Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:24:55 -0400
From: Jody
Subject: Re: “hateful message”
“Do those of you that write as hateful of messages as this one below stop to think even for a moment about the impact you are making on this sweet community or on your own well being?”
Did you not understand the part about someone adding me to a junk mail list for posting against their views on the Chatlist? And somehow me blasting off steam over that is “hateful?”
Look, Cathy, “hateful” requires “hate.” I didn’t rattle off about what a horrible person Melissa was or other untruthful hurtful nonsense for adding me to a Plenty mailing list without my permission and with the knowledge that I probably did not want to receive it in the first place. Don’t accuse me of “posting hateful messages” without understanding what happened, why it made me angry, and why it was such a disgusting act to take towards me in the first place.
The Chatlist has specific guidelines that state it is not to be used to populate mailing lists. Spam is a serious problem as it is, but it goes deeper with the Plenty mailing list incident because of two factors. One, it was a Chatham neighbor who took this unethical course of action rather than a Romanian spammer, and two, the person seemed to me to be doing this precisely because I expressed a disagreement with their beliefs. I see it as a digital way of spitting in my face over my opinion, and the fact that I never thought someone on the Chatlist would do something like that…but did anyway…left me in a state of disgusted shock. I’ve always felt that the Chatlist, no matter how vicious, has been civil enough that I could participate if I so desired. Incidents like these bring that feeling into question: what mailing list am I going to get signed up for next via a disgruntled Chatlist reader who disagrees with me? Am I going to start getting junk snail mail at my business as well over a Chatlist post?
I admit, I was quite upset when I posted that, but describing it as hateful is a big stretch, in my opinion. I don’t usually get that annoyed, either, so you probably won’t have to deal with it again.
To answer your question “if this type of thing brings up such a growl in you then how in the world do you react when something truly difficult happens in your life?” I’d say that the way something is expressed in textual form can be read very differently by two different people because much of the context we use in daily conversation is lost when converting to a lifeless typeface. I’m outspoken and blunt in real life, but I’m not angry or retaliatory, and I know when to pick my battles. Text doesn’t carry verbal tone, body language, and even a lot of context is lost in translation. It’s important to write with the consideration that other people will be reading our text so that we minimize misunderstandings, but simultaneously accept that we can’t predict 100% of the interpretations and that someone, such as in this case, may interpret it in a way we didn’t think about and a mess may ensue despite our best efforts. Apologies for that.
Jody