I was sent a message from Suba "warning" me to not pick fights on their
system. For all I know, Mr. Petro could have sent it himself while he was
at work. Whoever it was, was not honest enough to acknowledge that Mr.
Petro was an employee and that Suba was hardly acting as an impartial
third party. To back up an employee trolling a paying customer with
an attempt to browbeat the customer into letting him publicly have the
last and only word, though, was neither professional nor ethical.
Using the usual PC feeding frenzy tactic of echoing the last complaint
lodged in a hysterical fashion, he then complained that I had made
a threat to him, also. Well, why should Johnnyboy get all of the
attention? (Picture someone tsk-ing, with his fists on his hip).
The basis for this? I had already indicated that I wasn't going to
agree to just leave my mailbox open and cooperate with anyone who wanted
to get his little friends together, and orchestrate a campaign of e-mail
harassment because, well, that would be stupid. His response was to
complain about how I would not not accepting the responsibilities of my
actions, if I made it harder for someone to harass me for writing
something that he didn't like. Kind of junior high school-ish, don't you
think?
So, I pointed out the absurdity of that argument, with this purely
hypothetical example.
Just out of curiosity, how would you feel about a request that
you publish your home address (where you live, not your e-mail address) so
me and a few of my friends could come over and discuss matters with you,
possibly with the help of a few baseball bats? I'm sure that it
wouldn't matter to you that I'm 6'3", 200 lbs., and the small one in the
group. I'm sure that you'd just be dying to say "yes".
What, not receptive? Gee, maybe you even have the notion that
'accepting the results of your actions' doesn't include accepting abusive
behavior. Gosh, how irresponsible of you to try to "hide from the results
of your actions", like that. Grow up, creep. This isn't the Wild West.
There are limits to acceptable behavior, and a bare minimum level of
expected civility.
Naturally, Petro decided to play the hysteria card. As anyone with even
the slightest ability in the area of reading comprehension can see, this
was not a threat, as no future action was indicated. If someone says "well
he had the right to beat you up", saying "well, how would you feel if I
beat you up?" is a question, and maybe an accusation of hypocrisy, but it
is clearly not a threat. But Petro still labled it as such, and Suba
backed him up in this as the chi.general regulars would, later on.
People on Usenet tend to be a little stupid. Here's Petro's post on
chi.general, presented for your disbelief and disapproval.
Click
here for the original copy of this sludge in Dejanews. (Opens in new window)
And here is my reply : click here to
continue.
