Well, it’s the first day of NaBloPoMo, and the thing that’s been most on my mind this week is the general asshattery that is to be found on the Internet.
As you may recall, my good friend Eden has gained a certain amount of notoriety over the whole YouTube/Universal Music Publishing Group/Prince kerfluffle (aside–I luuuurve the word kerfluffle…). You can read the Washington Post story here, or the ABC News story here (or you could read about it on her blog, if I could get the darn thing to load…).
For those not in the know, here’s the quick sum-up…Eden posted a 29-second video of her son dancing on YouTube. Said video had the song “Let’s Go Crazy” playing in the background. Universal ordered YouTube to take down the video. They did. Eden filed a counternotice, and the video went back up. Eden got the Electronic Frontier Foundation involved, and a lawsuit was filed.
I’ve spent more time than I really should have this week reading comments on the various websites the story has been posted on. Many of the comments boil down to “prince sux!” Others are somewhat more intelligent. Many of the commenters are siding with Eden, but every now and then…
People have criticized her for posting a video of her child on YouTube at all. People have accused her of being a famewhore, of “just being after money” and even worse. Some of the trolliest comments have attacked Eden’s and Baby H’s looks. But that’s not even the worst part…the worst part is the other people who clearly don’t know how to deal with trolls.
I desperately want to put everyone with a keyboard and an Internet connection in a room and say, “Listen up, people. Do not, under any circumstances, feed the trolls. Stop it.”
So, trolls annoy me. People who think they know everything about everything and can’t be stopped from posting on public websites annoy me. Actually, lots of things annoy me, but that’s neither here nor there.
Before I ramble on any further, I just want to point out how proud I am of Eden for standing up for her principles this way. She shows so much more grace and courage in the face of asshattery than I ever could. Go Eden!
This is the first I’m reading of this story, Found your through NaBloPoMo. Interesting. It seem as if both Universal and some trolls should get a life.
Thanks for stopping by, Neil! And of course, I agree…
And today Supernova is down, which means TC is down, my site is down and Supernova is down so no one can ask “what’s going on?”
At the video, I delete any negative comments about Holden. They’re just trolls. The rest of the stupid comments, I just laugh off. And every now & then I read one like “git ‘er done!” or “I saw your interview & you’re hot.” Those are pep-givers 😉 But hey, there will always be assholes in the world and I will always be able to laugh at them. Most of them have the facts all wrong and it’s just laughable how ignorant they are.
Rule #1: You can’t cure stupid.
Rock on with your bad self…
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