h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You should apologise. Are you a father? Would you accept someone taking the mick out of someone close to you in a very public place?

I am the father of three and if that happened to us I would demand an apology and then leave if it wasn't forthcoming. I agree with what Ed has done but miss his presence here. I'm not sure if I would miss yours.

As a father, I would be appalled had my child been so rude and pretentious in public, if it ever happened of course. I would hope that if I then went onto a website bragging about it, someone would point this out.

Let's get some perspective -

1) Ed was being insufferably arrogant and boastful - again
2) I called him on it - again
3) Ed tried to have me censored - again
4) Ed threw a strop and used foul & offensive language - again.
5) Ed then flounced in a fit of melodrama, making sure to leave contact details, start a flounce thread, highlight the flounce in his sig and then post a big offensive message on his PS


Having had my disabled and dying wife mocked on h2g2, I think I know where the lines are around here.

Comfort yourself with the thought that Ed will be back. He loves himself far too much to stay away.

Swl, you should get some perspective.

You are imagining a story.
Why don´t you go back and read in the thread where it all started?

You make a comment out of the blue insulting Ed´s daughter.
It was a post Ed wrote in that tread 2 weeks ago...

C´mon swl, you won´t apologize, nobody expects that, but be, at least, honest.

"he left an offensive message in his PS"

pardon? what are you talking about?

You want to appear now as the saviour, the anti-pedants avenger and the victim for trying to fight it?

swl, every thing is written in those threads for anyone who wants to check, but, this is your weapon now: who is going to check what you have said in post 2? nobody will bother so you say what you wish.

I wasn´t going to bother either to give you an answer, but... you know, I have to write in English daily, as a grammar exercise, so this is a topic as any other to prompt me to write.

So here I am, to tell you that you missed the opportunity to apologize, or to ignore Ed´s post asking you for respect.
Why don´t you leave it now? Don´t insist.
This is like Dafne and the laurel tree myth, the more you say the bigger the problem.

As you say Maria - it's all there for everyone to see.

Apart from the foul-mouthed temper tantrums from Ed of course

Your anger seems to be all that is driving you at present.

I will wait until reason prevails.

Oh I'm not angry at all.

Really?

Post 2 is about as angry as I've seen on this site lately.

You may be projecting.

Try reading it again in Morgan Freeman's voice.

See - doesn't it seem different now?

Is it worth re-examining the posts?

Ed: My daughter allegedly said something rude and pretentious to an author. Aren't I clever?

swl: Pseud's corner much?

Ed: OH EM GEE! This is unacceptable! *flounce*

Projecting. Who?

M603
That´s your perception. The moment you read all the posts, including yours in the Signature dish thread, without the anti-Ed spectacles you use, you could have another opinion.

But, your sarcasm, which you confuse with wit, based on the assumption that Ed deserves to be insulted because he was being patronising or pedant or whatever you project on him, will prevent you from having another less solipsistic opinion.

I´ll remind you all again:

Once upon a time, there was a thread where people where discussing on juvenile tastes.
It´s assumed that at certain ages, adults, children or teenagers should have certain tastes. Then Ed says that in the case of his daughter, it wasn´t so, and that is what the daughter told to someone who probably expected as answer JK Rowling instead of Oscar Wilde when she was asked about her favourite author.

Two weeks passed by since that comment, which the researcher found funny. Nobody came to say that it wasn´t funny, or it´s good that teenager know classics from literature, or it´s not good, or your daughter is fortunate that at her school teachers , or at home parents try to expand their knowledge, or what? Wilde? Meh! ….
But no, no researcher appeared to make any comment.

Two weeks later, during a calm afternoon at Hootooland, nobody had posted for the last 4 hours, swl appeared in scene. A researcher wellknown for his animosity against Ed, (actually it is a mutual dislike) He said that those words , he quoted the whole comment of Ed, belonged to the Pseuds Corner.
Which is to say your daughter is a pedant, Pseuds Corner adds deserved ridicule to the words.

From there on, the storm burst.
M603, joined swl to attack Ed in another thread.( M603, has also shown his animosity towards Ed, like in the thread of the Hate words. Out of the blue, also.)

It was the occasion, Ed had received a wound in a very sensitive area, so let´s have fun now, let´s throw arrows, our sarcastic arrows, after all, he deserves it, since he is a person who can´t be tolerated by us because of his style of posting.

Now, after the storm there comes the fog. A misty cloud of personal interpretations and added ornaments to what happened.

Ed left the place. He couldn´t bear that his daughter was attacked, insulted… he asked for respect to swl and instead of apologising or ignoring the post, he hit him again.

Ed left the place, swl stays without anyone, except clzoomer, coming to his personal space to tell him something on what has happened, telling him to man up.

Seeing the way you both react, so juvenile, it´s no wonder that people don´t bother, although it´s not an excuse for no action.

I didn't attack Ed. I referenced his over-reaction in another thread when Mu Beta made a comment (humorous) about my mother, and then explained that I think Alex Kapranos is a .

As for the Ed-hate? That's a ridiculously strong word to use. I don't hate /anyone/. I don't even dislike Ed. I don't have much of an opinion beyond the fact that his tendency to bury any posts that he disagrees with under a barrage of comments irritates me.

And it's rich to take offence at swl making a barbed comment while championing this lovely little thread as some sort of social justice.

"Juvenile" is lashing out with foul language then storming off to sulk.

I hope he does come back, despite the sarcastic taunts. If he were to apologise for the language and explain why he so rightly lost his temper, he would be a better man than anyone on this thread. swl seems intent on preventing that by saying that narcissism would be the only reason he would come back. I remember when we used to attack the poster rather than the post. And I thought those times were gone.

Ever consider that all this collective wittering and mewling from the site drama queen and his associated bleeding hearts and artists has blown two sarcastic remarks wa-ay out of proportion?

Three. Apparently I'm not sincere in my distaste of Alex Kapranos.

Who he?

swl your position is insupportable. For a start, there's nothing rude about someone answering a question ("who are your favourite authors?"), and I genuinely can't see how you can interpret that as rude. Now maybe Ed shows bad taste in boasting about his children, but it's a form of bad taste shared by - as I understand it - almost every parent. Personally, I didn't find the pseud's corner statement to have crossed a line and I don't think Ed did either. For some people the "proper little madam" comment wouldn't have crossed their line either, but it obviously did for Ed and rather than apologise decently when this became clear, you twisted the knife. I don't see that there's any way of justifying that, but you could recognise that you twisted the knife because you were annoyed with Ed (because you find him an "arrogant, patronising, egotistic, narcissistic bore") and didn't want to back down. And you should apologise.

The telling line in Ed's description was "She looked her in the eye and deadpanned:" I have no idea if Ed's daughter is 5, 15 or 25 so have no idea if F Scott Fitzgerald, Mikhail Bulgakov and Oscar Wilde are age appropriate - that's irrelevant. It's the cocky way Ed described the incident that led to the remarks and I've been *very* clear that my comments were aimed at Ed's depiction rather than his daughter herself.

When he then came onto my PS to have a go, I pointed out that he "gives the impression of an arrogant, patronising, egotistic, narcissistic bore". That is my opinion. I never said he *was*, in fact I pointed out that he may be "a very pleasant and friendly fellow" in RL but my opinion was based upon his posting style.

Should I apologise for having an opinion? Should my opinion be censored because others feel their opinion is more valuable? So Ed took offence, so what? To quote Stephen Fry - "It's now very common to hear people say, "I'm rather offended by that", as if that gives them certain rights. It's no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. "I'm offended by that." Well, so ing what?"

This place used to be a hive of healthy debate - lively and rumbustious. Increasingly the liveliest threads nowadays are where people are disagreeing on how fervently to agree with each other. Diversity, especially diversity of opinion, has been hounded out of here to the point where grown men flounce off in the huff at a sarcastic remark.

meh

-“As a father, I would be appalled had my child been so rude and pretentious in public, if it ever happened of course.”
- “It's the cocky way Ed described the incident that led to the remarks and I've been *very* clear that my comments were aimed at Ed's depiction rather than his daughter herself.”

So which?

-“Having had my disabled and dying wife mocked on h2g2, I think I know where the lines are around here.”
-“Diversity, especially diversity of opinion, has been hounded out of here to the point where grown men flounce off in the huff at a sarcastic remark.”

Where the regrettable remarks about your wife sarcastic, opinion or just mean spirited?

What I'm saying here is what I've said on this site for many years. Intent is one thing and it's communicated by nuance that we simply don't have in the printed word very often. What I take away from a sentence is very probably not exactly what was intended by the writer or is read the same as another reader. Accept that as it is and don't read your own interpretation in the actions of that reader, especially when you clearly don't like their personality and/or posting style.