The flame wars on the SMZ/CC forum to the point where on Saturday, March 13th, I received death threats from at least one person.

While I can't claim that I am completely innocent in this, I can say that I have never sunk to the level of making outright threats against someone else. It was this event which gave me the motive to add the perpetrators of this act to the Square of the Village Idiot.

While I will address the specific issue in the Square, what I want to say here is more general.

As Rush Limbaugh has said, "words mean things". When you make a negative statement, it affects the person you are referring to, and it hurts your standing in the community. This is why I am not popular on the forum. I have made a name for myself as many things, among them being arrogant, a snob, a jerk, and others, some not quite suitable for a setting such as this. I have come to live with a lot of this because I also am known to stand by my word.

When a person says to another: "If I knew where you lived in real life I'd kill you." And if they then describe how they would do it. that is an incredibly negative thing, and it has huge consequences. The people involved in this have managed to turn a flame war around...the flames are no longer directed at me, for the most part, but are instead directed at a few people who either were directly involved in this stupidity, or allowed the generation of a climate that allowed the perpetrators to do what they did.

When I apologize on email or in a forum, I am completely honest, because to me, words mean things, and I stand completely behind my words. That is why I did not apologize to the people I directed some insulting comments to at the end of February... because I truly believed that they DESERVED the insults. When one of the people I attacked apologized to me, I publicly apologized to her, and that settled the matter as far as I am concerned.

Past conduct does not give a person clearance to do stupid things. The people involved seem to not see this. They want the people of the forum to give them a pass on this because, well, they're really nice people in real life, they have not caused trouble before on the forum, and anyway...it was a joke...

All of this serves only to demean what they say, compound the threat, and diminish their future credibility. I doubt I will ever take these people seriously again after the stunts they have pulled, and I imiagine a lot of other people will also have similar problems.

My credibility is not an issue here. I am already known for being a complete jerk, and you know what....I can live with that because know that when the chips are down, I can always rely on my word....

...which makes it even worse for the people on the other side of this flame war, because they will be given my status as the lowest of the low, yet they won't have their word to fall back on.

It is truly a sad situation.

Artemis

(comments welcome - please email me at lunahq7@yahoo.com and I will post your comments here as well.)