Internet Drama

I commented on a post over at Shiny Shiny the other day, and I noticed I received quite a few hits from there. I went back to see what the fuss was about. The post was about some rude comments made on Fark about a previous article posted on the site.

Now, I can totally see where they’re coming from. I’ve never been to Fark, but I’ve seen some pretty awful things said on Digg and other sites about women. But you know what, they say pretty awful things about men too. They’re not being sexist, they’re being completely, politically incorrectly, people-ist.

If the situation were reversed and it was mostly women making remarks about men, would anyone be complaining? Not likely. Why the double standard? If women want to be seen as equal to men, why do we deserve special treatment? Because we’re more sensitive and they’re hurting our feelings?

On every site I visit, even the ones that are 100% girls, people can be disgusting, rude, insulting, and just downright mean. Does this mean it’s OK to make these sort of comments? No, certainly not. People say some really extreme things sometimes just to hurt people. Attacking someone personally, for no reason, is never acceptable. Still, I think people also have to learn to be a little less sensitive. Someone got offended by a comment where I said, “it must be hard to plan a wedding for under $20,000, I don’t know how people do it.” It was a compliment!

It’s the internet, people are allowed to say what they want. You can’t expect every comment to be clean and politically correct. That wouldn’t be any fun! If something really offends you, sometimes you just have to ignore it and move on. Arguing about it usually only makes things worse. I have learned this from experience. If you must say something, I find attacking with kindness the best approach. It makes both parties much more relaxed and more likely to laugh it off.