One of my (former) readers was disturbed enough by my last post and comic on the dangers of slut-shaming as a defense to plagiarism to send me an email about it. They asked me two questions:
- Why would I want to publicly out my ex wife on her infidelity AND her copyright infringement (and why would I possibly want comments on that relationship)?
- If I was trying to market to people who had been victims of a cheating partner?
I asked if they were joking. They weren’t.
Out of respect, I wont reveal their name or their exact comments. This former reader then went on to say that they didn’t like any use of the term “slut”, but since the name of my business was WTF advertising [sic], it must work for me.
…
That’s the exact opposite of what the post was all about. Never mind getting the name of my business wrong; the whole premise of the post – comics and all – was that in order to prevent plagiarism, education is a much better alternative to slut-shaming.
I realize the irony of speaking out against “slut-shaming” only for me to turn around and share publicly a little righteous indignation about someone who took the time to write me a very nice (read: thinly veiled insult-filled) series of emails asking if I was sure I wanted to publish stuff like that – like some sort of “Nick, you’re being an idiot – confirm/retry/abort?” error message. Here, though, I’ve protected the former reader’s identity and exact comments.
While I appreciate the intent, insinuating that I have some sort of predilection to douchebaggedness because I use WTF in my business name, isn’t helpful feedback.
So I gladly unsubscribed them from my list. In short, I’ve stopped feeding the trolls. Look, I just can’t think of a more polite way to ask… what the fuck?
The only way it’s possible to so badly misinterpret what I wrote is if you skimmed for all the swear words. Of Erika’s post, the former reader mentioned they weren’t interested in “all the words”. What the fuck are you reading then?
The only other alternative is I must have done a terrible job of writing that post in order for our wires to get so crossed. So, just in case I left a bad taste in anyone else’s mouth, I’d better explain my post and comic from yesterday:
- Slut-Shaming is wrong, y’all. Educate instead of shame, whenever possible.
- I don’t have an ex-wife – I’ve never been divorced. I have a current wife who is wonderful. None of my comics are about people I know, even though many are painfully true.
- I personally just thought it was hilarious to think about intellectual property theft in terms of a fictitious sexual position being passed from one partner to the next while the inventor got no credit.
- The “Inverted Manatee” Sexual Position is – as far as I know – not currently a real thing. But it should be a real thing.
- I’m going to start including a TL;DR section (much like Steve over at Nerd Fitness does from time to time) which has the “lesson” summarized in a tidy little package at the end of the post, starting today.
TL;DR:
- Teach don’t shame.
- Invent the Inverted Manatee
- My wife is awesome
- TL;DR is gonna appear at the bottom of every post from now on
