Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

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I think I'm basically a misanthrope, and with good reason. However, I like to think of myself as a friendly misanthrope. Friendly is my default setting. It changes to unfriendly when I encounter the stupidity of human beings. In this way, because of my friendliness, my default setting on this blog was to allow anonymous posters, especially because I have friends who I know are not memebers of Opera. However, I have recently been receiving a great number of anonymous comments on one of my blog entries that I have really begun to find tiresome, so, sorry all you well-meaning anonymous posters out there, I have changed the setting of my blog to disallow anonymous comments. The truth is, I hate anonymity anyway. If you've got something to say then put your name to it, or your pseudonym, if that's the way it must be.

Since I like to have the last word on things, let me now examine the anonymous comments I've received and thereby explain exactly why I am a misanthrope.

Let's start with the first comment:

Anonymous writes:

this is fucking shit.

Well, that's really enlightening. It's funny how words can sometimes give us a glimpse into a person's mind. I imagine a brain here empty of all things but the four words, 'this is fucking shit'. Whoever this person is - apparently nobody, which I can readily believe - they don't even have the wherewithal to start a sentence with a capital letter.

... writes:

BORING!!!!!!!THIS IS RUBISH

Another illiterate. There are two 'B's in 'rubbish'. And, of course, this nobody is, like all the other interchangable nobodies, desperately inarticulate. The single brain cell plods around seeing 'Boring' and 'Rubish' (sic) wherever it goes.

jooeee writes:

I don't even like crocodiles so eat your foot i hate you go and smell your head and eat a mole and maybe chuck a bowl of cornflakes at your child.

Interesting. Creative. I quite like the bit about throwing cornflakes at your child. I also like the freedom that is allowed by the use of the word 'maybe'.

a stabbed little mole writes:

this website is so camp i wanted to kill myself when i read it so i want to tell you to change it or i will shoot you with a gun knife shooter mule and ity will sting so much you weill eat a beach ball so you will not live for another 7 years only 8 and 3 eighths AND I ALSO WANT TO NOT EAT A CRAB PUFFABLE GIRAFEE CALLED ALEX HANRDXTON AND IF YOU DONT READ THIS I WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN AND NOT PICK YOUR NOSE WIV A SPANNER BUT A SEED DRILL.

Judging by the style this is the same person who left the previous comment. Quite a nice line in surrealism going on here, with all surrealism's inherent violence. The first line also made me laugh, so, well done, a-stabbed-little-mole.

a stabbed little mole writes:

IM BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!.

Hmmm. Trying to spook me?

jooeee writes:

mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole mole small gay rat mole mole mole mole.

Notice the way the post-modern use of repetition is startlingly interrupted by the enigmatic 'small gay rat'.

a stabbed little mole writes:

cheese filled rat toy with checkered tights and a yacht.

I can see some themes developing here. I would encourage a-stabbed-little-mole to take up poetry.

Anonymous writes:

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z .

Yes, I know the alphabet, thank you.

At this point I made a response to a-stabbed-little-mole as follows:

"this website is so camp i wanted to kill myself when i read it"

Why didn't you? Obviously I have failed in my job..

There were also some friendly comments in with the mix. Here's one of them:

Sir Poe-a-lot writes:

interesting, good info for school, may the horror of Poe, Stoker and Shelley be upon all your heads, you dont even understand the importance of the Gothic influence in your pitiful lives.

I responded at length to this one. I was thinking of how to deal with the anonymous comments, and I gave my thoughts in the response:

Thank you, Sir Poe-a-lot.

I think you have noticed what I believe are called 'trolls', cluttering up the comments section of this entry.

I considered deleting them, but I'm not fond of censorship. However, it occurred to me after discussion with another blogger that, since anyone is free to set up their own blog and, for instance, dedicate it to the criticism of Quentin S Crisp, that to delete comments here is not really censorship. It is merely acting as the editor of one's own blog. Even so, I have refrained from deleting any of the troll comments here, because they are basically harmless, and even vaguely amusing. My only concern is that they might constitute an eyesore to readers such as yourself, so, if they do, I apologise.

I may yet delete comments, and will feel no compunction if I do so.

As you say, some of those here are lamentably unconscious of the forces of which they are mere puppets - the long Gothic shadows of history.

They probably don't even know that the Goths and the Vandals were allied tribes..

Then we had another troll:

Anonymous writes:

i hate goths they are faggs.

This one annoyed me. Unlike the mole character, this fellow was not creative in any way whatsoever. I wrote a brief reply:

Anonymous, you clearly have no idea what the word 'goth' means. The same is true of many who call themselves goths. Of course, had you actually read my post you might have been able to learn something, but clearly you made your own comment without reading, thus exposing your ignorance..

I could have added that he resembled all of his kind in the following ways:

A) He is illiterate (there is only one 'G' in 'fag').
B) He is ignorant (i.e. a moron). I take it that, when he says "goths" he is referring to people who dress in black and listen to Fields of the Nephilim. I find it hard to believe that what he really means is "I hate members of the barbarian tribes of Europe who ended up sacking Rome, because they are all homosexuals". And yet, in my blog entry, I made no mention of the former species of Goth, only the latter.
C) He is a bigot. He seems to believe that stating someone is homosexual is some kind of insult. His antipathy towards "goths" is also questionable on other grounds. I would certainly rather be a "goth" than a homophobic, illiterate, arrogant, bigoted moron.

Now we come to the last straw. The following comment:

Anonymous writes:

this is really dumb and stupid stuff to look at..

Really? Well, I wonder what you mean by 'dumb' and 'stupid'? For instance, let's take an example story. Imagine that someone was reading someone else's blog and they didn't like what they read. He (because it's bound to be a he) says to himself, "I really hate looking at this blog, but what can I do?" He struggles but it doesn't occur to him simply to choose not to look at the blog. Could that possibly be an example of 'dumb' and 'stupid', I wonder? Well, obviously not, since that person has shown such incredible wit, panache and expressiveness in his comment, that I am left speechless. We are clearly dealing with someone of superior intellect here.

I find it so depressing to think that there is so much pond-scum of this variety out there in the world, that I no longer want to know about it. And so I have, as I said, disallowed anonymous posters. Sorry to those of you who are not pond-scum. A battle of wits with plankton is frankly tiring.