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2001-08-13 / 1:37 p.m. ~An Unhealthy Exchange~ This is the current exchange between the previously mentioned diarist (who shall go nameless and linkless here) and myself: I submitted his writing to Quoted because I thought some of it was very good. The author of that diary printed my submission and I was excited for the diarist I had quoted. Thusly, I wrote to him: Hey, did you see? She put you in there, finally! Yahoo!!! Congratulations, man. Oh, in case you didn't know, I'm still reading you, I love your diary. Loved the subway stuff.........I know what it's like to lust after someone from afar. He did not respond. I made a note in his guestbook, following an entry in which someone else had congratulated him on being in Quoted. I said that he owed me an email! A little Thank You was in order. No response. So, I wrote this to him, via email: Did you even get the email I sent you? The one where I said, Hey, you got in Quoted! Isn't that cool?!???? I know your plate is really full, but I feel slighted by you, offended. Couldn't you have just taken a minute or two to click "reply" and said, Yeah, I saw that, thanks.? I don't get it. Maybe you can enlighten me. I just think it was really rude for you to blow me off like that. I got you traffic to your site, which most of us want. Don't you? Take care. I hope the job search is going well. This is what I get in return: If you are left feeling slighted because some online entity ignores you, then you really need to examine your grasp on reality. That sort of emotional investment is unhealthy. I think your entire premise is flawed. While it's obvious that your life is lived largely online, mine is not. I don't care that my shitty online journal made it into quoted because it doesn't make me any better of a writer. I don't write here to encourage some kind of telephonic emotional connection, and I'm not looking for anyone to forge any kind of relationship with me based on the illusion of insight into my life and my thoughts. Roughly translated, I write here because I enjoy writing. I write here because I want to remember my thoughts. I write here because I want to be better at the craft of writing, and the only way to maintain those skill is to practice. If people read my journal and enjoy selected pieces, that's fine, but I'm not seeking out any sort of interaction based on that. I think that you are craving interaction and you try and find it in a passive aggressive fashion here online. Its fine that you do that, but you have to understand that I couldn't care less if one person or a hundred people read what I write. It doesn't change how I write or what I write about. The issue I'm talking around is your idea that I should thank you for increasing traffic to my site. I appreciate your effort and the idea that you felt the need to put forth that effort, but the end result of being in quoted...I could care less about. If I were to want more traffic to my site, that would fundimentally change the reason for my journal from exhibition to interaction. I write because I want to write, not because I want to be read. It's fine that you do things the opposite way, but you have to try and understand my point of view. Unless there is some other reason, you submitted me to quoted because you enjoy my writing. While I appreciate that you enjoy what I write, I shouldn't feel obligated to thank you for liking it. You said that you thought it was rude of me to not take the time out of my already turbulant life to thank you for getting me into quoted. I think it's more then slightly rude of you to publicly hint at the notion that I should be thanking you for some sense of internet fame you believe you've created around me. My life is not lived in electrons. Nice, huh? Did I deserve that? No. I hesitated, but not for long, before writing back, and hoping I would never hear from him again I get this: > > If you are left feeling slighted because some online entity > "online entity"? Is that how you think of yourself? I was thinking you are a person. That's exactly the problem. I am not a person to you. You don't know anything about me, other then the limited view I present you. You have no secure knowledge that anything I say is true. I SHOULD be an online entity to you and nothing more. To believe anything more demonstrates an unhealthy emotional investment.
> > ignores you, then you really need to examine your grasp on reality. That sort of emotional investment is unhealthy. > > My grasp on reality needs no examining, but thanks for your amateur psychoanalysis. I have no "emotional investment" in you. And yet you fish for a thank you on three sepperate occasions. You read my journal regularly, you see what's going on in my life and you see how often I'm updating. Any normal person would deduce that I'm a bit busy, yet you invent some sort of rebuff because I haven't written you in (gasp) a week? This entire e-mail demonstrates emotional investment, and you're only lying to yourself if you try and deny that. > > I think your entire premise is flawed. While it's obvious that your life is lived largely online, > > obvious? You don't even know me. Obvious. It seems that every other day you're writing about your journal in your journal. You constantly bemoan your sitemeter stats and constantly watch your traffic. You write to webmasters and wet your panties when they write you back. Your interaction with your real world friends, exfriends, exlovers, lovers, whomever, seems to be routed almost entirely through e-mail. Your life is lived largely online. You choose to be inflamed by the truth of my statement rather then the idea behind it. You live your life online, I don't. Mine ends at the keyboard. I don't want any interaction from people online, I'm not looking to make friends who exist only in electrons. I don't have any interest in ever crossing between the online and offline worlds (ie - meeting internet people in the real world). My point was that it's fine that you do, but I'm not interested in any of that.
> > I don't write here to encourage some kind of telephonic emotional connection, and I'm not looking for anyone to forge any kind of relationship with me based on the illusion of insight into my life and my thoughts. > > Why is your diary public then? Why not lock it? Why not write for just you? You do want people to read it, you even have a Guestbook. Your premise is again flawed. There is a huge difference between blind exhibition and interaction. I do write just for me, and I write only to please myself. To imply a desire for people to read it, well that would completely change the reasons why I write...and thus what I write. I obviously don't give a shit if anyone reads it, otherwise I would have been submitting myself to quoted. You are applying your own neurotic disassociative beliefs about diaryland onto me, and it obviously does not apply.
> > If people read my journal and enjoy selected pieces, that's fine, but I'm not seeking out any sort of interaction based on that. I think that you are craving interaction > > "Craving"? Gee, you and I had a nice chat on AOL Messenger one day and I told you how great I thought your writing was, and that I sent in some of it to Quoted. I was excited for you when she actually printed some. > Craving interaction? The two are completely unrelated. My statement about you craving attention is not insulting, it's contrasting the differences between us. You constantly write in your journal about sitemeter stats, about who's reading you, about writing to webmasters (who you describe as internet celebrities). You describe how limited your real world interactions are, and how your office interactions always leave you lonely and paranoid. You are craving attention. If that truth offends you, then you have issues. > > and you try and find it in a passive aggressive fashion here online. Its fine that you do that, but you have to understand that I couldn't care less if one person or a hundred people read what I write. It doesn't change how I write or what I write about. > > Again...site meter, guestbook. Need I say more? Your premise is again flawed. You are surprisingly unperceptive. You take every bit of logical explanation I set forth and ignore it because I have a guestbook and a sitemeter that I check once every two weeks. The issue I'm talking around is your idea that I should thank you for increasing traffic to my site. I appreciate your effort and the idea that you felt the need to put forth that effort, but the end result of being in quoted...I could care less about. > I didn't feel the need to put forth the effort. I liked your writing, but I'm not sure why anyone should, you don't like it, you don't like yourself, you don't like much of anything. For an online entity you are awfully negative and self-loathing. Not a lot of emotional investment, eh? I stand by my point. I appreciate that you felt the need to submit me to quoted, but I never would have done so on my own. I don't give a shit that I'm in quoted. The truth is that you want to be in quoted. Submit yourself, you obviously would appreciate it a lot more then I do. > > If I were to want more traffic to my site, that would fundimentally change the reason for my journal from exhibition to interaction. I write because I want to write, not because I want to be read. It's fine that you do things the opposite way, but you have to try and understand my point of view. > > You ought to have a private diary then. Why have a public one if this is true? Illogical, completely. You test my patience. Admittedly, we're caught on the most fine of lines between desire and exhibition, but if you can't understand the difference...well, then logic is wasted on you. I write because I want to be good at writing. If people read it, I might just be a little bit good. If no one reads it, I probably stink. In that sense it's objective. If I try and direct people to my site, if I write about my journal constantly and watch my sitemeter stats...if I put forth any effort to get people to read me, then the fundimental thrust of the writing changes.
> > Unless there is some other reason, you submitted me to quoted because you enjoy my writing. While I appreciate that you enjoy what I write, I shouldn't feel obligated to thank you for liking it. > > When someone does something nice for someone else - as in submitting you, and you did say to me that you check Quoted every day..... - it is customary to say Thank You. It's polite, it's etiquette, you know that, I'm not sure why you are being so incredibly nasty. Bad day? Again, your belief is based wholely on your skewed view of why I write. I said I apprecaited the effort, but not the end result. More importantly, what kind of person takes it upon themselves to "do something nice" for another person and then demands thanks for it?? Some people call that an emotional leach, others- passive aggressive. You said that you thought it was rude of me to not take the time out of my already turbulant life to thank you for getting me into quoted. I think it's more then slightly rude of you to publicly hint at the notion that I should be thanking you for some sense of internet fame you believe you've created around me. > > Publicly? What, do you read my diary? Why? Why would you read what I, a mere online entity, have to say about my daily life? I don't know what you're talking about. Publicly as in what you wrote in my guestbook. I've stopped reading your diary for the simple reason that you've made it private. I have no interest in reading someone's private diary because the line crosses from exhibition to voyeurism. I want to read what people present to the world, I don't have any interest in that which people feel any need to hide. If you've been writing about me in your diary, then I don't know anything about it. >I get the impression you don't really care about anyone, not even yourself. You're half correct. I don't care about anyone online, and thus I don't feel the need to sugarcoat anything I say. Perhaps you should try and figure out why you're insulted by the relatively benign ideas I've directed at you. You might find enlightenment.
> Well, my diary is for me now, me alone, because I do not want this type of interaction. I didn't deserve this, I liked what I knew about you, I enjoyed your writing, I complimented you, I submitted you, I was excited, for you, but you are nothing but unappreciative and simply mean-spirited in return. Again, I don't deserve it and it makes absolutely no sense. It all makes complete sense. You are still operating under the premise that you've somehow done me a favor. I appreciate that you felt the need to try and get me into quoted (and thus direct some extra traffic to your journal), but I don't care that I'm in quoted. If you can't understand that, then you are truly dense. If that insults you, then you really have a limited grasp on reality. I'm not sure what bug is up this person's ass, or why he wants to insist that I am passive aggressive, my thinking being that he doesn't even know the defniition of the term he so recklessly bandies about, or why he is so incredibly angry at me, and inisistent that people who write online do not exist. This is a totaly mystery and I would recommend to anyone to stay away from this person, for he seems unstable and overtly hostile. Oh, for the record, in case the above is confusing, he wrote a reply to my reply to his nastiness, so the ">>" remarks are him and the ">" remarks are mine, and the text with nothing in front of it, one can tell by the tone also, is definitely his. Cost of the War in Iraq
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