Someone alerted me to a bizarre thread at That Dopey Board, so I had to head on back to watch the train wreck.
Rand Rover (a Liberal-esque knee-jerk Randian Conservative) has spent the last few years insulting everyone he can, including those who've been trying to help him. And then he proposes a Chicago DopeFest, but wants it to be people he's "interacted with on the board".
To which the general consensus is summed up by the OP: "Look, pal, I've interacted with you on the board, and if I were going to a bar to meet you in real life, you'd be well advised to run me through a metal detector before I get drunk.
You think you're liked here? You think people want to know you? Ever since you've joined the SDMB, you've spent your time telling almost every single one of us that we're shit. Almost every single one of us has told you that you are shit. You want to meet us? Why, to demonstrate your social skills?"
You'd have to read the whole thread to watch RR claiming that everyone just misunderstands him -- "mischaracterization and sheer lunacy", is how he puts it.
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Well, here was my post:
Wow. There are some serious mental, or at least emotional, problems on this board. And I think this thread just crystallized it for me.
Somebody tried to help a fellow doper: "Seems that quite a lot of people are reading your posts and coming to the same incorrect conclusions about you. Might want to consider the possibility that you aren't coming across the way you think you're coming across."
Wow. That would stop me in my tracks for some much-needed self-reflection, and maybe repentance, or at least a change in how I approach others.
But Rand Rover immediately responds ... declaring that everyone who doesn't like him is a "liberal douche".
WHY would someone that unhappy, that emotionally immature, WANT to meet the people he's treated this way? And not understand when people express surprise at that? (and some even try to help! And he's rude to them, too!)
RR may be the worst, but he's not the only one. So to any of the posters here that respond to honest comments with insults, with straw men, with defensiveness: get some help.
You may think it's funny, you may claim it's just an act, but I think you're fooling yourself. You need counseling, if not meds. Stop playing around on a message board and fix your life.
And now, I think I'll go do the same.