Fair is Fair (Spooking the PUMAS)

As the Furious Buddha, I have had the pleasure of spanking a choice variety of characters with Sarcasticus; Selwyn Duke shut down his message board, the Innocent Bystanders set up a site just to spoof me, and I’ll always cherish the day I tweaked Jospeh Farah into a paranoid spasm. I even shooed the thugs from ‘niggermania.net’ out of here without much fuss and bother. I have argued politely with Mormons. I made Christopher Neiswonger’s head spin off with a story by Swedenborg and an observation about Augustus. I have torn sock puppets off of countless hands and played the sevens with innumerable zeroes. But the PUMAs are a brand new kind of clown to add to the menagerie.

I was checking the links for the ‘Palindrones’ post when I noticed there was a new post up at riverdaughter’s site. I peeked at the comments section and this was the only one up:

myiq2xu, on August 30th, 2008 at 4:31 pm Said:
NOTICE TO TROLLS
I don’t delete your comments.
I edit them for my amusement
You have been warned! 

A troll is not someone who simply disagrees. It’s someone who posts off-topic, engages in personal attacks, and is generally working out their frustrated misanthropic aggression through the anonymous means of teh internets. But I was guessing that ‘myiq2xu’ meant the ‘nobody can disagree with me’ definition of troll. So I’d thought I’d test it out. I posted the following.   

I have to thank you for all of the material you folks have afforded me recently. I especially appreciate the screencaps I have captured of things that you later took down in what must have been a fit of sobriety. It is hilarious to read your complaints about the horrible insults Hillary has endured while giggling when one of your naughty comrades paints Obama and Michelle in racist caricature. Your hubris is refreshingly grand. Please do go on.
I know you like to reedit things to fit your delusions. Have fun with this.
-Winston Delgado

It was deleted inside of five minutes. I then posted the following:

Aw. You said you don’t delete comments, just edit them for your own amusement. But you deleted mine outright. That makes me feel special.
Have a lovely day.
Winston Delgado

myiq2xu edited that to read ‘I was captain of the short bus.’ I wonder how the mother of a child with Down’s Syndrome would feel about that sort of insult. Of course, later in that same thread they’re complaining about the awful things people are saying about Governor Palin, but I’ve come to expect this sort of deranged hypocricy from these people. Their comment threads read like the transcript from a Narcissists Anonymous weekend retreat. So do their posts, come to think about it. Their entire political argument seems to come down to ‘Everyone who disagrees with me is an evil idiot, even if what I say changes from day to day depending on how I feel when I wake up and if you remind me of that kid who was mean to me in middle school.’ The craziest thing about this to me is that I actually voted for Hillary in the primaries, which means that I am theoretically the most sympathetic ear these loudmouths should have. But I find myself liking the Innocent Bystanders who called me a ‘retard’ a lot more than these jerks. I’m having a hard time working up the empathy for them. The upside of getting to know them is that it will make Obama’s November victory taste just a little bit sweeter to me knowing how bitter it will be for them.

Postscript: myiq2xu keeps saying ‘troll’ like it means something other than those who disagree with him. He has a veritable army of sock puppets at his disposal, which would be impressive if it weren’t so sad. This post autolinked to the comment thread and got myiq2xu’s attention. He said he was just joking and politically incorrect and tried to quote George Carlin at me. So, I replied with haiku:

‘The words of Carlin
fall from your mouth stinking like
turds from dog’s ass’

This was then transformed into ‘I made a warm squishy poopy in my pants‘ by the moderator with the high IQ. This is who the PUMA’s are. They should be proud.