Is it just me, or are people ever-more infuriated by other peoples’ choices and opinions?

     I usually try to make light of things, but maybe sometimes even I go overboard to the point that I piss someone off. But all in all, I really do respect other peoples’ opinions… Moreso, if they’ve an inkling about “why” the feel the way they do, and can explain it.
     But as most everyone realises these days, you can’t even go into a Usenet group without seeing people up in arms over whatever subject, and getting pissed off about it. Dare I say, if you ever ask a question in a Newsgroup, you’ll get bombarded with badly formatted paragraphs full of spelling mistakes written by some weenie-head with nothing else better to do than tell you how stupid you are. And if you even make a statement in the newsgroups, it’s absolutely impossible not to piss someone off.
     Looks like the whiners are all grown up now (at least according to their birth certificates). And the arguments have only gotten sillier with time.

     Oh, I remember… Way back when… It all began with modems…

     …a 300 Baud acoustic-coupler modem, an Apple ][ and a Super Serial Card. “Gee, this is fun,” I used to think. I’d sit for hours on end calling up BBS’s and chatting with people, learning more as I went.
     Of course, it was slow. Not 14400 slow, or even 2400 slow. This was 300 bps slow. Not only were you connecting at 300 baud (remember that word?) to a few select places (usually long distance), but the phone lines back then were crap (uphill, both ways, through nine feet of snow!). We had to actually set the telephone handset down on the modem and be extremely quiet, or else all we’d see was

        [[[/!2|#-[[-
        ```NO CARRIER

     After a while, I got a 1200 baud modem. I was still using my Apple predominantly, although I had upgraded to a ][+ by that time. IBM’s were really starting to hit the scene in a big way.
     And the noise of the masses? Oh, it only got louder.

     I had my reasons for sticking with my Apple back then. There were Warez-a-plenty, and IBM programs were just too damn big to download, even at 1200 baud. At that time, I just didn’t care to run Lotus 1-2-3.
     Funny… that much hasn’t changed.

     I remember how arrogant the IBM users were, too. At the time, it was the machine of choice for professionals, and their particular sort of Classist mentality carried over. They were professional, and, by definition, anything else was a toy. They were absolutely relentless in their idea that the IBM was a better machine than the Apple ][+. It was ridiculous, the whole argument. After a while, I quit worrying about it and realised the argument for what it was.
     You see, when it came right down to it, I had a machine that was “fun,” and they didn’t. You have to admit, looking back, guys, that the machine I was using had games, and graphical ones at that, and in colour, even! The IBM had: Lode Runner. Little else, really.
     Then came the Apple //e and the 2400 baud modem and things got a bit better. So much better, in fact, that I plugged the 2400 baud modem up to my IBM. I still used my Apple, of course, and had even gone to the silly extreme of buying a Commodore 64 to play with.

     That’s when the shit really hit the fan. Apple released the Macintosh. I liked it. God, it was so simple… The first consumer GUI… A Paint programme that didn’t lock up!
     When it was first shown and later released in 1983 and 1984, it really sparked something in everyone. Many people loved it. Others who had never even used the machine simply despised it. Called it names… “Jackintosh!”
     Me, I did what I was supposed to do. It was new, and I embraced it as a wonderful innovation. And it didn’t take long to realise that Cut & Paste was a damn handy thing. I wrote HyperCard games for years, and loved it!
     But most of the IBM users were still aghast at the Mac. “There’s no colour!” they go on, knowing full well that most of the IBM’s were still using green screens. The tiny, grey-scale monitor on the Mac was so much easier on the eyes.
     “There’s no DOS prompt!” they would say.
     “I don’t need it,” I would tell them. They simply couldn’t understand that. I didn’t need all that crap — I just wanted to have fun with it.
     Those sorts of concepts flew over their heads like Mandelbrot’s “The Fractal Geometry of Nature.”

     But that’s beside the point.

     I still used my IBM. I used my Mac. I still used my Apple //e, the Commodore 64 and those damned Tandy Model-III’s in the labs. It was a computer, and it was, therefore, fun and exciting.

     Some time around 1985 or 1986, I started building PC’s and realised that I could make quite a bit of money doing something I really didn’t mind doing. I started fixing PC’s for people, and in doing so, noticed that the Macs never seem to break down.
     My mind was made up, for sure, at that point. I liked my Apple //e. I liked my Mac. But I wasn’t going to make any money with them. So I started fixing PC’s.

     Shit hit the fan again. The arguments became completely ludicrous. The Mac users’ groups hated me because I had “sold out.” The PC users’ groups hated me because I was a Mac person. And I wasn’t either… I was simply in it for the money.
     Computers were still relatively new to people. There weren’t a lot of us using them, and everyone became so cliquish that it became impossible to breathe around them for all their stuffiness.
     But I was doing something they weren’t … I was making money.

     The arguments have continued, and they’ve become much, much worse. They’ll threaten each other, call each other names, hate one another. As with any heated debate left in the care of the righteously indignant zealots, sooner or later, someone’s going to get physically attacked.

     The reason?

     Because someone had bought a Mac instead of an IBM… Because someone said their ISP was faster… Because someone’s Jewish instead of a Presbyterian… Because someone thought their Jaguar was better than a Mercedes… Because someone’s a Republican instead of a Democrat… Because someone’s from the US instead of New Zealand…

     Or someone thought they had a bigger wiener…

     Somehow, I don’t believe you.

     I don’t mean to sound rude or anything, I just wanna make you think about something before you call this woman you were obviously in something with a “psychobitch.”

     Let’s be honest. The whole term “psychobitch” is completely cliché, isn’t it? What does it mean?

     Is this a woman who…

     …has made you very afraid for your life? Did she attempt to stab, shoot, bludgeon or otherwise assault you simply because of the colour of her kitchen wallpaper? Has she created a public scene in front of no less than fifty witnesses, claiming that she hates you, and that if she can’t have you, then nobody else can? Is she pissed off simply because you have a car, and has she screamed about this to everyone she knows? Has she assaulted you in public, screaming at the top of her lungs, in front of no less than twenty people, “You’ve had an attitude with me ever since!” and you have no idea what she’s on about? And continues to scream about your sexual escapades with her, and you’ve honestly never even slept with her?
     Did you once date, well over five years ago, haven’t seen her for at least two years, and somehow she’s miraculously three months pregnant with a child she swears is yours? Has she bashed in the window of your car as it sits in your parking lot, seen by at least ten witnesses, but subsequently claimed that she couldn’t have done it as she was with her psychiatrist? Has she ever sat with you calmly at dinner in a four-star restaurant, stood up, started throwing tabletop items at everyone in the place, screaming at everyone for no apparent reason, sat back down, a calm look about her, and asked you what happened to her silverware?
     Have you ever walked in on her when she has some sod tied spread eagle on a bed, immobilized, she’s on top of him going at it like mad, and, when she notices you’re standing there, proceeds to beat him, all the while screaming bloody murder for you to help her, that she’s being raped? Has she ever run over you with her car, later giving the explanation that she did it simply because she had never done anything like that before? Has she boiled your aquarium? Has she stalked you, years after the fact, leaving little clues in the form of written notes — “I’m watching you, Love, Laura”?

     It’s perfectly normal, often understandable, to feel angry after a break-up. For some, it’s even normal to exaggerate a bit about simple things, blow them out of proportion. But people are ever-more likely these days to use the term “psychobitch” about their ex-whatever just because they feel like it. Never mind that they haven’t actually done anything to them…

     Keep that in mind the next time you think about saying it. And next break-up, try this… have your break-up, maybe fight, maybe not and get over it. Get on with your life.
     Sometimes it’s hard to do that, and one of you might have a little problem letting go… But you really need to start asking yourself the big question before you start going off about them to everyone.

     Is she nuts…?

     …or is this “psychobitch,” as you call her, just someone who you feel is, indeed, full of more shit than last night’s dinner casserole?

     That still makes me cringe every time I see it typed.

     And it never fails. You go into an IRC channel, an AOL chat room, telnet to your favourite talker or MUD, or even Usenet and someone who doesn’t know you will most always ask …

how old are you.

m or fem?

     Your initial thought usually gives regard to the lack of capitalisation or punctuation, perhaps even a lack of decent grammar. But then you get over it, often thinking, well, Hell, at least I wasn’t innocently exploring AOL and getting an instant message from BigDick90210…

HOW BIG ARE YOUR TITS.

     Messages of that sort that can be terribly confusing to anyone who is, very obviously, not physically equipped to even answer of a question (or statement, as it may be) of that sort. Unless you enjoy that sort of thing, these people aren’t worth talking to. But… these questions… they’re not that offensive or anything, really… just…

how old are you.

m or fem?

     You start to answer, but then you think about it for a moment, and realise, hey, that’s kind of rude, isn’t it?

     Isn’t it?

     Maybe it’s the way I was brought up. You could talk to strangers a bit when I was a kid; everything wasn’t so dangerous that you were afraid to let children out of your sight. But then, if I had walked up to someone I didn’t know and asked either of those questions, my parents would have given me a good, hard wallop.
     “You don’t ask people how old they are!” my mother told me. “That’s just plain rude!”

     I can’t say that I don’t disagree.

     Still, sometimes I sit there, wonder about it for a moment, and think, “Well, okay, this is a bit silly of me, really. I mean, hey, we’re all chatting here in this space, sometimes for a few days, weeks, whatever … this is somebody I’ll get to know, perhaps. They’re just trying to see what commonalities we have…”
     And then, I usually end up telling them. I just find it odd, I guess, because I rarely, if ever, ask those sorts of questions myself (and never out of context, mind you). Usually, if you pay attention, and you’re a reasonable judge of character, you can get a pretty good sense of who a person is just by idle chat: the things they say, the way they compose themselves during a “conversation” or what have you.
     You assure yourself that it’s only an Internet-related phenomenon. It’s not like they’re walking up to you in public and saying “How old are you?” or “Are you male or female?” In public, they can of things easily (unless it’s someplace like 42nd Street or K Road). They’re being inquisitive online because they can’t see you. The net is free of those kinds of prejudices, for the most part. Of course, there are those who want there to be prejudices like Age and Sex and Where You Live to be thrown in there, but for the most part, the people you meet online are nice enough lots.

     Most times, if the group you’re talking to is within a given area of the world, there might be some sort of get-together where everyone can meet each other, see who they’ve been talking to for all those weeks, months, sometimes even years. Quite a few of them will be inquisitive about what you might look like, considering they’ve imagined, from time to time. Usually, it’s at a local club or coffee house, and everyone sits around, talks, has a few drinks… Nothing major, and it’s usually quite different from the chat rooms. Some people get disappointed initially because someone didn’t look like someone else thought they would or something of that nature, but for the most part, those types of gatherings can be fun, right?
     And it’s usually a bit odd meeting them face-to-face for the first time. But if you’re comfortable with who you are, and you’ve been chatting for some time, it’s no big deal, right? All those questions in the beginning about how old you are, what sex you are, they don’t have any bearing on real life, do they?
     You walk into the assigned meeting place, to the assigned set of tables and look around, realising that these are average Joes, not unlike yourself. There was nothing to worry about, nothing to feel odd about at all. You may even chuckle to yourself a bit about feeling pressured.
     And invariably, someone will turn around and loudly ask…

who are you?

how old are you?

     But back to the problem at hand… The question… How to answer… “Ah, yes. I know,” you think to yourself, grinning slightly.

i’m 83 years old bucktoothed bowlegged and a horrid alcoholic with chronic halitosis. i live in a trailer in BFE and i live to swill beer, watch a broken television set, work on my big red truck with the gunrack in the back and beat my wife. my name’s mark, and it’s nice to meet you.

     “Ahh, yes,” you think. “I’ve outsmarted them now. Now maybe they’ll realise that was an off question and we can start again.”
     It’s only then that you realise the gross error you’ve made. They respond.

hey man it’s nice to meat you i’m kelly and i like to work on pabst blue ribon what do you drink
  .
  .
  .
do you like sex

     “Dammit!” It’s only then that you realise what you’ve gotten yourself into. You finally notice that the first three thousand IRC channels are #!!!!!!!!HORNY_SLUTS, #!!!!!!!!!SISTER_SEX_PICS, #!!!!!!!!!fuck_my_wife and the like…

     “Gods,” you mutter to yourself with despair. “Perhaps there really aren’t any social skills left amongst the Internet geeks…”