Just An Observation

I would like to begin this post with a few disclaimers:

1. The opinions expressed here are just that: my opinions. It doesn't necessarily make them true.
2. I'm aware of the shit storm that will possibly come my way by posting my opinions, but I am so stupid I'm posting them anyway.
3. Did I mention I'm stupid?

Partypants Parties All the Way to the Bank?

As I've said before on a number of occasions, I frequent the website Get Off My Internets (GOMI) on a regular basis. For those of you who don't know about this website, it posts articles usually snarking on bloggers. In turn, the readers, more often than not, rip the bloggers apart in the comments and forums. I didn't know about the existence of this website myself until they did an article on me a little over a year ago making fun of my poses in photos. I had absolutely no problem with them making fun of my poses. I mean, looking back those were some pretty jacked up poses. However, I did have a problem with the very personal attacks on my character and appearance over at GOMI and even on my own blog. Still, I was intrigued by this oftentimes very witty group of women, so I became a reader and put in my two cents from time to time. I should also mention that I put a link to my blog on my commenter user name because it was an option when making a comment, and I wasn't "scurred" to let people know who I was. Anyway, everything was all fine and dandy as long as I was in agreement with the GOMI community. The Anthroholic scandal came out, and I commented that the humor in the title "Anthroholic Issues an Anthropologie" was not lost on me. Everyone thought I was pretty cool for taking things so well, even their fearless leader who goes by the name of Partypants. Opinions of me changed pretty quickly, though, when I did not agree with the GOMI girls on a post. I was called all sorts of nasty names and then told I was an attention whore who was only commenting to get pageviews on my own blog. I took the link to my blog off and tried to comment a few times after this, but I was only met with more name calling and cute little gifs that said things like "You must not go here." and "No1curr." Realizing what I was dealing with, I stopped commenting, but I have continued to read articles on the website on a weekly basis. Jerry thinks I'm crazy for going there at all, and he's probably right, but I'm human, I do have a sense of humor, and as much as I hate to admit it, I find some of the things they talk about really funny (dead cat lady, anybody?). With that said, I don't agree with the majority of what they talk about over there, especially on the rare occasion when their venom is spewed my way, but I put on my big girl panties, take what enjoyment I can from the site, and leave the rest.

I was reading GOMI a couple of days ago, just like I've been doing for over a year now, and was struck by a series of what I perceived to be convenient coincidences. The most recent article on the site was written by the website administrator, Partypants, and was titled "Dooce Heating Crisis Sparks Rumors of Money Trouble." The article quoted a recent Dooce post where she was venting about the fact that it was colder than normal in her neck of the woods and that it was really putting a damper on her efforts to minimize her heating bill. Seems like a pretty innocent post to me and one that most of us can relate to this time of year. Even PP herself concluded, "it could be as simple as Dooce trying to minimize the wastefulness of heating the unused rooms in her mansion." Yes, in reality, it really could be, and probably is, that simple, but this is GOMI were talking about, not reality. Simple is never the answer on GOMI, because simple doesn't make for good material to rip another human being apart. Instead the majority of commenters decided to go with the other explanation PP provided: "one has to wonder if this is a sign that the Dooce media empire is winding down." Cue the Snarky McSnarkersons and clever gifs, because nothing is more entertaining than reveling in another person's potential downfall.

So far, this was shaping up to be a pretty typical GOMI post until PP felt the need to comment that up until recently she didn't have heat:

"Sandy blew out my bedroom windows, like out of the frames. They no longer stay in the frame and fall open multiple times during the day and night for no reason, and my bathroom window blew loose and the top window keeps dropping open. Not trying to be all ermagerdtragoedee, I’m sharing this information in order to say I am STILL better off than a LOT of people, and also, layers blankets socks. You just make fucking do because that’s what you HAVE to do when you are alive and human and trying to remain that way. It’s warming up to in the 40s now and that shit feels like a heat wave after the last two weeks. I feel incredibly lucky and am not at all inclined to make some big blog post about how I am getting by with a space heater and electric blanket and omgyallomg I don’t have heat."

Ok, fine, cry me a river, but then she comments again in the same thread about how she is terribly sorry for all the performance problems on the website recently but she is waiting for her next paycheck to come in so she can do a "server upgrade":

"Hey just a head’s up – my paycheck should come through in the next couple of days and I’ll do the server upgrade. Sorry for all the database errors and slow loading in the meantime, hams. I know it’s really annoying, please just ride it out a couple more days and I’ll be able to double the server again. Again, I am SO sorry, I know it’s irritating and I hope it doesn’t put you off the site. I’ve spent two days doing everything I can to optimize it for it’s current capacity, but it seems like every 3 months or so it needs to be upgraded. Yes I get the irony of whining that you need to wait till I get my paycheck on a post about dooce needing to budget. Feel free to tell me to turn my heat off."