Be Nice

Yea, so obviously when I saw that Reddit has a “Secret Santa” thing going I was like “cool!”… because I love sending people stuff. Always have. I used to send people marbles through the post when I was a kid. I once sent this girl I fancied (Wooley-Haired-Lass) a six-ft tall inflatable carrot. It didn’t really have the desired effect, but goddamn it was sincere. She was a Russian/Arab model who worked in my local bar. We had nothing in common whatsoever, and the first time I talked to her properly (as it were) I was on acid.

Still Secret Santa… fucking cool idea.

Unfortunately, your “santa” gets to see your reddit profile, including everything you’ve said over the years – and my involvement with reddit was mainly involved vitriolic flame-wars with conservative American wankers. Turkeys voting for thanksgiving the lot of them, and a bunch of fucking idiots. I let rip… so my reddit profile makes me look like a fairly unpleasant, unhappy sort of creature… which in many ways I suppose I am… my Digg profile is worse – because the people there are even stupider…

… but no Santa. Santa doesn’t visit unless you play nicely.

So that’s a fuckup – but at least I can delete those profiles (and I have) but danged if I’m going to sign up just for this Santa thing again, because I’d have to go back to getting into conversations with people I despise.

This doesn’t happen on Twitter or Facebook. I’ve had a couple of clashes on twitter… but always go out of my way to be extra-friendly to whoever I clash with afterwards… and facebook? These people are real friends. I don’t clash with them at all. Apart from Paul, who’s politics are flat wrong, but I still like the guy and would love to have a beer with him next time I see him.

Sometimes I hear people say that “anonymity is evil… it allows people to be nasty, so should be banned”… which is obviously bollocks – the only thing that should be banned are people who can ban things… but still… there’s something to the 6 (or 3) degrees of separation thing. The unspoken social contracts that prevent us going ballistic at each other.

And… although I’m fundamentally opposed to facebook, I still use it – whereas I stopped using Digg and Reddit years ago. From time to time I still drop anonymous bombs on people’s blog-comments… but not if they’re using one of the services that hooks up to twitter – like Disqus etc.

I need to get out more.