Pointless Breaking News

Hi!

I am traveling for work (although this is pointless news, it’s not THE pointless news that this post is about) over the next few days and I have scheduled this post to go live while I am gone (if you are reading this I guess it worked). So, approving comments will be delayed for a tiny bit.

Speaking of comments (nice transition there), since I made the change from almost all comments being automatically approved to being reviewed before they are made public, I have started to keep a better eye on the comments that are shuffled off to the Spam folder.

A better eye, mind you. I used to ignore that folder for months but now I only go a few weeks before I remember that I should check it. If you’ve ever made a comment and it gets approved like two weeks later, more than likely it went to the Spam folder for whatever reason and it took a long time for me to see it.

I’ve done a couple posts where I took some of the not-Spam comments and played around with them in Photoshop. These comments tended to be nasty and/or unhinged (love that adjective). I had so much fun with them and quite a few of you enjoyed them as well.

I did get some very angry emails from some of the people who wrote the original comments that were then immortalized in edited images and honestly? That delighted me. I am not being a bitch but I try not to spend tooooo much time being concerned about the emotions of someone who went out of their way to be mean or engaging with people who just comment and send emails with the intention of being cruel. Occasionally, however, I feel a need to defend myself or to clarify something.

Such as my sexuality. This is a topic that some people feel is something that is appropriate to discuss and will insist that I am straight. I have, as far as I know, never stated my sexuality. It’s not that I am being coy, it’s just that I feel that my sexual identity is rather pointless. Yes, I am married to a woman and have only had relationships with women so my intimate history is, well, heterosexual IF we only look at gender as binary AND only based on genitalia.

In the masculine presenting aspect of my life, I identity as non-binary when it comes to gender identity. If I don’t identify as male, then are my relationships really heterosexual? What defines sexuality? Is it the genitalia one has? Is it someone’s gender identity?

Some people feel that a heterosexual relationship is when one person has a penis and the other person has a vagina. But my goodness, why would anyone define a person and/or relationship based entirely on their anatomy? My penis is far from the most interesting or important or critical part of my body, so why would I let that impact how I identify when it comes to gender and/or sexuality?

At any rate, constructive criticism is different from mean-spirited comments. I appreciate feedback that is done in a kindly and gentle manner and is meant to be helpful. Intention is important.

But an email that simply says I am a freak/sinner or that I am skidding into the abyss or whatever isn’t meant to be helpful, rather cruelty is the point. Again, intention is important.

Over the last few weeks we have seen certain members of a well-known political party lose their mind after being called “weird”. A few years prior to that we saw people of a certain age get very very very riled up by the comment “ok boomer”.

I wondered why these two comments had the impact that they did.

Now, please understand I am not condoning or disagreeing with calling people weird, (of course, weird is as weird does but that’s a topic for another day) but rather I am discussing why certain words are triggering.

Firstly, I thought the outrage was hypocritical. I mean, the offended party was upset about name-calling but the same political party has a candidate that regularly calls others names himself, such as “Sleepy Joe”, “Crooked Hillary”, “Lil Marco”, “Liddle Mike Pence”, “Sloppy Chris Christie”, “Low Energy Jeb”, and quite a few others.

Now, regardless of your political leanings, and regardless of whether or not you agree with these adjectives, my point is that I feel it’s hypocritical to call others name but cry foul when others do the same thing to you. If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out.

But why are “weird” and “ok boomer”, in particular, so triggering?

I read a comment online that offered some perspective on this. Basically they said that some people who are cruel and evil really don’t mind being called cruel and evil, especially if they think they are doing the right thing. Afterall, in a book or a movie, a compelling and dangerous villain is someone who honestly believes that their actions are justified so they don’t think they are evil.

But nobody likes to be mocked so ridiculing someone is pretty damn effective. This is one of the reasons I did those silly Photoshops using those mean and/or unhinged comments. I will never be able to convince some people that feeding hungry kids at school is the right thing to do or that we should be letting women make their own decisions about their body, so why bother? I mean, it IS weird that some people who clutch their pearls and shriek about “protecting the children” argue against feeding the children. It’s hypocritical and it is indeed weird. Some argue that denying food to kids is a way to “punish lazy parents” but that’s just evil. I think Jesus was a big fan of feeding the hungry? I don’t care if the parent is the biggest scumbag in the world, give the kid a sandwich FFS.

I am not the first person to say this, but I don’t know how to tell you that we should take care of others.

And yes, some people do take advantage of certain programs, but as someone who grew up with a mom who used food stamps after my dad decided he’d rather drink full time instead of supporting his family and as someone who was for a few months receiving medical insurance through the Affordable Care Act and paying my mortgage with the help of unemployment benefits, I can testify how crucial and life-saving many programs are.

Essentially I don’t feel we should eliminate help just because some people take advantage of it. I am proud to live in Minnesota where every kid in school has access to free breakfast and lunch even if I pay a little more in taxes to fund this program. This program would have helped my family so much when I was in school and I am happy that kids now have this help.

Speaking of Minnesota (another nice transition), one of our politicians recently said in reference to a women’s medical care, “Mind your own damn business”.

You can’t argue for the government not interfering with your life AND believing the government should be involved in someone’s healthcare. That is very hypocritical. Mind your own damn business indeed.

My brother-in-law told me at a family gathering that it’s not the governent’s business to know how many guns he has and that the government should let people have freedom so he will proudly vote for people who say that they love freedom even those same people want to limit healthcare for his own daughters.

The weird thing is that we were discussing education (my wife and I work for a college and he is a high school principal) so a sudden shift to firearms was a very non-sequitor transition.

I suppose freedom is only important to his life, not in anyone else’s.

Ridiculing someone, I feel, is a way to have power over someone that is trying to hurt you. It’s also a way to show them that you don’t take their opinions or perspective seriously at all. Like, you are not even going to dignify their opinion with a response. And goodness that makes some people so mad.

When it comes to “ok, boomer”, it’s a similar thing. Instead of arguing with someone or ridiculing someone, you are just completely dismissing them. You’re not even bothering to engage with them.

And this also makes people mad. Like, they get SO angry. lol. Some people just feel the need to share their opinion about everyone and everything for no reason and they want to be listened to. When you don’t let them have that they don’t know what to do.

As I creep closer to the peace of the grave, I am becoming more and more aware of how time is zooming along. Do I want to spend my time and energy talking to people who want me to die because of how I identify? I am not going to change their mind, so I’ll usually end up ignorning them. I’m not letting them have any power over me, which includes giving them my time or energy.

Anyway, where was I? Oh right, the Spam comment folder.

Most of the spam comments are just links to adult orientated sites. Many comments seem to be random words pieced together by some AI program with the intention of the comment to be legitiamate. Most do not make sense grammatically, and some are just bizarre.

For some reason, I thought it’d be fun to share some of them. Below are some my favorites.

Every day I always buy a lot of snacks

My mother and I really enjoy reading the blog that you make every day, the blog you make is so good and is the best blog that my mother and I have ever read, thank you for adding new experiences for me and my mother

when i walk in a city to get pleasure in playing a great game, i find a lot of advantages in seeing this blog which is very great in finding pleasure

On this sunny day, my father and I will go to the mall to shop and it will take 3 hours to travel, that’s where I thought of seeing content on this blog that can entertain me during the trip.

One week ago I tried to get some inspiration by fishing in the middle of the deep and wide ocean to get lots of valuable experience, and in the end I saw this blog which is very special for my entertainment.

I know that these comments were not written by a human being but there’s barely an effort to make them plausible. I highly doubt this website entertained someone over the course of a three hour journey or their mom loves this blog.

Every day I always buy a lot of snacks is, in my opinion the most bewildering, irrelevant, and pointless comment. It reminded me of a headline I saw recently on CNN that was so… stupid and I wondered why they felt it was newsworthy.

Even if you love Anderson Cooper, I can’t imagine being interested in watching him try a condiment. I can’t imagine why CNN felt that this important, but that’s CNN. EVERYTHING is important. EVERYTHING is news. EVERYTHING is interesting.

And for what it’s worth, I think competitive eating is disgusting and given how the United States has children living in poverty (again, I don’t know how to tell you that we should take care of others) events like these are wasteful and immoral. Some people insist we can’t feed afford to feed the hungry but are silent on spending money on “events” like these.

The daily snack buyer’s comment felt worthless and uninteresing. But in the spirit of CNN’s perspective that EVERYTHING is headline worthy, I opened up Photoshop and had a little fun.

I used this picture specifically because I thought the image of someone in bed, wearing lingerie, with what I hope is a seductive expression, commenting about snacks is hilarious. It’s like the last thing you would expect someone in that situation to say.

One final thought. I am aware of the irony of this pointless post focusing on a pointless AI generated Spam comment. Sometimes a thought pops into my head, such as turning Spam comments into headlines, and my creativity kicks in and a half hour later I have this stupid image and now you have to see it too, lol.

…Just imagine all the nonsense I don’t post about.

Thank you for your indelugence and for humoring (and tolerating) me.

Love, Hannah