"GAH" moments on de Interwheb

The Sweeper

Apropos of nothing, I was reminded this morning of things on the internet that make me go "GAH".

Specifically, responses you have received to something you've been doing on the net, and your first reaction is to furiously type and delete three crushing ripostes, and eventually you just delete everything and go and have a cup of tea or a glass of wine and talk to some real people in the flesh, because there's just no point.

Boards.ie does have this effect on me occasionally, but the worst I've ever encountered was playing Scrabulous, believe it or not.

There I was, playing a game of speed Scrabulous. They have chatrooms linked to Scrabulous rooms and various players chit chat in those rooms. Because Scrabulous uses a java-enabled (I think) pop up window to run the game screen, it freezes every so often. It's generally considered bad Scrabulous etiquette to nick off in the middle of a game.

I was playing a game, and Eric the cat comes plundering across my keyboard and my screen freezes. I have to close and reopen firefox, and when I return to the room I post an apology to my opponent in the chat screen, intending to then offer him another game. I post:

"Sorry for disappearing, Bill, my goddamned cat walked across my keyboard and froze the screen."

The chatroom response:

Frisbee: "God isn't damned. Please don't swear in this chatroom."
Blake: "People like you shouldn't own cats. The poor animal."
Trio: "Thanks for that Frisbee, I wanted to say the same thing myself! People who swear don't have the vocabolary (sic) to play scrabble!"
Frisbee: "Yeah I know, it's like so unnecessary. I pity his cat too! God created cats and they're lovely!"

Okay so that might not be word for word, but I haven't exaggerated the response that 'goddamned' was a heinous swearword, or the accusations that I am obviously a cat-hating maniac, or the air of praise to the holy one.

I started with "If you think 'goddamned' is a swearword, you should hear..." and deleted that, and next "My cat is perfectly..." and just gave up on that straight away and moved on to a Billy Connolly-esque diatribe about how not swearing simply restricts your vocabulary because there really isn't anything quite equal to "fuck off" in the English language... and eventually posted nothing at all, logged out and went back to playing an RPG on my desktop.

What great internet battles have you just walked away from?

Silverfish

Minesajackdaniels wrote: »

What great internet battles have you just walked away from?

NEVER!!!

Canis Lupus

Silverfish wrote: »

NEVER!!!

Quality

Talliesin

You could have just replied that "but God is damned, happened after Satan conquered heaven and ****ed him in the ass". Then sat back and watched.

The Sweeper

No. They might have formed a prayer circle. I don't think I could stand watching the Our Father being typed out line by line on a scrabulous chat room while other posters interjected with 'AMEN!' and spelled Hallelujah wrong.

monkeyfudge

How are they any good at scrabble if they don't realise that cat is damned by god in that sentence... not the other way around...?

Worth nothing that god spelled backwards is dog.... ooooooh... cosmic...

Eviledna

Oh hell yes, boards.ie does that to me all the time. The "big girls are beautiful y/n" thread made me sad and angry all at the same time and it left a horrible feeling floating around me for a while. And then I realised that it is only a board and some people's mammys didn't hug them enough.:D

Internet battles are the worst because you can't emote enough. There is no smiley to represent a women scorned.

Crumble Froo

monkeyfudge wrote: »

How are they any good at scrabble if they don't realise that cat is damned by god in that sentence... not the other way around...?

Worth nothing that god spelled backwards is dog.... ooooooh... cosmic...

haha, damn MAJD, fair play for walking away... i cant help but feel if i posted all the replies i had written to frustrating threads... i would have long since been banned from here.

i think my most GAH type moments have been brought up around the topic of weight, eating disorders, depression, self harm, and general generalisations, misinformation and misconceptions about most of the above... people's ignorance, cruelty and complete lack of empathy just really really rile me up about these things... and ok, a joke is a joke, and i accept people are always gonna make jokes about these things, but some people just turn the line into a distant dot, and it just... grrr...

im getting angry just thinking about it...

edit: was meant to quote MAJD there

watna

The only thing that makes me angry on the internet is boards.ie. The muppet count can be high sometimes and some days I have what I call "bad boards days", because I haven't been doing much work since I handed my notice in and my OH is away for 6 weeks boards has been taking up more of my time. This means I've been getting too involved. It surprises me how annoyed I get at something online. It's proper anger over someone I've never met and involves constant wails of "how can they be so stupid!" I used to walk away but I've got to enjoy the argument now, up until a point, when my brain melts.

I tried playing scrabulous with my bf while we were at work, but it only annoyed me. He's very slow at thinking of words and once we'd been playing online for about an hour I remembered that we had to stop playing real scrabble together because I got too frustrated.

and MAJD, how dare you say Goddamned on the internet. You heathen, you.

Beruthiel

I'm shocked you didn't terminate them majd.
Oz must have a great, calming effect on you.... /tongue in cheek

fits

Equestrian and Canine forums drive me nutty a lot. They really are good at providing every day examples of extreme stupidity.

My favourite is along the lines of people with *absolutely no clue* going "I bought a foal for my 3 year old daughter so they can grow up and learn together"..... yeah a half tonne of a 'learning' horse could certainly teach your darling offspring a thing or two alright.... GAH!

jellie

the recent single ladies v's non-single ladies thing in LL.

Now i dont care if any of you girls are single or not, your opinion is just as valid on ANY topic, whether its men or not, regardless of whether you have a man in your life at the moment. But all these ladies claiming to be discriminated against because of the threads about men etc, that are then making a point of discriminating against the girls who arent single i just find hilarious. I just read the 1 about free time for SINGLE ladies& i stopped myself from replying again because 1. itd probably be off topic and 2. i didnt really see the point in getting into an argument about whether single people have more free time than non-single people.

so instead i had a mini-rant in here.

to be honest the childishness im finding around some of it is putting me off looking at or commenting on threads, and i used to really like this forum. i dont want to be attacked for having a bf, as i wouldnt like to be attacked for being single (which i have never seen anyone on boards do).

anyway [/rant]

ztoical

sar84 wrote: »

the recent single ladies v's non-single ladies thing in LL.

which just replaced the girly girls vs serious topic/femi nazi girls ranting

Its easy to get caught in the moment and jump madly on the reply button - somedays its easier to hold back then others - sadly tis the nature of the internet. I find I'm worse with emails to people, if I had to write a letter I'd stop and think more carefully about what I'm saying but with email I just type something out and hit the send button before I've time to think - thats come back to bit me a couple of times.

SarahSassy

ztoical wrote: »

which just replaced the girly girls vs serious topic/femi nazi girls ranting

+1

watna

You know what else makes me go gah? Youtube comments. Seriously, they make me worry for the fate of the human race. If a large proportion of us are that stupid we'll never survive!

Jim

Should have done a Father Ted.

"What happened in the scrabble match Ted?"
"I don't know how he did it, but he managed to get all his words to say STUPID PRIEST CANT SAY MASS"