People on the internet are dicks. Bails of hay have been made over and over again about the nature of anonymity and not having face to face accountability. I'm not going to make those arguments here because its done to death. All you need to understand is that people are dicks on the internet.

Case #1: I post an image of industrial decay on my journal, taken from the Livejournal Urban Decay list. Here, photographers, often professional, post images of civilization's decay. I often save these images to my hard drive to use them as a visual reference for descriptions in my writing. When the time comes around for me to post images on my journal, I go to the directory where I save every image I own and pick ones I find appropriate. Sometimes this means something copywritten gets thrown into the mix accidentally. I have every desire to attribute an artist when their work appears on my journal, but thats just not possible very often.

So I post this image and the artist gets wind of what I have done. A reasonable human being who is not at all an assclown or vicious, uncharitable fleasucker would have mentioned something first and contacted Livejournal about copyright infringement second. Instead, this housebound, knicker-wearing pinhead decided to go nuclear right off the bat instead of treating me like a fallible human being. I have no respect for copyright law or even copyrights as an institution. I believe that media is no longer a commodity at all and that the only defense artists have against massive obsolescence is making a name for themselves. Thus, I have no respect for what people have deemed as their "intellectual property" (read: make-believe commodity), but have profound respect for the act of creating art and of self-promotion. Had this individual but asked, this post would be in praise of their art with links and proper attribution provided. Instead, this post is there to decry their meanness of spirit. Good work, guy.

Case #2: I talk to a guy fairly regularly and we've met in person once. Suddenly, out of the blue he starts harassing my real life friends on Livejournal. There is no provocation or reason to this. Basically, hes just out looking to fuck with random people for kicks on my journal. I expect this sort of behavior from 14 year old B-Tards but not from self-possessed adults. Then, he starts posting things personally insulting to me, somehow weaving in jabs against his own ex-girlfriends like some drunken 3 am rant at some random neighbor's window. I understand how people can assume that the manifestations that the internet conjures up can seem unreal. I understand how someone could conveniently forget that there are real human beings on the other side of the screen, but at a certain level of repeated garbage it becomes untenable. I have no desire for people in my life who lack a certain baseline of empathy (see Case #1 for another example of this).

These events are doing nothing for my misanthropy.