Dear Idiot Teenagers who thought it would be a good idea to post a whole bunch of stupid comments on The Fashion Police this week, calling me an “idiot” and generally advertising your lack of brain cells:
It was not a good idea.
It was an even worse idea to use your actual email addresses to do it, though.
You actual email addresses that were issued by your actual high school. Your high school whose Internet connection you happened to be using at the time you posted the comments in question. Your high school Internet connection with an IP address that traced right back to… you guessed it!… your high school!
Also not a good idea? Repeatedly posting your mobile phone number, asking me to call you on it. And yeah, sure, it could’ve been a fake number, but given that you weren’t bright enough to use a fake email address, I’m going to guess it was real. Hey, guess what? The site had almost 15,000 visitors that day! That’s a lot of phone calls from potentially dangerous random Internet strangers you could be receiving, huh? So you’ll understand why I had to notify your school and ask them to notify your parents, no? It was my duty as a responsible adult. And as an ever-so-slightly vindictive one, to be completely honest.
Also? You’re SO grounded, chilluns. And on detention for the rest of the month, hopefully. Enjoy!
Love,
Amber
Seriously, I don’t know what they’re teaching kids today. In my day we knew how to troll a website, and we knew how to do it right. None of this “using real email addresses and posting from easily-traced IPs” nonsense. Honestly. What is the world coming to when the youth of today don’t even know how to remain anonymous on the Internet? This was all fields then, you know…
Tagged blog comments, OMG internet drama!, the fashion police, trolls
There’s a full moon tonight. Can you tell? I can. I can always tell, though, and I don’t even need the little “moon” symbol in my diary. No, I can tell when there’s a full moon because of the absolute 100% batshit craziness that goes down on my blogs at around this time every month. (Note: not this one, though! The people who comment on this blog are all lovely and totally non-crazy! Please don’t shout at me!)
Seriously, this happens without fail every month, and mostly involves the comments section over at The Fashion Police (Which was two years old today, by the way. I almost didn’t post about that over there because after the comments I’ve been getting lately, I was pretty sure some bright spark would use it as an excuse to comment saying, “Oh, the blog’s two today? That’s two whole years of SUCK, bitch!” or something. Because really, nothing would surprise me now. Not when the moon is full, anyway.) although the other blogs attract their fair share of Crazies too.
Now, fair enough, The Fashion Police is a blog which gives and solicits opinions on clothes, so it’s always going to be a little bit controversial. In so far as clothes can actually be controversial, that is. I mean, seriously: I enjoy fashion enough to write about it for a living, but jeez, they’re just clothes, folks. That you wear. Does it really matter so much if someone doesn’t share your exact opinion on them? Well, apparently it does. On Friday? I was called a “douchebag” in my comments section, just because I said I liked a certain hat. A HAT, people. That’s so messed up it’s almost beyond comprehension to me. I mean, what must it be like to get so angry over the fact that some random stranger on the Internet likes a freakin’ HAT that you find yourself verbally amusing them? Honestly, there are people out there killing puppies and torturing kittens, and yet I’m a douchebag because I like a HAT? For real? What must these people be like when they read something really upsetting? And how has their stupidity not killed them yet?
(Weirdly, it’s always the things I like that get the most abuse. I don’t really know why. I can say I hate a certain item and that’ll be fine, but as soon as I say I like something I get people telling me I should be shot in the head and calling me a “f&*^%&g bitch”. And those are example of real comments, by the way…)
This is just the tip of the iceberg, though. All weekend I’ve been dealing with this kind of crap. And sure, the site is getting around 10,000 visitors per day, so there’s always a good chance that at least some of them are going to be assholes, but it’s the Full Moon Effect that makes it so hard to deal with, because, for the most part, everything is fine. People are nice. They’re polite. Even when they disagree with me, they do it in a reasonable, measured kind of way. All month, things coast along just fine, and then suddenly, WHAM! Full Moon Fever! Suddenly every second comment is abuse. Suddenly everyone’s an idiot. Suddenly I’m spending so much time deleting comments and wondering if I actually DO deserve to die because I said I liked a certain dress that I don’t have time to actually write. And even although I know the wave of awfulness will pass, and tomorrow things will (hopefully) be back to normal… it’s hard. It hurts. It really puts a downer on things, and makes me want to crawl back into bed until sanity is restored once more. Oh, the humanity!
I don’t think there can be many jobs in the world which involve opening yourself up to such hatred and abuse every day. Other than call centres, obviously. (I speak as the voice of experience here, by the way: I used to work in a call centre, and we could always tell when there was a full moon there, too, because that’s what people would start threatening to kill us, rather than just threatening to break our legs. Again, not making this up…) Sadly, there is no intelligence test people must pass to be able to use the Internet, which means that growing a thick skin is one of the main requirements of blogging for a living. And I’m not quite there, yet. Oh, my skin is a helluva lot thicker than it used to be – today I was able to just laugh off the email from the person who said he “wouldn’t be able to live with himself” without ranting in all lowercase for a few hundred words, and to roll my eyes at the fellow blogger who commented on Dollface (a beauty blog, let me remind you) to tell me that I shouldn’t be writing about hairstyles and should be focusing on “actual news” instead, namely dresses and celebrity anorexia rumours. (Er, yeah, because that’s totally “actual news”. And it’s not AT ALL unfair to criticize a beauty blog for not being a fashion/celebrity gossip blog, is it now? )
So my skin is getting thicker, but it’s not quite thick enough, and sometimes, when there’s a full moon, it feels very thin indeed. Which is why, just this once, I felt the need to stamp my little feet and have a bit of a rant. Sorry. I’ll stop now.
I still get to have the last laugh, though because the sites are growing all the time, and yesterday was our best day ever, which means that I get to keep on working from my spare room, and earning a living from looking at pictures of shoes on the Internet. Not bad for a complete freaking douchebag, no?
Tagged OMG internet drama!
Well, 2008 has arrived without incident. There was food. There was wine. There was karaoke. There was an email from an idiot telling me that I have a “vacuous frigid cold heart” (lack of punctuation his, I hasten to add), but that happened at the tail end of 2007, so so far 2008 remains unmarred by Stupid People, although probably not for long, knowing my luck.
And why was I told I have a “vacuous frigid cold heart” (that’s so going to be my new tagline next time I re-design this site, by the way), I hear you ask?* Because I would not let the person in question post spam on my fashion blog. When I told him this I got an email back saying:
“Nice to know the Christmas Spirit is dead in your vacuous frigid cold heart
Good luck in hell…”
Which was…nice. The guy is the owner of a website selling t-shirts. I don’t want to send him any traffic, but I promised him I’d be sure to tell everyone how totally lovely he is to deal with, so if you were to Google the words “Retro God”, you’d probably find him. Not that you’d be able to buy anything from him, though, because I’d imagine he’s probably topped himself by now, having sent me a follow up email telling me I was “ruining his life”, but that this was OK because he’d “had enough of it, anyway”. Weirdly, this melodramatic missive also included the question, “How on earth do fashion designers without a budget get noticed by you anyway?” Answer: NOT BY SENDING ME INSULTS BY EMAIL, EINSTEIN.
Anyway, that was 2007. I kind of miss it. It was the year I got married. Had my first holiday since Terry got sick. Returned to my sort-of-second-home, in Florida. Started going to the gym. Spent a memorable couple of days with orange teeth. Yeah, 2007 was a good one, alright. I just don’t think 2008 can match it, and this makes me worry about what hellish things 2008 may have in store for me. On the other hand, I guess it could have some pretty cool stuff in store, too: I’ll just have to hope that my vacuous, frigid, cold heart is up to the challenge of enjoying it all.
* Not really, but let’s pretend you care.
Tagged email fun, OMG internet drama!
Well, folks, it turns out that looking like a student was the very least of my worries. Just for the record, I probably still do look like a student – but I’ve now been informed that I now look "butch" and "ugly" too. Which is, you know… nice.
You see, way the hell back in August, I wrote this column for Shoewawa. For the benefit of those of you who really couldn’t give a damn about shoes (!), allow me to summarize: it was about trainers. More specifically, it was about my abiding hatred of them. It’s true, I really don’t like trainers. Sure, I wear them for the gym, where I have absolutely no choice in the matter, but it’s always been my firm belief that trainers are only for the gym. I would not, for instance, wear them to go shopping in. Or out to dinner. In fact, I wouldn’t wear them anywhere I wasn’t going to be engaging in some form of physical exercise, such is my dislike of them.
In stating this dislike, though, I was very careful to try not to offend the trainer-lovers, and to make it clear that this was just a personal preference, and no reflection on them and their beloved footwear. In fact, I even went so far as to say that I think trainers can and do look good on other people. Just not on me. This is MY irrational hatred you see, and I was talking about myself, so if you like trainers, then good for you: wear them with pride, and may you have much joy of them. Just don’t expect me to do likewise.
Today I wanted to link to that entry from something else I was writing it, so I went back to it and decided to take a quick look to see if any new comments had been added since the last time I viewed it. One had: a comment by a girl called "Saelynne". Here is what "Saelynne" had to say about me:
"You look butch enough to pull off trainers.
Only pretty girls can wear heels or ballet flats & look cute.
You my dear are definatly not one of them."
So, bringing my powerful intellect to bear on this statement, I dunno, but I don’t think Saelynne likes me, do you?
Now, I would be lying if I said this comment didn’t sting just a little. I mean, one minute I’m being told I look like a student, the next I’m a dog-rough, "butch" looking student to boot. Looks like that lucrative modelling career I’ve been planning will have to go on hold, then. And was that my ego I just saw limping out of the room there?
Now, at first I thought this I had inadvertently managed to offend one of the trainer-lovers after all. I seem to do this quite a lot, and not just to the trainer-lovers: there’s a freakishly large number of people out there who just CAN’T STAND the idea that some people have different taste from them – hence the fact that when I wrote about a dress I didn’t like last week, someone emailed me to say that I was obviously just saying that about it because I am fat. So, let’s see, what do we have so far: I’m fat, ugly, butch, and I look like a student. Thanks, Internet! Love you too!
Anyway, Saelynne wasn’t actually disagreeing with me about the trainers (in fact, trainers are the only shoes I should wear, according to her, because I’m too "butch" for heels. Looks like there’s a whole lotta size 4 stilettos coming to an eBay auction near you, folks: get ‘em while they’re hot!). So she was just a random, spiteful bitch. Wow. I mean, I’ve always known that if assholes could fly, the Internet would be an airport, but sometimes amazes me the lengths people will go to to prove what assholes they really are. Also, the fact that there are STILL people who don’t know how to spell "definitely" correctly is pretty amazing too. (I know, I know, it was a cheap shot. She wasn’t brave enough to put her photo up above her comment, like I did on my post, though, so it’s all I’ve got to go on. That and the fact that she’s a complete freaking loon, obviously.)
And while I guess I should be flattered that people like "Saelynne" consider me to be so important that a few words from me about shoes is enough to turn them into raving lunatics, I’m thinking that "influential among crazy people" probably isn’t too much of an accolade, is it? Not really one to write home about. Women, huh?
This is Fat Amber, the Butch Blogger, signing out…
Tagged OMG internet drama!
GOD. As if it wasn’t enough that we have to fight them on the beaches, in the fields, streets and outside the doctor’s surgery, now the Stupid People are freakin’ EMAILING ME.
Last week this flooded into my inbox:
—–Original
Message—–
From: A stupid person ]
Sent: 03 October 2007 16:06
To: Amber McNaught
Subject: how?
how do i submit my work?
Now, on the surface of it, this may not seem too bad – until, of course, you realise that I get emails like this all the time and I have NO IDEA what these people want from me. Straight away it got my back up: I mean, did this guy’s mother never teach him how to send emails? In MY day it was the belt for us if we didn’t observe proper email etiquette: a salutation, a sign-off, correct punctuation, some clue as to why the hell we were writing to the person… Nowadays these crazy kids are all just “HOW?” As if I will know what they’re talking about. Jesus.
Well, I thought on this for a couple of minutes, but during that time I did not miraculous become involved in any kind of enterprise in which people would need to submit their “work” to me, so I wrote back an equally abrupt:
What are you talking about, dude?
In return I got this:
03
October 2007 16:11
To: Amber McNaught
Subject: Re:
how?
on a site i have
just been on it said to contact this address to ask any questions, i would like
to know ho wi submit my work onto the site
Now, this obviously helped me quite a lot, because luckily it’s not like there are millions of websites in the world or anything, is it? To be honest, though, it was news to me that one of these millions of sites was advising people to contact me (Me! Little me!) with any questions, so I asked my mystery correspondent if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to tell me which site he was talking about.
In return, he sent me a URL. Just a URL, mind. Because that’s a nice way to communicate with people. Polite. Makes you want to help them, you know? Anyway, luckily the URL was that of my infrequently-updated and actually pretty-much-forgotten-about a freelance writing blog. Which does not accept submissions of people’s work onto it, so really, we were no further forward. I brought my mighty intellect to bear on the problem before me, though, and managed to deduce that he was probably referring to the writing competition I had posted about a couple of days earlier. That would be the post which states “For more information and submission guidelines visit <clicky linky>.” NOT the post that states “Feel free to send me one-line emails trying to submit your work to me,” because that post? Doesn’t actually exist. Gah.
Sure enough, when I emailed my new friend to tell him that no, my blog does not accept writing submissions, I got back:
ok then, how do you enter the competition then?
Now, why could he not have just said that in the first place? Why could he not have just written somethinhg along the lines of: “Hi, I was just reading your blog and wondered if you could tell me how to enter the writing cometition you posted about? P.S. You rock.” Why could he not have written that? Sure, I’d still have thought he was a bit of a dumbass because the instructions are IN. THE. POST. but at least I’d have thought he was polite.
I told him to just read the post about the thing and follow the instructions in it. I didn’t hear from him again, so he’s probably off emailing other people about it now. I bet he wins that writing competition, though, if he ever works out how to enter it – talents like his don’t come along very often, you know?
And so it goes. Every week brings another email from someone who wants to know how to become a professional writer, but who has barely mastered the art of communication/ writing. Every week I have to sit on my hands to stop myself from telling them honestly what their chances are. Mostly, though, I wish they would just stop emailing me. Or would at least learn how to communicate people with something approaching manners, rather than just firing off one-line, un-punctuated emails saying “HOW?”
Tagged email fun, OMG internet drama!
You know how people are always saying imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? Yeah, that sucks.
On Friday, Terry and I went to dinner with my parents. When we got home, I decided to have a quick look at my web stats for the day, because yes, I am that obsessed. On this occasion, though, my obsession turned out to be a good thing – and that’s something I’ve never been able to say before – because on this occasion, the referrers for my Big-Blogger blog turned up a site I hadn’t seen before.
"Why, some lovely person has linked to my blawg!" I thought. "I will visit that person’s site right now!"
So I did. And found myself reading… my own posts. Yes, the swines had copied every single entry I’d ever written at Big-Blogger, and pasted them into their own site, lock, stock and every last one of my smoking barrels. They had basically replicated my entire site, stealing thousands and thousands of words and passing them off as their own. WELL. Unluckily for them, I’d had a couple of glasses of wine that night, so I immediately set about leaving comments on the stolen entries (needless to say, there were no contact details on the site, or I think I’d have overcome my phone phobia pretty damn quick) saying that the content had been illegally copied from me, and that the bill would be in the post, along with a lawyer’s letter.
By the time I’d written two of these comments (and Terry had tracked down the name of the company hosting the site, so I could complain to them, too), an email had flooded in, claiming to be from the "administrator of the site". I reproduce it here for your amusement:
"i’m the administrator of those wordpress instalations a haven’t know about
ilegal content. i’m sending emails to get down all content inmediatly. thanks
for the advice. you will be notifiel soon as posilbe."
Ha! Of course, I wrote back, saying I didn’t care if he "haven’t know" about it, it needed to be deleted immediately: otherwise I would be sending him a bill for the stolen content, and would be charging $1 per word for it. (No, I don’t know why I went all American on his ass. Must’ve been the wine talking). Meanwhile, I started drafting whiny, complainy emails to the web hosts and Google. And also to my mum, but don’t you do that if you ever find yourself in the same position, because there’s really nothing she can do about it, OK?
Anyway. I didn’t need to send my emails in the end because by the time I clicked back onto the thieving asshats’ website to give Google the link, it had been deleted. Amber – 1, Thieving Asshats – nil. Take that, thieving asshats! (And party).
So yes, that was my Friday night. And, of course, I had always known that this kind of thing happens on the Interwebs all the time, but because I am a bit dim sometimes, I had been working on the assumption that it would not happen to me. Do not do as I do, kids. They picked the wrong person to mess with, though. Oh yes. ‘Cos I’m a survivor! I’m not gonna give up! I’m not gonna stop! I’ma work harder! Or something.
(Needless to say, the "administrator" of the site never did "notofiel" me that it had been deleted. Funny, that.)
Tagged OMG internet drama!
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Trolling the Internet 101
Dear Idiot Teenagers who thought it would be a good idea to post a whole bunch of stupid comments on The Fashion Police this week, calling me an “idiot” and generally advertising your lack of brain cells:
It was not a good idea.
It was an even worse idea to use your actual email addresses to do it, though.
You actual email addresses that were issued by your actual high school. Your high school whose Internet connection you happened to be using at the time you posted the comments in question. Your high school Internet connection with an IP address that traced right back to… you guessed it!… your high school!
Also not a good idea? Repeatedly posting your mobile phone number, asking me to call you on it. And yeah, sure, it could’ve been a fake number, but given that you weren’t bright enough to use a fake email address, I’m going to guess it was real. Hey, guess what? The site had almost 15,000 visitors that day! That’s a lot of phone calls from potentially dangerous random Internet strangers you could be receiving, huh? So you’ll understand why I had to notify your school and ask them to notify your parents, no? It was my duty as a responsible adult. And as an ever-so-slightly vindictive one, to be completely honest.
Also? You’re SO grounded, chilluns. And on detention for the rest of the month, hopefully. Enjoy!
Love,
Amber
Seriously, I don’t know what they’re teaching kids today. In my day we knew how to troll a website, and we knew how to do it right. None of this “using real email addresses and posting from easily-traced IPs” nonsense. Honestly. What is the world coming to when the youth of today don’t even know how to remain anonymous on the Internet? This was all fields then, you know…
Amber
Hi, I'm Amber. I'm a full-time fashion/shoe blogger from the UK, and this is the story of my life, my clothes, and the International Man of Mystery Next Door. You can read more from me at my other blogs, The Fashion Police and Shoeperwoman.
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