I've met you in person and I still think you are self-serving too. :) (not that I don't think raptavio is) he is...we all are ...but you did try to play the pity card and it backfired. Just take it as a lesson learned.
Don't ruin panels by making them all about you.

Even ask raptavio, the truth is, it's all about me!

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As I've said earlier, we seem to live in an era where verbal abuse is entertainment. Evidently those who get their sick jollies from it feel the need to rationalize their behavior. Do you suppose if we tell them they're as clever as they think they are, they'll go away?

We should be so lucky.

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We also live in an era where people are so thin skinned they have no clue how to let verbal abuse bounce off. Instead, they either curl into a ball of self-pity and whining, or engage the verbal abusers with very little weaponry and come out on the losing end, and then curl up into a ball of self-pity and whining.

My father taught me more than 45 years ago a neat little phrase..."sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me".

This was at a time when there was no internet and no way to simply type "logoff" or "quit" to get away. Back then, we fought the abusers by simply ignoring them. After a while, when they got no reaction, they'd simply go away to pick on someone else.

Something to think about the next time people begin flaming you.

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My parents, and my school teachers, and other adults, taught me the same thing 35 years ago. It didn't work. The abusers kept right on going and going and going, no matter how much I ignored them.

As I've said in other posts, "illegitimi non carborundum" only goes so far. Everyone has a point beyond which it's of no use. For some, that point is higher than others. Even so, I doubt very many folks could handle the level of abuse I got without having their emotions at least a little bruised.

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If I said "verbal abuse is still abuse, and schadenfruede is still shadenfruede", I think it's likely that advocates of the sticks and stones camp might, at best, shrug and say "well sure, but life stinks and people will always been cruel, so why do anything other than ignore it?"

The problem is that you know what? At the end of the day I'd rather be a little too thinned-skinned than so entirely thick-skinned that I stopped caring so much; when people protest the kind of overblown, almost hysterical degree of mockery and abuse Jay has been protesting, it seems that no matter how they do it, they're always pinned as just whiners. This thinking neatly disarms people from considering that there may be a greater point than one individual's hurt feelings.

This debate has actually already been done to death in other threads, including on Jay's journal right here; I'm not going to continue it here, really. But I will observe this - through this entire thing the simple dissmisal of Jay "whining" has seemed pretty flimsy consider that all told, the degree of whining I've seen from him as hardly neared any really impressive degree of self-pity. Mostly, he's sounded like a guy saying "this is immature, offensive, and wrong". Of course, the fact that his position would spoil the fun of a lot of people who's pastime on the net is to flame-on, couldn't have anything to do with it...

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Back then, we fought the abusers by simply ignoring them.

If you ignore it, it will go away...

...after having done its damage.

(If it was bad, it will be back.)

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In only mildly-related news, I just got your new (signed!) publicity photo in the mail. It looks great!

It'll have a place of honor in my office. All I need to do now is turn around a nice inked original (signed) for you in return. Still mulling over subject matter...

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Thanks! I like the image, and I think I've managed to produce prints that do it justice. Photoshop 7, an HP Deskjet 5550 with photographic inks, and HP photographic plus paper. Add in a light blue opaque pen, and voila!

I await your artwork with bated breath...but don't interrupt your family vacation to do it unless you just happen to feel like it.

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You know, if ever there was going to be a sympathetic group for you it was Convergence. I happened to take your picture in the greenroom before Masquerade because I knew your history and felt you had been screwed. Someone asked why I took it and I explained, they agreed you were "one of us" immediately.

I know most of the members of the LJ panel and a good portion of the folks watching, lighten up. None of them had anything nasty to say about you before you got belligerent and I doubt any of them want to carry a grudge.

Some people are asshats and nothing you say will change that. Remember that most people you met last weekend applaud your courage to get up and profess your interests.

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Perhaps, one day, I'll feel like "one of us".

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It's funny, I've read a lot of your comments in various LJ's, and never realized it was you who did that fantastic costume. Good work!

Oh, and the people who just keep flinging crap and all that? They're just trying to bask in some of that reflected lime light. I used to hang with rock bands, and the same thing was going on there. Happens all the time, unfortunately. Don't let it get you down, it's not even really personal (which is quite an ego inflater for some, but on that one I suspect you're rather immune).

Rock on! \m/

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Sorry for the late reply...

I just wanted to say it's really kinda sad that raptavio just spent the past week screaming his life away on the internet instead of spending quality time with his children. His home life must be pretty dysfunctionally FUBAR if the only thing he's got going for him is his ability to be a jerk towards other people.

It's like he's dug himself a hole, and the only way he can think to get out of it is to keep digging.

I feel sorry for him. And his kids.

Assuming he even actually has any.

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