. I like to think that the author has no idea that anyone cares to read her blog. I like to think that you'd be less guarded in what you say that way.

09:45

 
Blogger Creativity Escapes Me said...

What kills me is some of the stuff that people post. Once something gets posted on the internet I feel it is free domain for criticism and opinion. I think the phrase in Spencer's post (which, by the way, the entire post has been deleted by the author) was "Go away and take your stupid with you." Now, I'm not a teacher or a grader of math papers but I am in an English 1010 class. At first I felt that it was a complete waste of my time until I got to chatting with a group member. She said that she likes it when I read her papers because I'll give her the honest line, not just, "Wow, that was good." Do I feel that Anonymous was unjust in how they felt? No. Everyone's opinion is their own. What I would like to see more of is where Anonymous comes from. Male or female? Profession? Young or old? Single, married, separated, divorced, or widowed? Let's get some background on Anonymous before we just plain jump to conclusions about who they are (there was a super long response calling Anonymous out - this has gone by the wayside with the deleted post). Maybe what I'm getting at here is tolerance.

17:46

 
Blogger . . . said...

I wholeheartedly agree with the tolerance issue. Since when was it so appropriate to call people names? Is it because you cannot see the person so the emotion that they will feel is not taken in when you do such a horrendous thing? What ever happened to the good old days where we just popped the guy in the nose and then you were friends? Oh yeah, now you could get sued. Another thing that really bugs me is the this-is-a-personal-blog-so-I-can-complain-and-name-call-and-judge-all-I-want crap. Like creativity escapes me states, it's out there now. You can't tell me that you have every right to say what you want then turn around and be angry when you get zinged. It's hypocritical. This void that is the internet has really skewed human relationships. Another thing that I noticed in this post is the response of Burtnacular and ties in with creativity escapes me's above comment. What ever happened to getting to know someone before judging and name calling happened? Have we all become so dependent on this cold, electronic form of communication that we don't want the warm fuzzies of actually conversing with a person? Whatever. I think I'm going to keep my conversations with warm-blooded creatures. Not this warm computer that burns my lap, which it's doing right now.

Whoa . . . sorry about the length. I must be on my soapbox.

21:46

 
Blogger Spencer said...

Yay, blog drama!

22:18

 
Blogger Spencer said...

I suppose I should clarify something at this point. At my invitation, the anonymous poster emailed me, and we resolved our mutual issues in that forum rather than in the more public and heat-garnering Blog Post Comments Arena of Doom 3000(TM). Wanting to put a damper on further blog drama, and feeling that the issue was resolved to both my and anonymous's satisfaction, I felt that deleting the post, comments and all, would be the most prudent course of action.

Knowing the way things go, it's not unlikely that I'll be accused of practicing revisionist history, but I guess you can't win them all.

22:26

 
Blogger Creativity Escapes Me said...

Drama is such a sophomoric word. I'm 26 years old. I like to think I'm fostering a place where two people of differing opinion can debate their view points without the fear of ridicule.

Has anyone taken offense yet? Once someone does that then all hell breaks loose. That's when people start leaving church and family gatherings.

16:46

 

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