Why Go Out of Your Way to Trash a Fellow Stumbler?
Negative reviews are a great feature on StumbleUpon - some people use them to criticize stuff think don’t think is up to snuff, while others (like me) try to reserve the ‘thumbs down’ for spam-filled sites or pages littered with lots of in-the-way ads. So OK, I wrote a post about how people using female avatars seem to get a lot of ‘friends,’ even if they aren’t Stumbling many pages:
So fine. Some people don’t like this, and that’s cool. Some think it’s apt and funny, and that’s great. Some people think it sucks, and review it negatively. All fine. So here’s what I don’t get: someone who doesn’t blog anything of their own, just reviews people’s work and rates it on SU, goes out of their way to personally trash the author on their blog:
Anyway, I’m thick-skinned - I can take it. But there are people of all ages and backgrounds using SU, and some might really take things like this to heart. Feel free to negatively review this, trash me, etc…, but just remember to ask yourself: why am I on StumbleUpon? Is it to rampantly trash people or to find cool stuff? If you don’t like something, why not just Stumble on? In this case I’ll make one tiny exception.
UPDATE: So DLAF has responded with something I never expected:
OK, now, I think you could make an (albeit difficult) argument that implying someone is “furiously masturbating” to something they wrote which is “fucking obvious” is not personal. I think, however, you’ll have a pretty tough time claiming that calling someone a “dickcunt” and particularly an “utter utter (etc…) cunt” isn’t personally insulting. As I said: fine, I can take it. But for crying out loud: own up to the fact that you’re trashing people and not just their pages, and think about the fact that others might have teeth and bite back (like me) or might be genuinely hurt or insulted.
SECOND UPDATE: I responded to DLAF and not the number of friends she sent to thumb this down and leave harassing messages - I am not interested in wasting time on some flame war. As a result of the fact that I only responded to her, she has decided that I am a racist woman-hater - which are rather humorous things to accuse a raging liberal of. Meanwhile, she appears unwilling to either write back to me directly or stop this - so I’m putting a stop to it right now. Thanks for the laughs, DLAF, your hypocrisy has been entertaining - I just hope you don’t step on the wrong person’s toes. Oh, and feel free to thumb this down if you want StumbleUpon to become Myspace.
Josh said,
July 23, 2007 @ 6:38 am
I don’t get it either. I occasionally get incredibly mean & nasty comments on my Youtube videos, when all the commenter should have done was *not* watch my video.
There are a lot of unhappy, unintelligent, and mean people hiding behind the safety of their computers
Aulara said,
July 23, 2007 @ 6:54 am
hey there, just wanted to say I completely agree with you. I’ve given very few thumbs down in my time as a stumbler and have never given any to another stumblers page. Except for one which was full of filth but hey, i was having a bad day and they’d sent me a message I found offensive. I think it’s sad the way some stumblers trash others… it takes away the enjoyment of the site.
kroq said,
July 23, 2007 @ 11:17 am
Thanks Josh and Aulara. Interestingly, the only people who left comments *on this blog* left positive ones, though the majority of people rating it *on SU* left negative ones. Go figure.
So the detractors are basically saying ‘don’t whine about it, it’s the internet.’ That’s fair and fine to say for sure. The thing is: there’s a reason I avoid Digg, StumbleUpon, MySpace and all those other sites: to my mind, there is more negative energy than positive - people waste more time trashing stuff they don’t like than talking about the interesting stuff they do find. I had thought SU was different, though the comments I’m now getting (on the SU review page) about this post suggest otherwise.
Bump said,
July 23, 2007 @ 12:34 pm
The only stumble pages I ‘thumb down’ are guys pages with a vagina for a pic. That’s just creepy.
The-Bozz said,
July 23, 2007 @ 12:47 pm
Dude, you took the words off my mouth. Negative comments should be reserved for the few times they’re really necessary.
Unfortunately, there’s trolls everywhere, and there’s always people who’ll fall for it. In fact, who hasn’t fallen in that game sometime?
kroq said,
July 23, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
Completely agreed … we all fly off the handle sometimes. What troubles me is that people hide behind anonymity while insulting others, and then won’t own up to what they do. In this case, DLAF can’t even seem to figure out that she is, in fact, being insulting. Fine, if someone wants to insult others, that’s fine. But at least own it, recognize that’s the kind of person you are and don’t hide behind lies on a blog that no one can make comments on, and, as such, no one can truly defend themselves or their ideas on.
Bryan said,
July 23, 2007 @ 2:18 pm
I think the issue that you have is that there are a lot of people out there who have MAJOR self esteem issues. This is especially prelevent within the internet community. What you’ve got is a bunch of low self-esteem geeks and nerds who have no life outside of the internet and need to put down other people in order to feel better about themselves. If you wore a sign around your neck that said “I author AllSux.com” and ran across these guys on the street (presuming they ever leave their dorm room), none of them would do or say ANYTHING. So, the moral of my little story is take anything these guys say with a grain of salt and be satisfied with the thought that they will NEVER have a happy and healthy relationship with a woman.
thoughtful said,
July 23, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
I am ruthless about thumbing down. If a page has no content, I thumb down. If it’s actively offensive to me, I thumb down. If the page is nothing but a “site in progress” sign, I thumb down. Life is short.
Thumbing down, making comments that explain why, and personal insults, are three different things.
Tim said,
July 23, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
Whatever. I agreed wholeheartedly with your original blog, and as a heterosexual male, I would be lying to say that one or two nonstellar pages got thumbed up because the Stumbler was sort of cute. It’s a male instinct, I guess. However, these losers who vehemently trash something someone has submitted are just internet parasites. They are the same people who a few years ago were signing into chat rooms just to call people names and sign out real quick. I’m sure it’s some sort of defense mechanic built up from years of being bullied on the schoolyard. Online, they are able to so elegantly put into words all the things they were too cowardly to say to their enemies.
kroq said,
July 25, 2007 @ 12:37 pm
It really says something that *still* none of them has posted a negative comment *right on* this blog. There is an SU forum where this post is linked from and trashed, of course instigated by DLAF, and a number of folks have gone out of their way to thumb this down - yet no one leaves a comment, and DLAF won’t respond when contacted. Too funny.
Liam said,
July 28, 2007 @ 4:38 am
I think there are just a lot of angry bloggers out there…people who think it is almost uncool to go without at least a few thumbs down when they are online…then again, doesn’t the thumbs down help SU give you more of the sites you want/don’t want!?!
Kingreaper said,
August 25, 2007 @ 5:44 pm
I don’t get why you felt the need to not only air your little tiff here, but also T-up the blog post, as though deliberately trying to attract Stumblers who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in you.
Seriously, this is a PERSONAL blog-post, there’s no real reason for you to T-up it, no-one who stumbles on it will actually CARE.
And you seem to think that T-downs shouldn’t be used “just because you don’t like something”. Wait, what are they for then? Your votes are to show what you like and don’t like. What you want to stumble on, and what you don’t. I wouldn’t want to stumble on this blog post, so it gets a T-D. I considered giving it a basic flaming, but *meh* in this case it just plain wouldn’t be funny.
And it’s only worth blogging a bad site if the review is actually good.
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DLAF said,
January 19, 2008 @ 9:08 pm
“I’m DLAF and I am a cyber cunt. In my spare time I like to pretend I am bad cause I have a potty mouth. In reality I am an insecure twat trying to fit in by schmoozing up to Stumble trolls. I like to pretend they think I iz kewl.”
DLAF is a wannabe. Her wrought sexual insecurity in being a closeted dyke is surpassed by her need to fit in. Her pontificated review sounded bad enough I guess but I noticed her whiny backpeddling. Pussy.
The stupid bitch couldn’t function on her own so she attaches herself to the “big stumble meanies.” She’s the dumb fat kid in the tough gang at school who gets ignored and spit on by her own but lacks the balls to go it alone.
So to get some more respect she got the mean kids to come by and thumb you down eh? Yeah. She’s a pussy. See how this works? She makes a bad review of you for approval by her leaders. Got your attention instead. Offered a closeted apology although she’d deny it because she’s a whining tormented psycho case. And now she won’t speak back to you. Had you not mentioned her name I’d still have known who you were talking about. She is one stupidly obvious cunt.
Watching her self-destruction has been one of the highlights of my SU experience.
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