Saturday, October 16, 2010
fun with foster
Here is a recent IM conversation with Mike Foster. He said he took screenshots too and asked if I would post them, and I will, but he hasn't sent them yet. Anyway, I'm posting this because if anyone thinks I'm a mocker and a scoffer I want them to please let me know. I need people to call me out on that kind of thing.
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23 comments:
Hello, have a heaping spoonful of shaming.
Holy mackerel!
You handled that so beautifully.
What a fucker. are you okay? I don't want him to talk to you that way.
Obviously, most people expect their FB book chats to be personal but Stephanie doesn't seem to respect any form of privacy. Moreover, she edited these screen shots to make them come across more abrasive than it really was. I actually took the screen shots. Would you load up the whole thing so people see them in context? I can send them to you.
Well, Stephanie took some of this out of context but you guys are right. This is no way to talk to a lady. A man should talk to a woman in a different way than he talks to a man. I let my guard down because Stephanie is playful and witty. She hits hard and I like that about her. Regardless, I was wrong. I'm sorry for falling short in this regards, Stephanie. Please forgive me. Please leave this up. It is a reminder to me and to others that our private conversations should always honor God.
haha... oh sorry... I thought this was supposed to be a comedy...
oh wait... he's for real????
I'm just wondering: In reference to the previous superhero you post, why have you not yet said "see you later" to this person who seems obviously unsafe for friendship?
Anonymous,
That is an excellent question.
what do you know? i DID find a lot of good adverbs here :)
lanternI feel like you're having two different conversations there.
- He says people see you as angry, hurt, and sarcastic, you say you want people to see that, and then he accuses you of being dishonest with yourself. What?
- He says you're a hypocrite, you say everyone is, and then he agrees with you but claims you're justifying it. Again: what?
- You say you want him to call you on your justifying (something presumably he thinks he's doing at that moment) and then he says you make him sad.
Essentially, he seems determined to denigrate you, even though you defuse everything he says. He lays the groundwork like he's heading for a big, negative revelation about you, and when you knock it down before he gets there, he keeps trying anyway.
The weird man-to-man vs. man-to-woman thing doesn't help him either. I'm a man, and I wouldn't talk to anyone this way. A.) I'd like to hope I'd make more sense, and B.) I don't try to cut any of my friends down like this regardless of which set of genitals they own. Michael has one of the strangest concepts of chivalry I've seen.
Michael
You mad. Anyone else see it? He mad.
Hi Steph, I'm on the other side of the Pacific in Australia and I'm gobsmacked to see such personal discussion out there in cyberspace for all, including me, to read. I came to your blog because you seemed like a really interesting person and this issue seems really sad - couldn't you pick up the phone and talk to the other guy? Does everything have to be out there? Also, you guys seem to swear a lot? Sure, you're upset and I get that but is it necessary?
Gobsmacked! To answer you questions: I guess I could pick up the phone and talk to that person but I've never met him, everything does not have to be out there, and swearing is necessary even when one is not upset. :)
Ok, on your side here, but the chat does look edited. Why did you edit it and what did you edit out?
Yeah, it is totally abbreviated, I could only take screenshots of about four lines at a time so I did of the pertinent ones. I put this here because I asked at the Stuff Christian Culture Likes facebook page if anyone else thinks I'm a mocker and a scoffer to please let me know because I don't want to be defensive of it and I need to be told this stuff if it is true (whenever I get a disgruntled comment on my SCCL blog I make it the blog's Facebook status so people can respond. Some people do agree with the negative comments which helps redress the uneven balance of me being the blogger and being able to control what is posted, etc.). So this is all that I captured of our conversation but Foster said he has screenshots of the entire thing and asked if I'd post them if he sent them to me and I said yes but I haven't gotten them yet. I'd love to post the whole thing so hopefully he'll send them.
thanks Steph for answering - gobsmacked is a good Australian term for being surprised. You can use it anytime you like - maybe instead of non-creative swear words. You write very well so you really don't need to swear - it lessens the impact of your thoughtful communication, which I enjoy reading. So next time you want to tell someone to stop, say 'don't come the raw prawn with me'. Go on, say it to me. I do hope things work with your church and the issues are resolved and healed. All the best, cheers.
One of my best friends is from Melbourne and I love when she says her gob's been smacked. Yeah, I know it's lowly to curse and is a poor showing of vocabulary but it's just so much goddamned fun!
I totally agree, swearing is the shit. If "gobsmacked," which is an awesome word, is nonetheless in popular use, how is it any more creative than a "fuck" here or a "goddamn" there? That's what I don't get about the angle on swearing that calls it uncreative. But aside from that sort of random criticism, you were mostly very nice, anonymous-from-australia.
Michael, how interesting that you changed tacks in twenty minutes. I'm all for private conversations being made public if that's what it takes to bring about respectful dialogue.
oh Sarah, just mostly nice? I'll take that. :)
Sarah and Stephy, sure swearing can be fun, maybe as comedic shock value in the mid-80s (Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor spring to mind), but, fair dinkum, it's boring when you hear and read it so much. You can do better, I'm sure.
Anyways, enough from me, have a nice evening in the land of the free, home of the brave. I really ought to do some work ...
Sorry Anonymous, I'm not accepting any shame today. You can try again tomorrow. Even though it's already tomorrow your time. Bloody hell!
Good to see you're laughing then, Stephy - even my good Baptist sister-in-law uses the b word, which is quintessentially Aussie! Mid-afternoon actually here in the wide brown land.
Enjoy the rest of your shame-free day.
I said "mostly very nice" because shaming someone, however pleasantly worded, is almost never a kind thing to do, especially for something trivial like word choice. Your preferences are your own, and you're free to have them; that doesn't make your preferences a universal standard for everyone else.
It bothers me when people who object to certain kinds of social behaviors -- ways of speaking, dressing, etc. -- try to impose their objections universally as standards on others. If you don't like words like "damn," "ass," "shit," etc., that's fine; no one's making you use them. If you're going to be around people who do use them, or read the writings of people who use them, it's far more well-bred to develop a thicker skin about them and refrain from using them yourself instead of correcting people's behavior based on your preferences.
Offering criticisms like "you could do better" or "you're too smart for swearing" is like taking those same criticisms and applying them to people who use the wrong forks at a formal dinner or pour wine into the wrong kind of wine glass -- it's only "wrong" based on a certain kind of formal etiquette. Shaming someone is designed to make the other person feel bad/ashamed/guilty. Not an appropriate tactic.
Really, it's all about context. If we were at a formal dinner or a business meeting using words that are socially inappropriate for the context, you'd have every right to say, "Hey, this isn't the situation to use that language." Since a blog isn't formal or professional, you don't have any reason to object to Stephy's mode of expression. Your only basis of objecting is that you don't like it. Which is fine; but this isn't your blog, so you don't get to call, or even suggest, the shots, without coming across as something of a douchebag, even if a very polite and good-natured one.
Besides which, the words we consider "swearing" in English didn't get their designation as such until the Victorian era.
My son is currently working (I hope) on the dissertation for a Masters Degree in Christian doctrine and his chosen subject is swearing.
But then he is my son so he was screwed up from birth and didn't stand a sh*t with me as a father.
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