As a charming capper to a very long week, I've gotten some hate mail. Someone calling themselves Marian left a comment on my last blog entry but one, telling me that I'm creepy and embarrassing myself. The specific angry objection seemed to be to me making conjectures about the inside of Brian Molko's head, so I would hazard a guess that it's a Placebo fan? The Tokio Hotel fans were much nicer. At least she(?) had excellent spelling and punctuation.

The comment was then promptly deleted. I'm not sure if the author thought they were doing me a mitzvah there. Possibly they just couldn't be bothered to find my actual email address after already going to all the effort of reading an article they hated, and then composing a response.

I am unsure what to make of this. I know people on the internets can cruise by and leave far more vitriolic things in the comments section. Usually those are on much bigger blogs, or a post that's gone viral, and on much more politically- or ideologically-charged targets. I find myself perplexed at what I wrote that was so angry-making. From my point of view, that entry was mostly about me and about writers in general, tied back in to a public figure who got me thinking about all that in the first place.

For the record, all of my observations are based on either finished work or interviews that an artist has released into the wild intentionally. I can go rummage through YouTube again and find all the bits that went into that one, if people want.

I wondered if my commenter in fact had information that I didn't, which would prove my guesses were mortifyingly wrong. I'd rather correct mortifyingly wrong things, so I checked to see if they had a blog that might tell me. The profile is blank, dates to April 2016, and said it had been viewed exactly once -- i.e., by me, right then -- so they had evidently registered it specifically to criticize me. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that, either. If you want to leave a comment, good or bad, Blogger should accept anonymous ones.

This is all just stuff I think. I thought I made that pretty clear. I don't know if any of it's right, and will probably never find out. I use it more as a jumping off point for things I have observed about human beings in general, and often about myself in specific, than anything else. If you are ever tempted to use me as a source, don't. I am an authority on myself and nothing else. I just have a lot of opinions. It's all drivel, which is why it goes here, in my free and easily-ignored internet blog.

I'm not sure what's objectionable about pointing out that a guy who freely admits he's kind of weird has said stuff that suggests he works kind of weird, I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything uncomplimentary. I like Molko -- genuinely, I think he's interesting, and I enjoy both his real work, and watching him mess with interviewers who ask him stupid questions.

Am I missing something here? I try to keep internet comments in perspective, but if this is nothing anyone wants to see again, I honestly want to know. You can comment, anonymously or logged-in, or send it to me privately at miss.arabella.flynn@gmail.com.

Comments

  1. I enjoy pretty much all your entries. You fall into the category of 'people whose very grocery lists are fun to read'; the text-based equivalent of 'could declaim the phone book compellingly'.

    "Creepy" and "embarrassing yourself" indicate that your phantom commenter got squicked, probably by the sexual content or the families-aren't-always-perfect content. People having that kind of reaction tend to launch a flood of unconsidered words, whatever they think is most likely to make you shut up and take it back.
    Your regular readers would not be fazed by any of that content, so this person probably arrived via search results.

    This commenter seems to have though better of it as soon as they hit Send. Deleting is an attempt to make it not have happened.

    They're probably trying to forget this happened, and probably won't be back. Water under the bridge.



    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for the perspective. I'm aware that my idea of normal is probably very skewed -- I have a sociology degree, for god's sake, you don't get those by being unremarkably well-adjusted -- and if someone is freaking out, it might be a good idea to double-check whether it's my fault.

      For all the hints I get of non-standard brain wiring and having a difficult time of it growing up, Molko seems to have done quite well for himself. He might not have figured out how to be happy until he was an adult, but he did get there.

      Delete
  2. I'm with Kathmandu on this, for what it's worth. People sometimes get oddly protective of their celebrities, would be my guess.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm with Kathmandu on this, for what it's worth. People sometimes get oddly protective of their celebrities, would be my guess.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The mystery of "Himmmm"

Fun things to feed rats