egoboo and the anonymous coward

[redbird]

(a title that deserves a better use than this, but I'm not sure what kind of book it would be; reminds me of elisem's named necklcases)

I posted this to soc.support.fat-acceptance.moderated yesterday:

Summer may be two months off, but it's 90 degrees here in the
nonexistent shade. That's shorts and tank top weather.

So I was walking home through the park, carrying a couple of cut-off
tree branches [1], and I heard a boy say "She's cool, she's got a
tattoo". So I stopped, said "I've got three", and turned so he and
his friends could see the bird on my left arm. I answered the standard
question (does it hurt?) and a non-standard one (about tattoos on
fingers), and wandered off, pleased.

I'm happy with my body, but it's still nice to get egoboo about it
from complete strangers who weren't trying to impress me or get
me to do anything.

-----

And had email from an anonymous coward (it said "anonymous" and I opened
it anyway); I don't know what all was there, because it started by quoting
my entire message, then said something like "it's easy to hurt a fatso"
at which point I hit delete and then "empty mailbox" to make it go away.

And yes, I am annoyed. Also puzzled. Why do people do this? Anonymously
and by email, so they don't even get whatever mean pleasure they'd get
by insulting someone on the playground?

Comments

anonymous nuisances

[webbob.livejournal.com]

Presumably the anonymous cowards believe that they can accurately imagine the consequences of their insult, which I expect they overestimate by several orders of magnitude. Some may feel that the effect of making you feel bad when they do it so that you can't "hit back" is important in itself.

I doubt that they realize that the only real influence they have is in being a demonstrable example of how tragic it is when a human baby, so full of potential, grows up into an anonymous coward. Such a waste.

[jenett]

They are also, of course, proving a complete lack of reading comprehension.

I mean, if you'd been posting something about a nasty comment someone had made to you, I'd understand the one-liner. Attached to a comment that was *positive* and cool... well, they just look incapable of reading for content as well as being a jerk.