My big peeve with the Mary Annes and Whatzizfaces of the world is that they have no reasoning faculties as such--it's all emotional. They are incapable of separating fact from feeling, and they take everything personally. I hate that. There is no way the factual debater can get through to these people--everything has to be about them. They hate arguing with me, and since it's all personal, they end up hating me--because I won't crawl down to their level and start ranting at them for being ugly and their mothers dress them funny.
After I blathered about letting it go, I picked up messages from a horse list, and lo and behold--hot-button time. It was sort of similar, in that it was all about not very bright people getting personally involved in impersonal matters. It was also about another peeve of mine: newbies and wannabes who come to lists demanding advice for specific problems. List experts relay advice, very carefully and considerately. Newbies get all snarky and snotty and "I don't want your stupid advice!" because it's not what they want to hear. Because of course it always adds up to, "If you want to be successful in any field of study, from equitation to writing, you have to be willing to work hard and subsume your ego--and not incidentally, you also may have to make fundamental changes in how you approach whatever it is." After several rounds of this, with experts being extremely patient and newbies getting progressively snarkier and starting to say they never said what they said in the first place, some Mary Ann type invariably comes in and scolds the experts for "jumping on" the newbie. Usually with some slighting reference to the experts' right or qualification to give advice. Today's Mary Ann stopped just short of calling me a liar because I'd said something I know from experience and observation to be true but she has had no experience of it (therefore naturally it does not exist).
I swear it's a script. They hand it out when newbies get their first ISP's, along with the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe and a slew of "VIRUS WARNING!!!! SEND TO EVERYONE IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE!!!!!!!" spam.
So much for good intentions on my part. Is it something in the air? I got a message from yet another listowner at about the same time, asking for help with a brangle on her list that was playing out in pretty much the same way. I swear these things come in waves, like epidemics.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-06-29 10:14 pm (UTC)My big peeve with the Mary Annes and Whatzizfaces of the world is that they have no reasoning faculties as such--it's all emotional. They are incapable of separating fact from feeling, and they take everything personally. I hate that. There is no way the factual debater can get through to these people--everything has to be about them. They hate arguing with me, and since it's all personal, they end up hating me--because I won't crawl down to their level and start ranting at them for being ugly and their mothers dress them funny.
After I blathered about letting it go, I picked up messages from a horse list, and lo and behold--hot-button time. It was sort of similar, in that it was all about not very bright people getting personally involved in impersonal matters. It was also about another peeve of mine: newbies and wannabes who come to lists demanding advice for specific problems. List experts relay advice, very carefully and considerately. Newbies get all snarky and snotty and "I don't want your stupid advice!" because it's not what they want to hear. Because of course it always adds up to, "If you want to be successful in any field of study, from equitation to writing, you have to be willing to work hard and subsume your ego--and not incidentally, you also may have to make fundamental changes in how you approach whatever it is." After several rounds of this, with experts being extremely patient and newbies getting progressively snarkier and starting to say they never said what they said in the first place, some Mary Ann type invariably comes in and scolds the experts for "jumping on" the newbie. Usually with some slighting reference to the experts' right or qualification to give advice. Today's Mary Ann stopped just short of calling me a liar because I'd said something I know from experience and observation to be true but she has had no experience of it (therefore naturally it does not exist).
I swear it's a script. They hand it out when newbies get their first ISP's, along with the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe and a slew of "VIRUS WARNING!!!! SEND TO EVERYONE IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE!!!!!!!" spam.
So much for good intentions on my part. Is it something in the air? I got a message from yet another listowner at about the same time, asking for help with a brangle on her list that was playing out in pretty much the same way. I swear these things come in waves, like epidemics.