{"id":108,"date":"2003-05-29T20:54:07","date_gmt":"2003-05-29T23:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/?p=108"},"modified":"2005-11-17T20:33:20","modified_gmt":"2005-11-18T01:33:20","slug":"memes-and-morons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/","title":{"rendered":"Memes and morons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Say it with me, people: It was a stupid stuffed bunny, and nobody cares any more.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>This is a classic case of at least three sides of a story. There&#8217;s person #1 who started a meme, person #2 who is now convinced that they are this horrible person that everyone is mad at&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And there&#8217;s my side of the story.  Which, as always, is known as the &#8220;gospel truth&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>While, yes, it seems at face value that there&#8217;s no excuse for person #2 to still be holding on to a passing meme&#8230; and the selfish morons are bitching to person #1 about it.<\/p>\n<p>Well, I happen to know that person #2&#8217;s life happens to be in shambles right now (it&#8217;s not my story to tell, but it&#8217;s pretty bad).  Perhaps mailing this retarded stuffed animal isn&#8217;t top priority in their mind right now.  Ya think?<\/p>\n<p>Of course, you can count on the web to be totally devoid of compassion, or sympathy, or even cutting someone a little slack.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nIf person #1&#8217;s mass-mailing to God-knows-who, talking for three or four paragraphs about how selfish and irresponsible person #2 is, wasn&#8217;t bad enough&#8230;  then it surfaced as a post on their site, where the usual culprits in the Clueless Brigade&trade; have to chime in and hurt person #2 even more in the comments. (The post has since vanished  after I left a subtle little comment&#8230; so no link.)<\/p>\n<p><b>One more time, for the hearing impaired: It was a stupid stuffed bunny, and nobody cares any more.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I work a lot in this community. I do a lot of projects requiring the support and cooperation of others. It&#8217;s a pain in the ass. There&#8217;s always personality conflicts, somebody messes up, this one don&#8217;t like that one&#8230;  do you see me here pointing fingers EVERY TIME I have a conflict?<\/p>\n<p>No I don&#8217;t.  It only looks that way.  Shut up.<\/p>\n<p>Someone aggravated me, so I cancelled the &#8220;mom project&#8221;.  Last year, home problems made &#8220;the valentine project&#8221; impossible.  I cited both of them as &#8220;time constraints&#8221;. You didn&#8217;t hear Faith or me post about every roadblock we hit planning and organizing the Pocono Gathering last March, did we?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s called decency and professionalism.<br \/>\nHurting and humiliating person #2 wouldn&#8217;t settle anything.<\/p>\n<p>It would have been so much easier to simply say.  &#8220;Hey, it must have gotten lost in the mail.  Shit happens.  Either someone can get a new bunny, or we can scrap it here.&#8221; Everyone saves face and looks good. It went to one person.  What is the big deal here? This was totally un-called for.<\/p>\n<p>Tres tacky.<br \/>\nOf course I&#8217;ve come to expect that from person #1 and all her heartless friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do you call someone who starts a meme by mailing a big-ass stuffed bunny across the country and publicly beats up on someone who can&#8217;t afford to mail it to someone in Italy? That&#8217;s right, a moron.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-as-the-web-burns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Memes and morons - SoApBoX<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Memes and morons - SoApBoX\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What do you call someone who starts a meme by mailing a big-ass stuffed bunny across the country and publicly beats up on someone who can&#039;t afford to mail it to someone in Italy? That&#039;s right, a moron.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"SoApBoX\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"EricBrooksDotComWeb\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"EricBrooksDotComWeb\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2003-05-29T23:54:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2005-11-18T01:33:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Eric Brooks\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@EricBrooksCom\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@EricBrooksCom\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Eric Brooks\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Eric Brooks\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#\/schema\/person\/8ff62df16d2105a698b2aa19323dca30\"},\"headline\":\"Memes and morons\",\"datePublished\":\"2003-05-29T23:54:07+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2005-11-18T01:33:20+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/\"},\"wordCount\":446,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#\/schema\/person\/8ff62df16d2105a698b2aa19323dca30\"},\"articleSection\":[\"As The Web Burns\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/\",\"name\":\"Memes and morons - SoApBoX\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2003-05-29T23:54:07+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2005-11-18T01:33:20+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Memes and morons\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/\",\"name\":\"SoApBoX\",\"description\":\"Rants and Raves of Eric Brooks. Low-tech whining in cyberspace...\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#\/schema\/person\/8ff62df16d2105a698b2aa19323dca30\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":[\"Person\",\"Organization\"],\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#\/schema\/person\/8ff62df16d2105a698b2aa19323dca30\",\"name\":\"Eric Brooks\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.ericbrooks.com\/images\/posts\/eb_3d_logo-1.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.ericbrooks.com\/images\/posts\/eb_3d_logo-1.png\",\"width\":190,\"height\":190,\"caption\":\"Eric Brooks\"},\"logo\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\"},\"description\":\"Musician, Programmer, Graphic Designer, Evil Clown - A thorn in the Internet's side since 1997 with no intention of stopping any time soon.\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\",\"EricBrooksDotComWeb\",\"ericbrooksdotcom\",\"ericbrookscom\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/EricBrooksCom\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/author\/site-admin\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Memes and morons - SoApBoX","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Memes and morons - SoApBoX","og_description":"What do you call someone who starts a meme by mailing a big-ass stuffed bunny across the country and publicly beats up on someone who can't afford to mail it to someone in Italy? That's right, a moron.","og_url":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/","og_site_name":"SoApBoX","article_publisher":"EricBrooksDotComWeb","article_author":"EricBrooksDotComWeb","article_published_time":"2003-05-29T23:54:07+00:00","article_modified_time":"2005-11-18T01:33:20+00:00","author":"Eric Brooks","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@EricBrooksCom","twitter_site":"@EricBrooksCom","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Eric Brooks","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/"},"author":{"name":"Eric Brooks","@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#\/schema\/person\/8ff62df16d2105a698b2aa19323dca30"},"headline":"Memes and morons","datePublished":"2003-05-29T23:54:07+00:00","dateModified":"2005-11-18T01:33:20+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/"},"wordCount":446,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#\/schema\/person\/8ff62df16d2105a698b2aa19323dca30"},"articleSection":["As The Web Burns"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/","url":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/","name":"Memes and morons - SoApBoX","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#website"},"datePublished":"2003-05-29T23:54:07+00:00","dateModified":"2005-11-18T01:33:20+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/memes-and-morons\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Memes and morons"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#website","url":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/","name":"SoApBoX","description":"Rants and Raves of Eric Brooks. Low-tech whining in cyberspace...","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#\/schema\/person\/8ff62df16d2105a698b2aa19323dca30"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":["Person","Organization"],"@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#\/schema\/person\/8ff62df16d2105a698b2aa19323dca30","name":"Eric Brooks","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.ericbrooks.com\/images\/posts\/eb_3d_logo-1.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.ericbrooks.com\/images\/posts\/eb_3d_logo-1.png","width":190,"height":190,"caption":"Eric Brooks"},"logo":{"@id":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/"},"description":"Musician, Programmer, Graphic Designer, Evil Clown - A thorn in the Internet's side since 1997 with no intention of stopping any time soon.","sameAs":["https:\/\/ericbrooks.com","EricBrooksDotComWeb","ericbrooksdotcom","ericbrookscom\/","https:\/\/x.com\/EricBrooksCom"],"url":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/author\/site-admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}