doesn't that pretentious title make you want to punch me? me too. but, I'm not going to, because there would be no point. I'd still be a pretentious douche. and you're not going to either, because we're not at the same location. now that we have established relativity as a theme of this post, let us continue:

i initially posted the following as a comment on a documentary about furries, but i'm mentioning it here because...i need attention and approval, i guess. hopefully beyond my own needs though someone else will find it worth reading. less self-effacingly, the topic is important to me because it concerns a.) rampant rudeness (which I've discussed at length before), b.) the creative validity of furriness, and c.) the necessity of good social attitudes in survival. i don't think that last point can be overstated even if it seems at first glance like exaggeration. the original comment consists of the first three paragraphs.

---the original comment, which was responding to someone else's comment that "I don't hate furries but that's a pretty starry-eyed assumption, don't you think? No, many of them are just misinformed and ignorant.", which was in reply to the original poster's assertion that "people who hate on furries and bronies are probably lonely not creative and come here to documentaries and type their hate to make themselves feel better"---

I don't think it is entirely 'starry-eyed'. while it's true that most the creative people in the world are not furries, it is also true that the the role of most furries, as opposed to fans of say sport, movie, tv-show and most other popular fan-centric interests, is not essentially passive; I mean that the vast bulk of furry content is created by the fans themselves, whereas extra-fandom content like movies and video games is really a small percentage of the total creative sphere. as mentioned in the video, and as anyone who's checked out a furry social media site or attended a convention can attest, there is a huge over-representation of creatively inclined people in the furry fandom when compared to mainstream interests with large fanbases (i'm thinking of the latest super bowel as i type this which just occurred the day before yesterday). I think that this point is beyond dispute, though the following one is simply my impression:

I think that non-creative persons are much more prone to the sort of exaggerated criticism and mean-spirited derision that seems to be especially reserved for furries. i think that it seems reasonable to them to have such an attitude because many furries are clearly douchebags - but i don't know that there's a greater percentage of douchebags in the furry fandom than out of it - and that their derision seems therefore justified. but, derision is something that people do out of insecurity; it's hard for me to imagine that people who have genuine accomplishments, in their own personal development, in their work, in art, in any meaningful area of their lives, would need to tear other people down in order to feel valid and estimable. and besides that, if you're busy painting, making music, building a business, solving your own issues, supporting and nurturing the people around you, or engaging regularly in any other inherently worthwhile positive creative activity, when would you have time to make a big point of ridiculing some person or class of persons who have done you absolutely no wrong? why would you bother?

i do agree though on your points of ignorance and misinformation. we are all ignorant and misinformed about so much of life and about each other. this is really the problem of modern society, because we can't care about what we don't know about or don't understand. solving this problem is a life-long project, and i think we'd all feel a lot better about ourselves and less hostile to each other if we spent more of our time addressing our own issues and distorted worldviews than in slinging excrement.

---and now, the thrilling sequel---

there's a lot of praise for the internet and the capabilities it imparts. most relevant to this post is that it allows people to communicate in ways undreamed of before, and that the (illusion) of anonymity allows for more candor than social convention typically allows. but, what is actually being communicated? unfortunately, and unflatteringly, it is often the lowest, crassest, ugliest parts of our personalities: snide, sarcastic, belligerent, deliberately offensive bile that we spew at any opportunity.

on the one hand, the general lack of immediate reprisal is good in that it allows in a certain respect more honesty. it allows us to dispense with obfuscating niceties and simply state what's on our minds. however, a lot of us take this as carte blanche to voice any opinion, though much of what i have in mind can't even rightly be called opinion, that springs to mind without the slightest consideration of how insensitive, offensive or repulsive it may be. and quite often, it's carte blanche to be offensive and repulsive intentionally, because no one's going to physically attack you for it. it's analogous to an x-ray machine. unfortunately, what is revealed by the xray is often malignant cancer. for instance this gem of humanity from the same video comment forum: "These faggots that are furrys should all be shot in the head. They are a danger to society". or this one: "Fucking Weirdos. Join reality with the rest of us". like you (probably), my immediate inclination is to say something very snide and biting back to them that will hurt them. but, what would that do but perpetuate and further distill the sewage? instead, i observe my thoughts, and i allow them to run their course without condemnation or action, and i find that after a while i'm not even angry or hurt, at least not hurt in the way they intended to hurt me. i'm hurt insofar as i realize that only a hurting person would say such things to begin with, and i sympathize with their suffering which is compounded by their inability to cope with it and express it in a relieving way, and thus feel their hurt. but it is really their pain i am feeling, because they are robbing the rest of humanity, which includes me, of their potential value as a fully realized person. i feel hurt in the way that people feel hurt when someone they love commits suicide, not like they do when someone throws a rock at them. haters have confused their subjective conceptualizations with external objects (other people). which is why the second person's invitation to "join reality with the rest of us" is so sadly ironic.

self-understanding is not often cultivated today, and most never learn it. if a person doesn't know themself they can never know another. for the most part we don't know other people; they exist as conceptions in our own imaginations. we are more like dream figures to one another, functioning as reflective surfaces upon which we project our own expectations and prejudices, hopes, hates and fears, which we fail to recognize because we so rarely, if ever, look inside ourselves to begin with. our tendency to mistake our projections for objective reality is only augmented when the other is not a person but a whole category of people we've only seen or heard of over the internet. how great are our social delusions when we only 'interact' via message boards, comment boards, youtube videos, etcetera?

so when i read and here this casual vitriol, 'trolling' i guess is the newfangled phrase for it (but i'm verbose and must stretch single words in to paragraph-length multi-claused hyper-hyphenated sentence walls) and i compare it to my experience with all the positive, supportive, friendly, nurturing, beautifully talented people i've been getting to know in furlandia, i can't help but pity those trolls. but, i don't let them drag me down into their despair. i've had quite enough despair of my own, and i am much more interested in learning to excell how, when and where i can despite other people's missiles launched out of their insecurities and poorly integrated egos.** the people who voice this sort of violently-worded insult are revealing what they cannot admit directly: that they are abused, neglected, frightened children who are suffering from arrested development. i feel sorry (i mean actual sorrow) that they are broken, angry and frustrated, but i know those feelings from my own experience, and if i ever attacked another person in any fashion because of them i was not right in doing so. but, i do understand them. most people are beyond any help i could give, and some beyond any help whatsoever. hideously, the most effective medicines for these problems are almost all felonies in most of the western world, and so we are left with an ever growing population of these fragmented persons leading existences of raging futility.

at any rate, i'm personally doing alright, could be better, eating too much and not working out enough, but getting some other work done, happy that i've connected with you and that good vibrations seem to be spreading through our little circle. i sure hope it continues; i'll do my part and encourage you to do yours! the world needs more care, more consideration, more generosity of spirit. a kind word is never wasted.

to close with a more uplifting video (actually that first video itself i thought wasn't bad, although i do have criticisms of it...but they're very dorky criticisms and i just don't have the emotional strength to withstand anyone thinking i might be a dork!), i find this girl to be rather endearing and, for a fourteen year old, unannoying. and it's nice that she doesn't say "um" and "like" like, um, 500 times a minute.

*i didn't want to include actual screen names because i don't want anyone to track them down and engage them since that's exactly what these sad creatures feed on, but considering the spirit of their messages it seemed i'd be more remiss to refrain. so, the first words of wisdom were committed to public record by someone who chose as their screen name "Suck a Cocker Spaniels Cock". i could not have made that up. nor would i have thought up the second commenter's handle, which is InebriatedAssClown. A third person chose ThatGuyWeHate, rather pathetically i might add, as nothing he said was hate-worthy, merely pitiful. for instance "Sorry you suck at life. You ended up as a human not a fancy wolf. Don't try to cover up something with a piece of broke glass." it's kind of like a third grader yelling "fart head" at someone out the window of a schoolbus and thinking themself quite cool.

** this video is a good illustration of what i'm talking about. in it, a lion bites the hell out of his owner/trainer's leg. although it's not mentioned in this video, i did originally see another video of the incident in which it was explained that the lion had a rotten tooth that was causing it pain and it basically expressed the pain by biting.