You're kind of a general pariah aren't you?

I remember being outraged by that tweet for about 30 seconds. I may have even retweeted it. But, really, why? it would have been racist if she really believed that white people can't get AIDS, but that seems unlikely. If it's a joke, it has to be a joke about first world cluelessness. But you don't stop to reason it out. It FELT racist, and it was easy to broadcast without thinking. I think of myself as the kind of person who abhors this sort of thing. Oops!

I don't want to blame the victim , but we should all take away the understanding that if you make a practice of sending out acerbic little tweets that are meant to be just a teensy bit mean and just a tiny bit over the line over the line, and if you have any kind of following, you're playing a kind of russian roulette. Three tweets a day is over a thousand tweets a year.

One thing that would be helpful, especially for high-profile tweeters, is some kind of delayed tweeting app or function. Does anybody know if anything like that exists.

Really great TED talk! Never heard of this guy, and I like him a lot,; he can really tell a story! Nice Submission, THAT GUY!

I haven't watched this (yet) but I'll go ahead and 5 star it because I'm interested. But I do remember this tweet. I dunno, I've heard much more casually racist jokes done by comedians, and at worst they get groans. It's only when someone pulls a Michael Richards or Jonah Hill and shows their true hatred (even if it's momentary and they apologize) towards a particular race or sexual preference that I find myself having a problem.

AIDS in Africa is not funny, and the "joke" was in poor taste, but honestly I see sarcastically racist jokes on here and while I don't appreciate them, I understand the intent. Obviously Sacco is smart enough to know that white people get can AIDS just as much as black people can, but we, and particularly South Africans, tend to have an attitude that it only happens to the poor, i.e. those subject to apartheid, i.e. black people.

Also I don't use twitter (except for one time when I set up an account and wrote "hi") but I'm pretty sure you can at least edit and delete your posts just like you can with facebook. So let's say you're having a bad night and are intoxicated and say something mean about your girlfriend or something.. you've at least got time to delete it once you sober up. I know there's a difference between saying something that IS racist (I'm not defending what she said as non-racist, just the double-standard) and just saying "my girlfriend is a bitch" or "fuck my boss", but people should understand that if you said something and then took it away, that you didn't mean to write it.

Look how quickly everybody forgave Colbert for his racist "ding dong" tweet. I hope whomever his tweet writer got canned by taking the line out of context, but sarcasm or not, it was a racist thing to say. Deleted and apologized for, he's hosting the Tonight Show now. But an ordinary person with a bad sense of humor can't make it known to the world that she didn't mean it by going on talk shows and apologizing on their own show; twitter's all they've got. It's like trying to become a celebrity on a ham radio vs. somehow selling out the hollywood bowl and saying the same exact thing.

Part of what amazes me about the story is our American inability, as a whole, to understand irony.

The fact that the proportion of twitter users that'd eagerly join in a hatemob at the drop of a hat are as likely to be mouthbreathing idiots as she general population is just one more reason not to use twitter.

It was pretty clearly a sarcastic joke about the white privilege bubble so much of twitter lives in. I mean, the moment I saw it, I got it, and, eh, it's not exactly the funniest joke ever, but...the fact that it was a joke, and the meaning of the joke, in particular the fact that it was a joke about how RACISTS ARE DUMB AND BAD.

Fuck's sake. And then literally millions of idiots expend just enough effort to light a virtual torch or maybe wave a virtual pitchfork, but with those numbers, it's still more than enough to ruin someone's life.

I'm quite happy with my 'fuck twitter' status, held since before Shaq was even tweeting about his lunches.

Yeah, you might even say you're a messiah figure! Or just delusional.

Weird.. having watched it we said pretty much the same thing. If somebody tweeted something during the one year anniversary of the shooting death of Michael Brown, "I'm going back to St. Louis to visit family, don't worry I'm white" I do think I would be offended, because in that case you are (sarcastically) making a joke on a dead person's expense. Now it could be argued that singling out one person vs. the millions of people afflicted with the virus is picking and choosing, simply because they don't get front page headlines, it's just a thing we know exists or choose to mostly ignore.. I dunno.

I was really surprised when I found out she was terminated from her job: I had a friend who was pretty high up in a Nordstroms store, and wrote something on facebook about how awful the day at work was. Can't remember exactly what it was, but it definitely wasn't as blunt as "fuck my boss" or "fuck Nordstroms customers." She WAS terminated for that, but that tweet relates directly to her attitude towards work, whereas Sacco's does not. And while racial intolerance is NOT tolerated in any workplace, you'd think the people making the decision would see the sarcasm immediately and not join the anonymous usernames calling for her termination. And if the decision was made because it might be bad PR, well, you're the owner of such sites as Tinder and Collegehumor, so you should be able to spot a racist dick move from 100 yards away, or at least be able to take an unfunny joke.

IZ step back from the dumbfuck ledge for a minute. You're giving shit examples.

For once I agree with you, SolRo. You should not be ashamed of who you are! I'd *prefer* if you acted a bit more mature and were willing to have intelligent, civilized debates, instead of just trolling and being an idiot all the time, but nevertheless, it is not good for people to pass personal judgments on you, and I am vehemently opposed to you censoring yourself.

For all your faults, you seem to know who you are, and are comfortable with the online role you have chosen. That's really cool, even admirable!

A DOO BEE DOO BEE DOO BEE PIXAR MOVIE THEME

PIXAR MOVIE THEME

GONNA MEET SOME OBJECTS THAT COME TO LIFE

THEY HAVE AN ADVENTURE, AIN'T THAT NICE

MAYBE THEY'RE CARS OR TOYS OR GARBAGE BAAAAGS

OOHHHHH PIXAR MOVIE THEME

YES SIR NOW

PIXAR MOVIE THEME

(this is the only thing I know Randy Newman to have ever done)

He's got that one song about how small people suck.

His old stuff (pre-short people, pre-cartoons) is actually pretty good. The doc is short, and worth watching for precisely the reasons you just listed.

From baleen's documentary: "In fact, I was a mixture of self-absorbed and defensive sarcasm, malevolence and social awkwardness and Jewish guilt. I felt so alone. Was there anyone out there who shared this unique cocktail of personality flaws? And then I heard Randy Newman." --Jon Ronson

Yup! Minus the jews it's pretty much this website.

"I Am, Unfortunately, Randy Newman" is terrific. Just the coining of the phrase "noisy money" alone is terrific.

>>This would be a lot more convincing if this guy didn't frame it as an assumption-filled portrait of Justine Sacco as the world's most innocent naive little daffodil.


I didn't get that impression at all.. Her first tweet, about a stranger's BO, was actually pretty mean.

>>Mind you, the response to Sacco's tweet WAS wildly disproportionate, but so is turning it into a Shakespearean tragedy to add some spice to your TED talk.

What the story does, and I think it does it very well, is convey what it was like to be her while the shitstorm was happening. The point of the talk isn't to def3end her actions or judge some more, only less harshly this time. It's to make you care about her and her feelings. I think it's exactly what's called for.

I think it would have worked more if it had actually humanized her instead of sanded her down to martyr status. But I see your point. The talk probably had its intended effect on a lot of people.

I imagine Sacco, while employed, is still fucking terrified and probably loses a lot of sleep. I doubt she can have the same kinds of casual fun that we enjoy on the internet with our irreverence and trolling, and probably feels a tinge of terror every time she opens her inbox.

You can get psychologically fucked up by knowing that thousands of people hate you. That's hard to let go of for most people, let alone any fears she had for her safety.

Just to be clear: Someone hired this person to do public relations for them?

Xeno, I think you're looking at a great short story and wishing it was a novel. Who this woman is, her character, isn't part of the story, and its pretty much left out. We're given the B.O. tweet, which deftly establishes two things about her.

She's no saint.
She's a lot like us.

Other than a few standard biographical facts, that's really all we ever knouw about her, and all we really need to know. We're supposed to empathize, to imagine this happening to us, and establishing her character in depth would only get in the way of that.

This is why I admire this so much. He knows what he wants to do, and he does it with elegant precision. I need to Google this motherfucker.

John, why are you anti-sex?

I am not merely anti-sex. I am PURE ANTI-SEX! If I were ever to come in contact with SEX, the universe would implode. Or maybe explode. I can never remember which one it is.

true
It was a stretched metaphor/analogy about censuring anyone who say the wrong, unorthodox thing to make a clumsy-ironic joke.
That censuring isn't surveillance. Wrong word, and he's responsible for that.

I still like him in general. He has given a lot of interesting talks.

Here he was going for looking at an abuse of power in an unusual diffusion-of-responsibility way that we don't think about, and he got caught up on his own rhetoric on that point.

George Takei's bon mots

My girlfriend is an aggressive twitterer and she seems to know shit that is impossible to know, just from using twitter, like how many children Michael Ian Black has and where they go to school. So there's that.

You been watching "Another Period"? Michael Ian Black is in it, so are a million other people of interest.

Yeah, good stuff!

It's indeed alarming when stupidity leads to aggression. I think, however, there's nothing special about failure to understand irony: it's just another failure of understanding. In grade school, these outraged Twitter people had difficulty with algebra and with reading passages, and now as adults, they have difficulty detecting irony. It's not an American thing; it's an intelligence thing.

Your counterexample might be the TA at your good college, who didn't comprehend Born in the USA. Surely she's smart, right? I think there might indeed be an American cultural problem here, but it has nothing to do with irony. It has to do with our tendency to conflate domain-specific intelligence with g factor.

Your TA likely has high domain-specific intelligence at writing essays; that's likely how she made it into grad school. She obtained her domain intelligence by putting shitloads of hours of practice into writing. I would, however, put money on her not having a high g coefficient. She probably struggled, for instance, at math. And likewise she struggles with irony.

She shouldn't be criticized for being stupid at irony, or for having a non-stellar g coefficient. It sounds like she has her heart in the right place and has worked hard to be good at something. In her Springsteen class, she was trying to fix an evil she (mistakenly) detected in her world. She sounds like a pretty good human.

If we're threatened by stupid, we aren't putting our smarts to proper use. When a person with a very high g coefficient applies themselves within a domain, the result is genius.

I detect that you have a very high g coefficient, That guy. Two books I might suggest would be _The Better Angels of Our Nature_ and _Moonwalking with Einstein_.

I'll check them out in a sec. Thank you.

I'm not sure that 'her heart was in the right place'. After a point I'm not sure that I differentiate 'heart' from other faculties. They're tangled together, and if she makes her main job 'the over-detection of one's imagined enemies' her 'heart' is making constant mistakes that can be dangerous, given power.

And "doesn't get irony" is not an appropriate intellectual vice for a TA in the humanities or arts. She was grossly incompetent at her job.

ps yeah I'm gonna check out Steven Pinker one of these days.

Over-detection of one's imagined enemies, I like that phrase, and I agree that it's a dangerous force when there's power behind it. Still, I like to believe in the ability of people to better themselves, and I try to see the best in people -- what they could be, and what they might become, more than what they are.

Your TA managed to make it into academia, even with a mediocre g factor. She's a hard worker. Additionally, she actively tries to make the world better. Her attempts are stupid, but she's putting real world effort into it, and how many of us can claim that? I bet her essays are well-written, and I bet if she were to stumble upon a legitimately important issue, she could make a compelling article.

Regardless, she's another human like all of us trying her damndest, and I don't think talking about her competence like it's a static, binary thing is a good way to look at the issue. I think if she continues with the hard work that got her into academia, she can at least learn irony and become a decent English professor. It was no doubt a pain in the butt you had to sit through her humble early stages, though.

Pinker is great. _Moonwalking with Einstein_ is about Joshua Foer's (fascinating) journey of self-development at a skill, and it pieces apart g factor from domain-specific intelligence. It's also a good study in irony: people are mad about it on Goodreads because it has nothing to do with Einstein, and it doesn't serve as a guide to become a genius, either. The title is of course ironic: The World Memory Championship competitors are generally doofuses, far removed from anything resembling Einstein. This zoomed over everyone's head, which might also carry a certain irony.

Slate is almost as bad as TED but this is still a much better, more insightful exploration of the problems with Twitter:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/tw itter_is_broken_gamergate_proves_it.html

Also it's kind of amazing that Hairgel Potter isn't an old man.

He talks like a more self important version of the coroner from NCIS.

I thought he was McIntyre from the pilot episode of "Red Dwarf".

http://reddwarf.wikia.com/wiki/George_McIntyre

Note this is not a criticism of the content of his talk, which I haven't watched because his voice bugs me and I just assume if it's a TED talk it's probably going to be crap (but there are occasional exceptions).

You can replace Sacco with any number of other nobodies who did something dumb or tasteless and felt the wrath of the online mob, even without the "lol good PR!" hook.

A building exploded in lower Manhattan a few months ago, 2 people died, and a random tourist took a smiling selfie in front of it and posted it on Instagram. Gothamist posted it, identified her by name, and helpfully provided a link to her linkedin account.

Even the Sacco story's "legs" are pretty weak and it was really an excuse for thousands of other people to enjoy some schadenfreude.

To my eye he's the spitting image of Johnny Rotten.

I'm sticking with "Hairgel Potter."

Her story is in Jon Ronson's book. The worst thing is the whole thing died down and some veterans' website decided to trash her a second time for Memorial Day or something.

In the book they hire a social media team to create blogs for her to try to make the offending picture disappear onto page 2 of a google search for her name.

Same here. I've never understood the appeal of character-limited microblogging; the way I see it, if the things you have to say can be summed up in 140 characters or less, then you're probably not saying anything worth bothering with.

But you're not really confined to 140 characters, because you can post links. If you want, you can tweet a Dickens novel, by linking to iit.

You need to know about Twitlonger, which is an essential tool for getting the most out of twitter. Post something on Twitlonger, they'll post the whole message, no matter how long, and then they'll post a link to the whole thing in twitter, along with the first part of your post.

It was just announced that private messaging in Twitter will be unlimited by characters, a chance which is long overdue.

OR, you can just not use twitter.

But even then you're not using Twitter to post anything meaningful; you're simply using Twitter to post links to a better hosting service, one that's actually suitable for posting worthwhile content. Furthermore, odds are good that the thing you are linking to wasn't even written by you; why should I care that you posted a link to a Jane Austen novel? That Jane Austen novel wasn't your work and itcertainly couldn't have been created in Tweet-space; it existed, and will continue to exist, with no regards towards you or your Twitter account.

And *PMing* has unlimited characters? Who cares? If you're going to send a private message to somebody, then why don't you use, ohh I dunno, EMAIL? You could call them, text them, Facebook them, send them a Voxer message, or even write them a letter on a sheet of paper. The only real purpose for Twitter is to post socially - i.e. to interact with a whole bunch of people at the same time. If you're communicating privately, on a one-to-one basis, then why not use one of the hundreds of better alternatives you've got already?

If you use Twitter for a while, you have to appreciate its genius, even if it doesn't suit your purposes. I'm not going to go into it now, but believe it.

If you want me to take something like that on faith alone, then you're going to have to provide some pretty solid Biblical citations.

>>>But even then you're not using Twitter to post anything meaningful; you're simply using Twitter to post links to a better hosting service, one that's actually suitable for posting worthwhile content. Furthermore, odds are geood that the thing you are linking to wasn't even written by you; why should I care that you posted a link to a Jane Austen novel? That Jane Austen novel wasn't your work and itcertainly couldn't have been created in Tweet-space; it existed, and will continue to exist, with no regards towards yo u or your Twitter account.


This is CLASSIC Evil Homer, am I right?

You know, Homer, you could make the argument against search engines. ALL GOOGLE DOES IS LINK TO OTHER SITES, WHAT GOOD IS IT?

The key is informstion management. Twitter is a concentrated, customized feed that puts a whole lot of information and communication into a small space, for you to peruse and access as you will. Celebrities use Twitter to communicate with fans because it allows individual communication on a mass scale.

Social media is cancer.

That's a bad comparison and you know it.

Twitter isn't a search engine. It's not set up in such a way that people will go to it looking for links that are relevant to their interests. It's a micro-blogging service; people go to it looking for random gossip and advertisements masquerading as casual communication.

And yes, celebrities use Twitter to communicate with fans. They are the content creators that Twitter is best adapted for. Why? Because there are always starstruck fans eager to read whatever random, pointless bullshit their favorite celebrities are Tweeting. Maybe you're one of those people, Mr Holmes? Maybe you're the sort of guy who gets a lot of stimulation out of seeing Ariana Grande type "bout to snuggle my liz for the afternoon ......... I'm so excited I had to tweet about it", or Jackie Chan type "Like if you're happy! (^_^)" ?

If that's the sort of stuff you're into, Twitter's great. If you want Google and Jane Austen, go to Google, search for Jane Austen.

>.>>That's a bad comparison and you know it.

Not really.

>>Twitter isn't a search engine.

So?


>>It's not set up in such a way that people will go to it looking for links that are relevant to their interests.


But the feed is customized. You choose who you follow. Therefore, in effect, information that is relevant to your interests comes looking for you.
It's a micro-blogging service; people go to it looking for random gossip and advertisements masquerading as casual communication.

>>>And yes, celebrities use Twitter to communicate with fans. They are the content creators that Twitter is best adapted for. Why?

I already told you why, and you ignored me. Its because the short format allows someone to scan through a large number of personal messages quickly, and respond quickly. It has its limitations, but its personal communication on a mass scale.

But its not just celebrities. There are a lot of information sources you can choose to follow, including just about anything that would go into an RSS feed.

Homer, I think we've yet to reach the inevitable point where I can no longer ignore that you're stringing me along, so maybe when I'm at my computer and not my phone, I'll post some examples.

>> But the feed is customized. You choose who you follow. Therefore, in effect, information that is relevant to your interests comes looking for you.

That's really stretching it. *At best*, we might say that Twitter can be a form of Google for lazy people; people who aren't even assed enough to get up and find relevant content for themselves. Rather than search the web for stuff that might be interesting, the users in your hypothetical example go to Twitter and hope that a celebrity finds something interesting for them.

>> I already told you why, and you ignored me. Its because the short format allows someone to scan through a large number of personal messages quickly, and respond quickly.

I didn't ignore you, and you're answering the wrong question. I wasn't asking why people use Twitter, I was asking why celebrities are the content creators Twitter is best adapted for. -Of course- Twitter allows people to scan through large numbers of personal messages quickly! But why might that feature be of particular interest to celebrities and consumers of celebrity-culture? That is the question.

Again, it is because large numbers of short-form personal messages (i.e. dumb bullshit) are of great interest to the masses, _if_ these messages were posted by famous, attractive entertainers. It's not that the Tweets themselves are of any lasting value, but rather that Twitter makes it easy to get star-struck and feel like you've got a vicarious connection to glamorous people.

Twitter is dumb. Some people like dumb. If you like dumb, then that's OK, but you need to own up to that dumbness.

I don't think I read that post. Was that what started your infamy? I know "JHM is a creepy sex-pervert" has been a running joke for ages, but I had no idea that you were able to trace its origins back to one specific post. That's sort of interesting, in a way!

>> As I type these words into my phone, my body tenses up.

For serious? Like, not joking, your body actually tenses up?

It's possible that you're suffering from PTSD. That definitely sounds like a stress reaction, and if this was an episode that has been bothering you for the past decade, negatively affecting your quality of life, then it may be something you should look into.

^ Am not making fun of you. Physiological effects like that are worrying, and you may wish to look into CPT (cognitive processing therapy).

>>For serious? Like, not joking, your body actually tenses up?

>> Physiological effects like that are worrying, and you may wish to look into CPT (cognitive processing therapy).

It's not a joke, but I may have made it sound worse than I intended. It's discernible, that's all I meant.

>>I don't think I read that post. Was that what started your infamy? I know "JHM is a creepy sex-pervert" has been a running joke for ages, but I had no idea that you were able to trace its origins back to one specific post. That's sort of interesting, in a way!

It's just the way I am. Remember when I deleted all my porn for valentine's day, and made a video about it? To me, that's innocent AND creepy. And that's me.

I'm not kidding when I say that I've never had a fully-formed unchaste thought about Catie Wayne, because the thought of her and me together makes me feel old and ugly. It's completely innocent, but I fully understand why people think my fandom is creepy. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a true innocent, but it turns out that true innocence can be pretty disturbing.

I'm okay with that. "Creepy" is what they call you when you haven't done anything wrong.

>> I'm not kidding when I say that I've never had a fully-formed unchaste thought about Catie Wayne, because the thought of her and me together makes me feel old and ugly. It's completely innocent,


But you've obviously thought about it; half-formed thoughts, at the very least. And note, too, the reason you gave for your gallantry: it's not because she's unattractive. It's not because you feel it would be morally wrong to lust after her. It's because fantasizing about Catie would make you feel old and ugly.

I don't think there's anything wrong with you being creepy, John. I think it's totally natural for any man, even a man your age, to have feelings for a girl like Catie. It's not the sort of thing which is accepted in polite society, of course, but I think that given the collapse of traditional sexual mores, it's difficult to think of a reason why you should be looked upon as any more "creepy" than, say, a crossdresser. You should not be ashamed of who you are.

One thing I will say, though, is you probably should have played up the gay angle. Now obviously you aren't exclusively homosexual, nor even perhaps predominately so, but nevertheless. an elderly gay man being obsessed with Boxxy would be far easier for most people to accept than the same behavior from an elderly straight guy. Catie could have been played off as your own personal Judy Garland, rather than as your own personal Dolores Haze, and you would have avoided a lot of grief.

Dirty old man, as long as you embrace it and genuinely love yourself, is a legitimate card to play. Behold, Hugh Hefner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Hefner

The merits of Boxxy fandom, taboo about being attracted to much younger women, childish labels like "creepy" -- these are all stupid and irrelevant, and worse a distraction from getting better if you're not feeling so good about yourself.

Roadmap to being really damn happy:

1) Imagine a strong and compassionate man you'd love and respect enough to follow into battle. See him in vivid detail and imagine what he's like. Be that man every moment that you can throughout the day, and as that man try to take care of and love the hell out of yourself. Eventually, your self image will become more positive. If you need more help, check out the book Reinventing Your Life.
2) Create something to offer other humans and give it freely without any expectation of return. Humans, more than anything else, need love and empathy and a sense of security, and to a lesser extent group connection and opportunities for fun. If you can get good at providing any of these things, people will value you. Buying your friends beers or gifts is probably the simplest thing (warmth, the sense of being cared for: security/protection), and a more advanced thing would be starting a club. The key is to provide for people freely.
3) Meditate. Meditation has so many scientifically-proven benefits it's frothing levels of stupid not to do this immediately. Headspace.com can get you started in less than two minutes.
4) Learn to be charismatic. This is almost as valuable as meditation. Watch this Stanford video: http://goo.gl/L8BFr . Now buy her book and do what she tells you to do. Practice every damn day.
5) Contribute to something bigger than yourself. Whatever you pick, find other humans who share your vision. They're your people now, your tribe.

This will get you surrounded by friends who value you, it will make you feel connected to your fellow humans, and it will make your life feel immensely meaningful.

Citation: I was deeply depressed with zero friends, panic disorder level of social anxiety, and my lifestyle was playing computer games for 12 hours, going to bed in my filthy apartment, and waking up at 4am literally shaking in terror, feeling like my mind was on the cusp of falling apart. Wee! Now I run a Meetup.com group with almost 600 members, I have some great friends I know I can rely on, and I have a girlfriend who loves me. If I can climb out of such a hellish shithole, I'd say the opportunity is open to most anyone.

I know this advice is unsolicited, but I'm weirdly attached to Poe people. I've been here for a really long time. If I can help lift up one of the 12 Poe people who might read this, I'd count that as a glowing victory. I know this is most likely a fart into the void, but that's okay too, my goal was to try.

>>But you've obviously thought about it; half-formed thoughts, at the very least.

OWell, of course! For one thing, people keep bringing it up.

>>And note, too, the reason you gave for your gallantry: it's not because she's unattractive.

Well of course, although I don't really feel that attracted to her. I mean, she is attractive, and I love watching her in videos, but it's like she's another species. All that makeup? I think that if we were to hang out together, it would be probably be boring and awkward, and I'm not into fucking someone I can't hang out with. Plus, the girl has no ass. Plus she's into MLP, which would make her more your type than mine.

I'm sure this will sounds pretentious, but I consider this to be an artist's obsession with another artist. I'm reminded of Andy Warhol, whoiduring a formative moment in his education, was obsessed with Shirley Temple. I would probably marry the girl, if that meant I could put her in my videos.

>>It's not because you feel it would be morally wrong to lust after her. It's because fantasizing about Catie would make you feel old and ugly.

You seem to think I claimed to be virtuous. I claimed to be innocent. There's a difference. I'm not sure that it would be morally wrong to lust after her, but if I did, I would do it more privately.

You do kind of have a talent for being inappropriate online and getting yourself into "trouble". On the other hand, it's really no big fucking deal and people have made it so in the past. I guess you should have learned better by now (for example, you could not mention past "transgressions" to remind us that you have been exposing yourself as a a weird creepy guy numerous times), but on the other hand, your opinions are pretty progressive and you come off as a generally kind-hearted person.

As someone who once "semi-inadvertedly" (I did it on purpose, but it got waaaaaaay out of hand) started a witch hunt against you, I once again apologize. It started as a sort of joke, but then the whole shaming thing became MUCH worse than the actual "transgression", and I felt horrible about it. So, once again, my apologies, I think I can still learn a lot about being a better person online. Being cruel to strangers we don't know is incredibly easy. Peace.

Ah, yes! The Santa-Shaming!

We've talked about this, that should have been funny, and it wasn't really your fault that it wasn't. It's a weird, embarrassing thing, and I should have expected to take some ribbing over it, like Homer's doing right now. I consider his post to be essentially good natured ribbing.

For sexual innuendo, that video didn't even rise to the level of a popeye cartoon, so certain people got way too sanctimonious about the whole thing.

I have an idea. I'm going to submit the video I made for Catie's 21st bday in 2012. This is for you and homer.

oh boy, here we go