Internet Violence

I’m kind of slow.

Apparently there was this big scrap in the blogosphere a few years ago and I’m just learning of it now: I missed the whole thing. Normally I wouldn’t care, but in this case reading a little bit of the goings on made me reflective and it will have an effect on what I write about moving forward.

Please bear with me, this may take some explaining.

I can’t even remember how I found her site, but there is this cast-iron bitch (I’m not being mean because she fully admits and relishes in being one) who calls herself Violent Acres, and her first post was one that was a work of satire with the purpose of calling out a certain mommy blogger. The sarcasm was so thick you could cut it with Tucker Max’s penis. More on that in a bit.

I didn’t even know that there was the whole genre of mommy bloggers on the net, but apparently they are out there and making enough money from doing it so their husbands don't have to work, which sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

But Violent Acres didn’t stop there. Her next post was calling out a daddy blogger, saying he exploits his disabled kid for money, then she went after other mommy bloggers, and then she crucified Tucker Max, accusing him or making up all his stories.

Now comes the part where I head way off into the rhubarb. Be patient, there is a point to all this.

Reading VA’s post about Tucker Max got me thinking. Specifically, it got me contemplating making shit up. I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve read some of Tucker’s stuff and laughed a little. Twenty years ago I probably would have laughed a lot. My college years were nothing like his real or imagined ones. I didn’t start university until I was 20 and I met my wife a year later and we’ve be inseparable ever since. Sure, I got drunk a number of times, but wild and crazy shit never happened to me because I guess that I’m just a boring guy; a boring guy with a good body who can bench press a lot and run pretty fast. It’s hip to be square.

Did Tucker make his stories up? Who the hell cares? He wrote a bestseller so he obviously found a niche and filled it and now he makes a living as a writer. He’s certainly not anyone I’d ever want to hang out with, but the alleged truthfulness of his stories got me thinking What if I started making stuff up?

Of course, My Book isn’t what I’m talking about. My book is really what I’m trying to sell and I’ve made it as factual and realistic as I can. I consider that to be a nobler pursuit than telling gullible folks that they should eat a certain diet based on what their blood type is, or that they can scarf 5,000 Calories a day as long as it’s some magical mixture of macronutrients and they know the secret.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, this blog, if you can call it that, is a tool to keep people coming back to my site, but it also allows me a creative outlet without the constraints of the book or writing magazine articles. I don’t get a lot of traffic yet because I’m not really very good at Internet marketing. Sure, I got an MBA in marketing, but everything I’ve done with it has been big picture strategic shit, and whenever I did web marketing it was with a big budget. Correction, I know a fair bit about web marketing when I’ve got lots of money to blow, but next to bugger all when it comes to free traffic. Feel free to get in touch if you want to help teach me.

So to get more traffic maybe I need to start making these stories more outrageous. In other words, maybe I need to lie.

And I could. I used to write science fiction before I realized that it’s exceedingly difficult to break into that genre, so I know how to make shit up. Hell, off the top of my head I could come up with some wild story about me and the reptard. I could write an entire fucking book about Spiky. Hmmm… I bring up reptard and all of a sudden the F bombs start getting dropped. Coincidence?

How about this scenario for a book: I start going through a midlife crisis. I’m 41 and I’m still not a gazillionaire rock star with a private island and a personal harem. Woe the fuck is me. My life sucks ass. Then I hear Lenny Kravitz on the radio and decide that I just got to get away, so I buy a big-ass Harley Davidson (can’t have a midlife crisis without a Harley, don’t ya know) and tell my family that I need to go “find myself” or some shit like that. As I’m leaving my teary-eyed daughter runs after me holding Spiky the reptard, insisting that I have to take him with me because he’ll watch over me and make sure that I make it back home okay.

Just what I need: a reptard to cramp my midlife crisis style. Spiky hops up on the handlebars, and the adventure begins.

Here are some of things that happen:

We head off to BC and Spiky meets a bunch of hippies and they get him baked on hydroponic homegrown. Spiky ends up pigging out on Cheetos and then craps orange reptard poo all over the Harley. I’m not impressed.
We cruise down the coast to California and Spiky learns to surf. The chicks dig him. We go out clubbing in LA and the celebrities are drawn to Spiky. Madonna and Angelina Jolie get into a cat fight over who gets to adopt him. The only celebrity who doesn’t like him is Paris Hilton, but that’s because she’s jealous of his superior IQ. Paris is pissed that Spiky is the center of attention so she stomps off in a fit of rage and sticks her infected tongue down Dustin Diamond’s throat.
I admit to being jealous that Spiky gets all sorts of female attention because “he’s so unique and interesting.” Women don’t pay any attention to me because, compared to the typical California beach boy, I’m fatter than Rosie O’Donnell.
Spiky is able to resist bleach blonde hair and double D implants, but he develops a cocaine addiction from all the free blow available at the parties he keeps getting invited to.
Spiky meets a Hollywood producer at one of the parties and is offered a role as the villain in the next Matt Damon / Ben Affleck flick, but he ODs on coke while on set and flips right the fuck out, ripping one of Ben’s testicles off with his little reptard claws. This makes Ben a full eunich since J Lo took the other one years ago. Spiky gets fired and is replaced with the guy from the Six Flags commercial. You know, the one who looks like a geriatric Freddy Krueger undergoing late stage chemo and who dances like he’s on a combination of meth and itching powder.
Apparently Spiky wasn’t enough of a star to get away with the non-surgical removal of a Ben Affleck testicle, so we flee LA with the police hot on our tail and head for Mexico. There Spiky sinks deeper into coke addiction and I’m so pissed off that I’m ready to sell him to a Tijuana reptile pimp for gas money, but I remember that my daughter loves the little reptard and decide to cram him into my backpack and keep riding, forcing him to quit the nose candy cold turkey. Spiky has a withdrawal meltdown as we’re crossing the border into Texas, and we almost get busted by the border patrol who think I’m either trying to smuggle in illegal reptiles, or smuggle coke inside the stomach of said reptile (and the alleged balloon burst, which would explain why Spiky was freaking out).
We get turned back and have to sneak across the border late at night. A bunch of pissed off Texans spot us and start blasting away with their boom sticks, and Spiky takes a bullet that was meant for me. I rush him to the vet and he barely pulls though.
We celebrate Spiky’s full recovery with a trip to the Texas State Fair, where Spiky eats someone’s prized cricket and they arrest him for murder. In order to hire a lawyer I need money, so I take a job writing death row obituaries. These don’t pay well, but at least there is lots of work for this genre in Texas. Spiky’s lawyer insists that he be subjected to an IQ test and it is determined that he is indeed legally reptarded. He is sentenced to death in spite of this, because that’s just how they roll in Texas.
Remembering that he took a bullet for me, I use my obituary writing connections to get into the prison “because I need to clarify with one of the death row inmates which trailer park he was raised in.” While there I sneak into Spiky’s cell and smuggle him out of the prison. Use your imagination as to exactly how I smuggled him out.
We flee into the night on the Harley, the Texan lawmen hot on our trail. So much for me ever selling any books in that state.
We briefly travel into Louisiana and Spiky once again narrowly escapes with his life because he knocked up some swamp daughter and her daddy wanted to turn him into Cajun BBQ. Guess I’m not selling any books in that state either.
The Texans find our trail and we head up the east coast with them in pursuit, finally taking refuge in New York City, knowing that no self-respecting Texan would set foot there. We thought we were safe, until Spiky was made CEO of a major financial institution. Of course, Spiky embezzles 100 billion dollars and then is arrested. I have to use all the embezzled funds, plus the little money I have left, in bribes to get him off the hook.
We try to leave New York, but have no money left for gas. Spiky has to do bearded dragon porn in order to make enough money so we can get home.
We head north to Ottawa and the Federal Liberal Party tries to make Spiky their new leader, believing he’d be a vast improvement over their previous ones. They’re right that he would have been better, but Spiky’s past behaviors on this road trip convince me that his moral standards are too high to qualify him for public office. His IQ might be too high as well.
While traveling the last leg through Alberta to Calgary, a late summer storm hits and temperatures plummet in typical Canadian fashion. Being that Spiky is a reptile he is in danger of freezing to death. I’m so pissed at him at this point about everything that’s happened that I’m tempted to just let him freeze, but I remember that I need to get him home alive or my daughter will be devastated.

And here comes the grand finale of the story; the part where it all comes together; the final scene where I find a deeper meaning in my life-changing journey blah fucking blah.

Spiky was cold. He was freezing. If I didn’t do something then he wasn’t going to make it. I knew the only thing that could save him was shared bodily warmth. My mind rebelled at the thought; at having his reptilian skin pressed against mine. He had done so much to earn my ire on this trip that I didn’t think he deserved to be saved yet again. Not this way. I looked at his pathetic face, and for a moment I thought I saw in his eyes the faintest glimmer of intelligence. Those eyes were saying something: please. “Please help me,” they said.

Feeling disgust I unzipped my jacket and unbuttoned my shirt and stuffed the little reptard inside against my chest, letting my own warmth return life to his nearly frozen body. His claws raked my skin as I rode the Harley through the storm. I couldn’t wait to be home simply so I could hand him back to my daughter and rid myself of further responsibility for him. Sure, he’d taken a bullet for me, but then I broke him out of death row so that made us even, and since then he’d done nothing but get us into more and more trouble. He’d made the entire trip a living hell.

After many miles the storm let up and the sun came out, and with the sun there was a rainbow, and with the rainbow, there was an awakening in my soul. I stopped the bike to check on Spiky and there was a new look in his eyes. These eyes didn’t express gratitude, but forgiveness. They were saying that it was okay for me to forgive him for his transgressions, because he had forgiven me for what I had done. The eyes told me that my own crime had been to not realize all that I had that was good in life: a loving family, and even a loving pet.

We drove the last miles home and it felt like a weight had been lifted. I finally knew who I was; who I was meant to be. It took an incredible journey to find myself, but with the help of special reptile I’d found the meaning in my life I’d been looking for.

I’d also found a friend.

BAAAARRRRFFFFF!!!!

I’ve even got a title in mind: The Reptard Road: A Healing Journey of Friendship and Forgiveness. New York Times Bestseller List here I come.

Eh, probably not.

Right about now you’re probably wondering if I’ve been drinking. I haven’t, but it’s starting to sound like a good idea. Just FYI, I already had my midlife crisis a year ago. My act of “rebellion” is evidenced in the picture below:

I buzzed it all off a couple of months later. I’m all better now.

I had a point when I started writing all of this, so let’s see if I can get back to that.

Violent Acres did another post against the mommy and daddy bloggers that called them out for profiting at the expense of their kids’ privacy. She talks about how these kids entire lives are being played out online, complete with photos and full names, for the amusement of many thousands and the generation of significant ad revenue by the parents. Writing a private blog for your friends that talks about your kids is fine, but sharing every detail of your kids’ lives for the entire world to see does strike me as an invasion of a child’s right to privacy. I know I wouldn’t have wanted my mom writing about some of the shit I pulled as a kid.

I didn’t read a 20^th of the stuff on VA’s site, but I gleaned that she’s not the nicest of people. She says some pretty bad shit. I’ve called out scammers and assholes on the Internet without actually naming names, but she uses methods I find distasteful. Nevertheless, I think she makes a good point about the mommy and daddy bloggers.

And it got me thinking that there are a couple of instances where I could be accused of being a daddy blogger. Fuck.

I think Inchy the Caterpillar is the most blatant example of me coming up with writing material at the expense of one of my kid’s feelings and privacy. Bearded Reptard #4 is pushing it as well. I figured I was just showing my target market how I’m a regular family guy just like them, and since I never mentioned my kids names or posted any pictures then I was protecting their privacy. I think I was kidding myself. This blog shouldn’t be about them. They deserve more privacy than that.

I can understand why popular bloggers choose to write about their kids. It’s because they play an important role in their lives, but also it’s easy! There is non-stop access to good material when you’ve got kids in the house, and it’s material that a lot of people can relate to, but it doesn’t make it right.

I’m not going to shit all over the famous mommy and daddy bloggers out there who detail the minutia of their kids’ lives for advertising revenue. I’m just deciding not to become one of them. I may make mention of my kids now and then because they are a major part of my life, but in the future they won’t play a key role in any of these posts, and certainly not in any way that could portray them in a negative light like the Inchy story did. There is a line, and that one crossed it.

Pulitzer Prize winning humor writer Dave Barry often uses his kids as a source of material, but he’s found a way to do it that maintains their privacy. I’ve got a lot of respect for Dave and I need to read more of his stuff. Here is a perfect example of how a vague mention of one’s child can provide great material, yet at the same time protect the kid’s privacy. Dave is the master.

So, what will I write about? I was kidding about making stuff up. There’s enough true-life entertainment in this world without having to resort to that. I still may use my kids for inspiration now and then the way Dave does – I don’t see a problem with writing that my son called Boromir a dick, for example, but that’s about as much detail as I’m willing to share with you folks from here on out. There are plenty of entertaining stories about them I could share, like the time my daughter launched projectile [deleted] directly onto her brother’s [deleted], but telling you these stories is an invasion of their privacy. I don’t want to give them any additional reasons to hate me when they become teenagers.

I try to make this blog fitness related to reveal “the fit family guy” lifestyle, but that can be a bit limiting sometimes, so if inspiration strikes then I just need to go where it takes me. Without using kids as a source of material if might be a little more challenging, but don’t worry, I’ll think of something.

One day soon I think I’ll do a review of the Bowflex. They’ve got it coming.

Want to receive updates of new content? Fill out the form below. I keep your email private and you can unsubscribe any time.