Occasionally, we get comments or emails about the issues that we write about. Recently, Deek wrote an article about not wanting anyone other than her children to refer to her as “Mommy,” and so she was on the receiving end of a bunch of comments along the lines of, “stop whining about non-issues!” and “get a life!” (Nevermind the fact that these people are apparently taking time from their own precious lives to comment on an issue completely unimportant to them.) This is not the only time a blogger has been told to discuss “more important” issues, but it’s the most recent one that came to my mind.
And then we received the following email (fully tongue-in-cheek, just to get that out of the way). And it made us laugh and so we are sharing it with you. Enjoy! Or, get a life or something!
Dear President of Grounded Parents:
I write to express my Extreme Dissatisfaction that your site, which I access without personal cost and at my own discretion and liberty, does not meet my personal entertainment and information needs. What follows is a list of my demands; heed them, or I shall take my internet custom elsewhere.
1. Too many articles about children, childbearing, parenting, dealing with kids, etc. I know your site is called “Grounded Parents”, but the internet exists to serve my entertainment needs, and you are not holding up your part of the bargain. I do not have children, so I do not care about all of these articles.
2. Too many articles discussing personal points of view and the individual perspectives of actual people “reflecting” on their own “lived experience”. First, see the above note about my lack of interest in articles about children, parenting, and The Like. Second, these “experiences” are not validated by Science, and are therefore immaterial.
Third, I have had different experiences, which necessarily negate entirely the “experiences” reported by your correspondents. Fourth, were I to imagine my own response to, shall we say, “hypothetical” experiences your correspondents report, I believe my own response would be considerably different; therefore, your correspondents are wrong to report their own “experiences” (if they can indeed be classified as such).
3. Too little regard for Serious Issues Impacting the World Today. As you may know, we who are “privileged” to live in the “First World” discern all manner of “problems” Those Less Fortunate would kill (sometimes literally) to have. It is Unconscionable that your website would attend, in any way (let alone, seriously), to “First World Problems”.
I demand that you instantly implement a new policy in which a “trigger warning” is applied to all reflections on First World Problems, so we readers who are now sensitized to such problems may avoid sullying our consciousnesses with these issues we have determined to be trivial, so we may instead ponder the fate of child sex trafficking, starvation, insecure water supplies, and curable or preventable disease. Our work Pondering the Less Privileged can never advance if you continue to post essays about pink toys and whether it matters that children are allowed to choose their own clothing.
4. Finally, I here enumerate a brief list of articles your site lacks and seems disinclined to offer:
a. Sports Page. Just because I am female, and just because your site has nothing specifically to do with “sports” or “sporting events”, does not mean that I am not interested in sports. Your “demolition derby” posts are metaphorical, and as such, do not qualify as sport, because there are no actual engines revved.
b. Cartoons. Such things can brighten a reader’s day, particularly when she sees how troublesome Hagar the Horrible is to his patient wife, Helga.
c. Customer Service “Chat.” At times when I peruse the site I want to ask a question about a sponsored link or comment made by another reader. It would be useful to know if the item for sale works, or if the commenter can be fired because I disagree with them
d. Instant user moderation. When I do not agree with or like posts or comments, I demand the right to remove those posts, or edit them so they are made to agree with my point of view. After all, when I tell someone to “chill out” or “don’t get your undies in a bunch”, I expect to be taken seriously for my discerning commentary.
As you can see, this list presents a series of Critical Issues for your site, and for the extent to which I may or may not choose to continue to monitor it on a daily basis, “follow” it, comment repeatedly on articles with which I disagree, and otherwise freely invest my time and attention.
Consider yourself warned. As I have said, I will go elsewhere.
Sincerely,
Uvula P. Beeblebrox
Pretty great, the one thing I was hoping it would do is after calling for a trigger warning, demand that there be no trigger warnings, and go on about how said person overcame their past traumatic experience without them, and so they were completely unnecessary and arguably bad!
The Internet Meme Demolition Derby is not a metaphor. It’s more of a framing device. A metaphor implies a lot more thought than I actually put into the column.
“Our work Pondering the Less Privileged…”
Brilliant.
Sigh. . .I love Uvula. Specifically: “when I tell someone to “chill out” or “don’t get your undies in a bunch”, I expect to be taken seriously for my discerning commentary.”
Also, not enough cat pictures! Did you not know that the interwebz are for porn and pics of cats??? Who are you people???!!!