Some people

What is it that dri­ves some peo­ple to con­stant­ly seek argu­ments? It does­n’t mat­ter what you say, they have to pick at it. I tru­ly think, on one mail­ing list, that I could just post, “Oh, I total­ly agree with you” and a few peo­ple there would still find a rea­son to bitch.

I have to won­der what they’re like in real life. Scratch that, I know what they’re like. You say, “What a great day! Every­thing smells so clean right after it rains!” and they respond with, “I hate all the mud” or “Damned coun­ty still won’t let me water my grass” or some­thing else that’s neg­a­tive, in a tone that indi­cates they sus­pect you to be per­son­al­ly respon­si­ble for the rain, and maybe the drought, too. If it had­n’t rained, they’d gripe about that, too.

Peo­ple post to email sites, forums, and blogs to get respons­es, right? I mean, if they did­n’t want a response, but do want their words read, they could just write some­thing on a site with no com­ment­ing allowed, and not pro­vide an email address. If the author asks ques­tions, espe­cial­ly, one assumes they do so in order to solic­it answers. It’s anoth­er thing alto­geth­er if they say, “I just need to vent” or “I need sup­port, not sug­ges­tions.” I get that.

One of the good things about being at home is that I don’t real­ly have to deal with such peo­ple off-line, for the most part. I don’t read the blogs of peo­ple who are con­stant­ly neg­a­tive. I don’t real­ly do Usenet any­more because I don’t like trolls. I pre­fer well-mod­er­at­ed mail­ing lists. Good fences make good neigh­bors, right?

Yes, I’ll prob­a­bly unsub­scribe from the list in ques­tion. I have before, and some­one always writes and asks me to come back. I don’t do the pouty, “I’m unsub­scrib­ing!” bull­shit, I just leave. When I don’t reply to ques­tions direct­ed to me, they real­ize I’m gone and con­tact me. I’ll just have to main­tain my bound­aries bet­ter this time.

And yeah, I just need to vent. Feel free to com­ment, but don’t expect to engage in a debate. I dis­cuss. I don’t debate. I got any need to do so out of my sys­tem back in high school when I was on the debate team. I have a stepchild who would argue that the sun rose in the west if I said it rose in the east. He reminds me of my sis­ter. Yep, done with debates.

Besides, this is about me feel­ing annoyed because of what seems, to me, to be total­ly irra­tional behav­ior. There’s no rea­son at all to debate feel­ings or beliefs because they aren’t facts.

Cyn is Rick's wife, Katie's Mom, and Esther & Oliver's Mémé. She's also a professional geek, avid reader, fledgling coder, enthusiastic gamer (TTRPGs), occasional singer, and devoted stitcher.
Posts created 4259

One thought on “Some people

  1. That’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult kind of caller at work. It’s tough to find the right bal­ance between address­ing their con­cerns, and being drawn into their bitch-fest. I tend to keep bring­ing the focus back to what can actu­al­ly be done, and wrap up the call when there’s noth­ing more to actu­al­ly be done. That lat­ter can be tough, too — but I’ve got­ten pret­ty good at it. 

    Of course, at work I’m get­ting paid to deal with those peo­ple. Out­side of work, I try to avoid that kind of atti­tude altogether.

Comments are closed.

Related Posts

Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel.

Back To Top