So I just made a couple of mistakes.
The first was to try the Teddy Grahams again.
The second was, as I was travelling through blogs and ljs I hadn't read in a while, go to the lj of this particularly vile little person whom I have encountered a bit online at a message board where I used to post. VLP (as I'll call her here) has made it clear on her lj that she reads the blogs of several of my online friends--she makes nasty and completely inappropriate comments about them on her lj. I was dimly aware of this, as it had been brought to my attention before, but hadn't given it a ton of thought.
However.
Her latest entry said something really fucking horrible about someone I really like, using information gleaned from an entry on the best blog I've ever read. Not only did she use the term "white trash," which is just fucking unacceptable in any context, but she took a really low shot at someone who is obviously doing the best she can, and the best she can seems to me to be a pretty damn good job.
I honestly don't get what's up with VLP. Why in the world would she waste her time and energy reading blogs of people she professes to hate (as much as you can "hate" anyone you are only acquainted with online) and then bashing them? Is she really that desperate for blog-fodder?
(Here you might ask if *I* am really that desperate for blog-fodder, but I do actually have a point in recounting this, so be patient--I'll get there.)
So, in my infinite sick-person rationality, I start yeling at VLP when I read this. Really yelling--top of my lungs and all that.
And then it hits me.
She isn't here. I don't *know* her. I'm screaming at a goddamn computer screen. This is just as ineffectual as it is when I watch Shrub on TV and scream at him. All it does is make my throat sore and scare the dog.
At what point in our development as cyber-people, or at least in my personal development (not that I believe for a second that nobody else does this...) did shit that happens online take on this reallife quality? I remember when I first started posting at my first message board, quite some time ago--it was fun precisely because it had nothing to do with my real life. It was something invented, like a story or (I can't believe I'm about to admit this) like playing an RPG. It was completely seperate from reality, and I could and did turn it off whenever I chose. I certainly didn't think I had personal relationships with any of the other posters, good or bad. Good ones amused me the same way characters I like on a TV show might, and bad ones irritated me like Raymond (yes, I hate Raymond--everybody may love Raymond, but I hate him. OK?). It was simpler.
Now, however, there are people I know from online to whom I have real-world attachments. Amd I'm not just talking about speaking to them on the phone or sending them packages through the real-world slow-ass snail mail. I'm talking about people whose lives I care about, who I think about not as sympathetic characters, but as friends. Conversely, things that make me mad "online" or people like VLP who are obviously just shit-spewers affect me in a way they wouldn't have previously. They aren't something I'm watching--they are part of my life.
Ultimately I think this is a good thing. I was never 100% comfortable with the role-playing version, and I like the opportunity the Internet affords us to build relationships beyond geographic contraints. I think it helps with making friends of a greater variety of ages, backgrounds, etc. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't come with a price, and the price, for me, has recently been sleepless nights and more immediately been the feeling of futility one experiences when one realizes she is yelling at a goddamn electrical box (which she herself bought, paid for, and put together, so she ought to know it's limited capacity for yelling back).