On Chicken Shits

tyunglebower ♦ November 15, 2012 ♦ Leave a comment

If you ever frequent my other blog, Always Off Book, you will find my thoughts and adventures and observations on the world of theatre. To be precise, amateur productions in which I find myself. It’s often like a journal to share with curious readers how my acting is going in any particular show. I offer advice sometimes as well. (One of my early posts is actually one of the top three google response for the phrase, “first on-stage kiss”.)

Last week I concluded a theatre project not as an actor, but as a director. I didn’t include many updates on that adventure, since it wasn’t acting-oriented, but I did post one or two updates on the progress. I also published a little post-mortem on the experience, both the ups and downs of it, once the show was over. You can read it here if you like.

You can also read the nasty comment I got from someone. Someone anonymous, of course, because instead of the cream, the chicken shit tends to rise to the top on the internet. You can also see my reply to said comment on the link I gave.

Sometimes I post anonymous comments on line, to things like a youtube video i think is funny, or to a forum talking about salsa. Mainly because it isn’t always worth it to go through the steps to identify myself on a place that really will not be a platform on which to base the rest of my life. But unlike the half-wit that posted this comment on Always Off Book, I am not one to post angry, semi-threatening comments on someone’s blog, and not put my name to it. After all if I don’t like somebody’s blog, I don’t visit it. (Something “Anonymous” lacks the sense to conclude.)

I don’t often reply to such posts. Truth be told, I don’t usually even print such comments. Always Off Book, which is not a blog I promote endlessly, doesn’t tend to get many comments of any kind. It never has. I’d be happy if it did, but it doesn’t. Except these one off nasty comments, which as I said I usually deleted without publishing. I get a few every other month or so, I’m thinking from the same exact person, though I can’t prove that.

I guess I published this one because the coward who wrote it was so blatant in their mention of, “I know you won’t post this.” Daring me to post it? I don’t know. Calling some kind of bluff, hoping to not be posted, but wanting to look tough anyway? Perhaps. Either way, it’s posted. Probably the only time I will ever post such a comment.

Why now? And why dedicate an entire blog post to this issue here on my homepage? I wish I had a better, more complex answer for you than simply, “because I felt like it”. Yet the more I think on it, the more I think that applies. I don’t usually reply to people who are jealous of my abilities, (and let’s face it, this poster clearly is), but today I felt like it. I felt like replying to it on behalf of everyone that has to deal with it.

I imagine you get them if you have a blog, or publish articles on a regular basis. Somebody who for whatever reason can’t stand what you have to say, but is so lacking in their own platform, and so insecure in their own meager knowledge on the subject that they have to say something. Or barely something, as such comments as the one I received this morning have little substance.

Yeah, I know some of you think it gives people like that power by talking about them. Maybe it does and maybe it does not. I’d be less likely to say anything about it at all if they had put their name where their mouth it. But they didn’t. Such people never do. It could be anybody.

One of a million people or more who simply cannot stand that I am more knowledgeable about the world of acting and theatre than they are. To be blunt about it, I feel good that by merely expressing my knowledge I can both piss off someone of lesser mind so much, yet intimidate them so thoroughly that they can’t even sign their name to their vitriol. Perhaps it’s perverse, but I enjoy knowing that whoever they are and whatever they are doing, it isn’t enough to keep them from lashing out at what I’m able to accomplish in my life.

I won’t pretend I’m so magnanimous that I feel sorry for them. I rarely feel sorry for assholes, really. They tend to be what they are by choice, and not by some random decision of the gods. I suppose there are a few Scrooge stories out there wherein a bad life turns an otherwise good person foul. I therefore believe that once in a while such a person can be redeemed. Yet on the whole, once a jealous sniveling child, always a jealous sniveling child.

Which is why I have no problem keeping their messy diapers off of my blog, usually. The lack of mental development and emotional accountability is tantamount to a child that is just a few months beyond the normal potty-training age, but still in diapers. They mess themselves, knowing somehow that this should no longer be happening, and proceed to get angry and cry about it. Yet they just can’t put on the big boy pants, and finish the job. In a child, it’s sad. In an adult who acts like a child, it’s just pathetic, and I almost always keep it to myself.

But today, my friends? Today I posted the whine that “Anonymous” has smeared all over Always Off Book as an example of the type of people all columnists, bloggers, writers, or indeed anyone with the confidence to express their knowledge to the world have to face from time to time. And the reply I make to it today is on behalf of all such people that have had to face the angry faceless undeveloped mind that is screaming at having shit itself in front of company.

We’re all on to you, “Anonymous”. And as much as you hope to put some kind of crack in the esteem readers may hold for us on any given moment, you’ve only achieved in us, or at least me, a temporary willingness to toy around with you before discarding your lack of intellect and experience into the garbage heap of cyber space. Thanks for the laughs. Not just on my blog, but on every blog of every colleague known and unknown to me that has had to read such trash from you.

Here’s hoping you can always find pull-ups in your size.