I'm Sick of People Being So Defensive.

By Atari · Feb 19, 2009 · ·
  1. Every time I enter a forum and find a thread about role-playing that has a long list of rules, and the owner of the thread looks like a reasonable person who merely made a small imperfection in word choice, so I send him a private message with a better word suggesting that he may have meant this word but is not obligated to use it at all, the person gets all defensive.

    What is the problem with me suggesting a viable alternative that may be more suited to his purpose?
    Is pride so rampant that he cannot merely say, "Thanks for the heads up," and then just never use the word?

    What is your problem? The humble suggestion always deteriorates into a senseless argument in which the person I am speaking with attempts to make me look like some sort of perfectionist who is only pointing out small incongruities in everyone's writing in order to feel superior.

    The next thing I know, he's stumbling back onto himself, dismissing things he had already said and replacing them with other defensive arguments.

    He first says, "Well, the word 'vulgarity' means the same as 'expletive'."

    I pointed out that it does not, but that it was just a heads up and he is in no way required to use the word.
    He then retorts, "WELL! IT'S A GOOD THING I'M NOT IN SOME KIND OF CONTEST WHERE EVERYTHING HAS TO BE PERFECT! AND I MEANT ANYTHING THAT IS VULGAR AT ALL!"

    No, you meant 'expletive,' but you should CALM DOWN BECAUSE YOU'RE GOING TO BURN OUT THAT ONE GOOD BRAINCELL!

    Instead of blathering on like a buffoon, you would have saved face had you only given me a small thanks, (or no thanks) and been about your way, but now I'm writing a journal entry about all of you morons who are too defensive to take what is not even criticism, but mere suggestions that you have possibly made a poorer choice than you reasonably could have, and it would be quickly rectified.
    Most will never, EVER use the word I supplied, out of sheer contrariness.




    Defensive, insufferable simpletons.

Comments

  1. Acglaphotis
    Something similar happened to me a couple of days ago. This woman posted an article about oppression of race, and I was like "Oh, that's interesting", and I posted about how I don't think race is something to be celebrated, as it is completely out of our control, and I nicely tell her that using 'u' instead of 'you' is a bit awkward and that her posts would look much more professional if only she fixed her SPaG. She then posts a visitor message on my profile, saying how she wrote like that for 'creative' reasons and that I had no idea what it was like to be a female minority. I told her that that was obvious since I was a male minority. And I didn't do anything to upset her besides pointing out a SPaG error and commenting on her blog!

    I felt like a jerk for about a minute until I realized I did nothing wrong.
  2. Atari
    HAHAHAH! I love you, man!
  3. Kas
    I'll sign this one.

    What really picks my ass is when I (politely) correct something exceptionally stupid in the interest of helping the person seem more intelligent, and they resolve to be dumb just to spite me. What should be taken as a kind and thoughtful gesture is misconstrued as an insult... and the next thing I know, I'm being informed of what a '****tard' I am for saying that Africa is a continent, not a country.

    Then usually someone else will step in and say 'yeah, he's actually right...' and the person looks 100 times dumber than they ever would have if they'd just said 'oh really? I didn't know...'

    Defensive, insufferable simpletons, yes.
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