WARNING! May contain nuts
 | | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 4, 2012 by  Don't Gosho me if you don't know me
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 | | http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/b...nastier-than-the-article-she-wrote/
A year or two back I wrote a journal entry bemoaning the fact that on too many web pages that allow comments, the comments section will be so long (not to mention vapid, vacuous and downright vulgar) that it makes the scroll bar the size of a very small  . If it was compared to hard copy the actual content would one page, followed by a dozen pages of ignorant, poorly-spelled, opinionated cobblers.
I slogged my way through Samantha Brick's DM article and found it to be utterly forgettable and empty. She is also quite self-deluded and should perhaps get an eye test before the next time she looks in the mirror. I don't want to call her a liar but I find her string of stories about so many other women being jealous of her beauty a bit hard to swallow.
Anyone who has been on any kind of online forum, from a chatroom to h2g2, knows that it's often a bearpit. I've never read Lord of the Flies but from what I know of it I see a corollary. People revert to the way they were in the school playground, but without the threat of hauled into the head teacher's office and disciplined. It's very, very easy to sit in front of your monitor and say anything about anybody and suffer no consequences, mostly: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17515992 and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotla...north-east-orkney-shetland-17385042
But is it really so surprising that people behave that way when the media itself is so constantly strident and vicious? The Daily Mail is one of the worst on that score. Eddie Mair has already been mentioned in these pages. I could cite more examples but I reckon I don't need to.
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| | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 5, 2012 by Sho - It's Mrs G to you!
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 | | I don't know how I am constantly surpriised by
a) the Daily Mail
b) teh interwebz
In this case: the woman is so vapid and self-deluded not to mention completely slapable (on behalf of all women) for helping/trying set back the cause of women's equality another 10 years...
She's average looking with a professional make-up job and I'd like to see her without any, and then with a norma make-up version that she does herself... but anyway
The comments section certainly brings out pack instincts and sometimes it seems worthy of a study of the kind they do in crowds when working out how best to place emergency escapes.
On the other hand: I think that 99.9% of the comments are just what people would think anyway. If they didn't have the medium by which they could share those thoughts, probably most (if not all) would stay in those heads.
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| | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 5, 2012 by U94986
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| | I hardly ever read the comments. I picked up the story and read it because so many people were talking about it, it's an opinion piece and that's the interpretation she's put on events in her life. I don't see that we can argue with her opinion, and don't know why we would want to change it.
Usually if people don't have many friends it's because of their personality, not their looks.
Jeremy Kyle is proof of that. Some of the least attractive people I've ever seen on that show, but they are behaving in a very ugly way, which doesn't help! They must have inspired love in the past, of there wouldn't be so much hate now.
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| | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 9, 2012 by Felonious Monk - h2g2s very own Bogeyman
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| | The sort of people who engaged in the Brick-based feeding frenzy are as bad as she is. We have always had to deal with superficial and narcissistic people. The trouble with narcissists is that they treat *all* attention as positive.
My view on all of this is not to even acknowledge this kind of behaviour. This involves, for instance, trying to think up a good justification for why you should have a good rant on a very inconsequential website. So, Gosho: do us all a favour, will you? Enough is enough, and if h2g2 is going to cling onto its self-appointed status as a uniquely communitarian site, it could well do without echoing the more base behaviours we see around us.
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| | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 10, 2012 by Felonious Monk - h2g2s very own Bogeyman
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| | Likewise. I get tired of people complaining incessantly about things they can do nothing about. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can change, and the wisdom to shut up about it all.
If you really want to feel some righteous anger, I can point you in the direction of a few well-deserving targets for it. Narcissists like Brick don't deserve a second glance. And as for my visits, I'm just expressing what I feel about h2g2 in much the same way that you talk in your own journal. That's why I don't come back here very often. It's dispiriting.
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| | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 10, 2012 by Sho - It's Mrs G to you!
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| | but I still maintain that it is more than interesting, especially as members of an online community where flaming and trolling do rear their ugly heads now and again, that we are free and able to discuss things like this.
Without internet this article would most likely not have been written. It certainly wouldn't have received nearly as much exposure as it has and would have been quickly forgotten after a bit of a guffaw over the breakfast table.
With the internet it's a whole other kettle of fish. And there are a lot of interesting aspects to the story.
One of them would be, knowing that paper, and in particular the online arm which is separate from the print arm, and knowing their readership - what on earth motivates someone to write an article saying such things about themselves (subsequently, from her own mouth, shown to be not things that happen on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis, and some are 'historiical') especially accompanied by pictures...
How much of the article came from the writer, and how much from the editor (who wants to attract readers and consequently can re-arrange as much as he likes)
The whole Twitter/facebook/blogstorm that followed: what on earth makes people say such things? Seriously, as the meme goes: without the internet those things would still be in people's heads. Maybe it's a good thing that there is an outlet? Maybe some things are better left unsaid? Do people really need to readjust and learn to employ their own internal editor, or not?
Finally (from me, there are probably myriad other aspects to this story): there is a hugely serious and interesting discussion to be had in how much outward appearance of 'rivals' (for jobs, partners etc) affects how women (and men, come to that) treat/regard their 'better looking' competitors...
FWIW: I don't begrudge women their better looks. I do begrudge it if that is what is promoting them at work if they can't do the job.
I know a lot of people want to keep the conversations on h2g2 as some kind of high-brow, rarefied ivory-tower type of thing. But ... well, we're human. And I appreciate these discussions in a relatively safe place.
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| | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 10, 2012 by Felonious Monk - h2g2s very own Bogeyman
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| | I've just seen the whole feeding frenzy erupt around Brick. I'm not sure who's more to blame: her or the Daily Mail that regularly twists the words of its subjects and even its journalists to support its own reactionary agenda, or the myriad panoply of trolls who stuck the boot in online.
Yes, it's annoying that organs like this can get away with that kind of behaviour. Yes, I even get annoyed too, you know. But there's only so much I can do, short of buying the paper (I did buy it once when I'd run out of bog roll).
Certain people have built a following, or even a career, out of bemoaning the small-mindedness of others. I have no idea what they *do* to improve things, all the same. I'm just a nobody really - a very well-educated nobody - but a person of very little consequence all the same. But I've done my bit. I've worked in the voluntary sector, even having my considerable orgnaisational skills press-ganged into setting up organisations, and I give about a hundred quid or so to charity every month.
So, I'm going to ask a very pointed question: what do people here actually *do* to improve things in the real world. h2g2 does not count, sorry.
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| | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 10, 2012 by Sho - It's Mrs G to you!
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| | but why is it necessary to show that people "do" things in real life? I find it an interesting thing to discuss how people react to this kind of thing - there really is no problem in that.
I don't spend a lot of time hand-wringlingly bemoaning the fact that people do discuss this type of article in the way that happened with this one, it's just a thing that I found interesting to talk about (as did others, apparently)
FWIW what I _do_ in RL is:
sponsor a child/family in Honduras
donate blood
I'm a member of the PTA on two schools and various other school committees
I work full time, study part-time and have a home and family to look after (in that respect, I have daughters, what I _do_ mostly is act as a role model for them and their friends)
None of that has anything to do with the fact that I thought the whole Samantha Brick furore was and interesting topic for discussion. I'm confused at the conflation of those things.
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| | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 10, 2012 by Felonious Monk - h2g2s very own Bogeyman
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| | But it's not interesting, really. It's a story of a dreary (and not very bright) little narcissist who has been set up as an Aunt Sally by a right-wing newspaper which has discovered the publicity potential of stirring up a storm in an internet teacup. That's it. End of story.
My point is that my initial response - which saw this particular journal as increasingly being a venting operation - was perfectly proportionate. Compared to the ordure that Brick has had heaped on her head, my comment was very mild stuff indeed. The same applies to people here as it does to Brick. If you don't want people to comment - perhaps negatively - on what you say on the internet, *don't say it*. And if you don't like what they *do* comment, then either back up your intial points or go away and think about what they have to say. Either way, make sure you change the record.
I tend to hang around mostly on Facebook nowadays. It's very much more inclusive and less cliquey, people are nicer and much less up themselves, and there's no hiding behind false identities. Yes, there's some trolling and mean spiritedness but this tends to be concentrated in pockets which are easily ignored. People on h2g2 however exploit the anonymity of an online persona to sound off, complain, berate...in fact everything that stops short of actual harassment. I've done it too often here. That's why I don't come here very often. It brings out the worst in me and, more importantly, gives it plenty of room to cause trouble.
So, when I come here on one of my rare visits and find that the Brick stuff has permeated my immediate surroundings and that it's now being done to death here as well, then what kind of a response do you expect? I can go down the local pub and sidle up to the resident bore and hear them sounding off about things like this all evening if I want to. And I still find myself wanting to ask them the same question: what have you actually *done* to change the world so you find it more acceptable, however small? If the answer comes back as a big fat zero, then I'm really not very impressed.
Ultimately, for me, it comes down to whether one is sufficiently pissed off about an issue to *act*. Those issues I cannot hope to have any impact upon I accept, even thought I might not be very happy about it. But I'm finding that there's an awful lot more that I *can* do something about. It's a very simple dichotomy - from my perspective, anyhow. Not a 'conflation'. More a sort of imperative.
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| | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 10, 2012 by Vip
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| | There are ways of saying things, you know. And post 5 was *not* the way to do it. Flies, honey, vinegar? Accusing everyone in the thread of being an idiot isn't exactly going to turn people to your way of thinking.
If you don't want to talk about something surely you've figured out where the unsub button is by now. 
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| | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 10, 2012 by Sho - It's Mrs G to you!
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| | but, FM, if your time here is so limited, why did you come here and comment? and then engage in reiterating your views (which is fine by me) but then continue to, basically, belittle people for their choice of discussion topic?
You were the one who mentioned accepting things you can't change, surely internet discussion is one of them. You are, in effect, the master of your own destiny by virtue of the back-button.
I wonder if you would stand in a pub, then barge into a group of people discussing the latest ep of Eastenders (or the civil war in Syria or the price of petrol) and then (rather rudely) tell them that they should get out and do something about it rather than have a chat over a pint and a packet of crisps.
And I think that I am perfectly old enough and ugly enough to decide what interests me and then discuss it.
Or as the Gruesome Twosome might say: whatevs.
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| | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 10, 2012 by Vip
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| | Not at all. I think you should participate in conversations, rather than barging in and telling people they shouldn't be discussing specific things on h2g2.
If you thought that your were participating in post 5, it did not come across that way. It came across as a personal attack on the participants rather than a generalised comment. Perhaps it was a genuine communication error.
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| | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 10, 2012 by Felonious Monk - h2g2s very own Bogeyman
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| | Perhaps I was being domineering and self-righteous. Or perhaps I'm just trying to get people to develop a sense of perspective. There are some very important things to get angry about. And then there's just the act of indulging someone's latest off-the-peg grievance.
And you haven't actually answered my question: do you give a damn about the issue which started this whole thread off? And I'll ask another question: *why* do you care about it if you do actually care about it at all? These are the sorts of questions that h2g2's community should be best placed to answer, being that they regard themselves as something of an elite when it comes to discussion issues.
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| | | Subject: Hardly surprising
Posted Apr 10, 2012 by Sho - It's Mrs G to you!
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| | must be miscommunication, FM, because what I took from what you said is that we shouldn't be wasting our time discussing things (Samantha Brick in particular) but get out and change things.
You also seemed to say that you had no interest in the topic, which made me, at least, wonder why you kept coming back to discuss it.
or change the topic, which also seems a little rude since we were already sort of having a conversation.
but since this is teh interwebz i could just say YMMV and get on over to the  thread and be even more inane. 
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