Virtual Rage, Real Problem

“I know what I have to do. I’ve got to go Red Ross. You know, Red Ross? The time we were all waiting in line for Dances With Wolves and that guy cut in line in front of us and I just lost it?! Screamed at him – turned all Red Ross?!”

-Ross Geller, Friends

Every few days, just when I’m sitting down to a fabulous cup of apricot mango black tea, or when I’ve just earned a huge Viggle bonus just for being me (which likely means checking into Supernatural or I Love Lucy), I’m met with a real downer. Coming in various forms, these hunks of bad news almost always come via email. And they almost always throw me into an instant state of anger. Like the road rage of the interweb, these events keep on coming. Perhaps it was a drifter telling me he could do my job “while on the toilet,” or maybe it was the millionth email from an account I’ve repeatedly marked as spam, or maybe, worst of all, it was the ignorers. Those who either block me out all together, or correspond regularly and then unexpectedly fall of the face of Columbus’s flat earth.

Let it be known that I hate all of you.

Angry Birds: Don’t mess with the nest.

It’s true that these irksome moments are just a part of my job, which involves talking with those I’ve never met through electronics and only sometimes phones, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to complain about it any less. It’s brutish commenters, condescending tones, name callers, and I’m-never-wrong types who make the online world a less awesome place.

It’d be appreciated if you kept your lack of online knowledge, bossy behavior, and toilet humor to your own IP address. Your Wi-Fi router (and me) would greatly appreciate it.

Other things that peeve me to the core:

• Apple doesn’t use a forward delete. Sometimes my mistakes are frontal, not backard, Macintosh.
• Saved credentials that are sometimes invalid; how can they only partially work?

• Those who call me “Beth” or “Bethany” despite immediate access to my online signature. (It’s BethanEy; no abbreviations unless we’ve exchanged phone numbers and have at least three photos together.) I would eat your candy and take your free kitten before I’d approve of your immediate nickname.

• Password restrictions. Let me be the decider of just how secure my accounts are, please.

• Captchas … grrrr

• Other web-y things I can’t think of right now.

While, after nearly two years as a professional web dweller, I would change the tactful-ness that takes place online, I certainly wouldn’t trade in my job. Instead, I write posts like these, outlining my frustrations. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to tell the uncivilized strangers how incredibly sorry I am it didn’t work out. Consider this the blog version of my crossed fingers.

Angry Birds artwork courtesy of Zero Lives.