I think this is wrong. If anything, the internet only increases the incidents of running into morons. The anonymity the Internet offers makes morons even more intolerable because they have less inhibitions about what they say and many more places to say it without censure.

Also, the article seems to assume that finding groups of people that like the same things you like automatically eliminates idiots. It most certainly does not, and anyone with any Internet experience at all will be able to tell you this firsthand.

And, okay, to be fair, I should probably also stop calling them idiots. I should probably refer to them as people who give you the shits, idiots or otherwise. You are going to run into these people on the Internet. I guarantee it. Just because you share an interest doesn’t mean you’re actually going to like them. I know there are people online in communites I’m a part of who annoy the crap out of me. But that’s part of life. You have to deal with idiots and people who annoy you.

Actually, the trigger for this rant wasn’t the article, it was witnessing the horror of some published work in a rant about the poor state of the English language. That got me ranting about morons. XD

Classes start again tomorrow. The only thing I am dreading is having to deal with people with lower literacy levels than me. These are invariably school leavers, and it makes me cry for the standard of education we’re giving our kids. These kids are our future. What kind of future are we going to have when we have all this wealth and opportunity and they can’t read or write very well? What kind of future is that?

Call me old-fashioned, but I firmly believe in a decent education. You should be able to use the English language in a good manner, be able to express yourself well and not freak out when told to read something. Seriously, if you are at university and it takes you a whole day to read a 14 page short story, I dread to think how you are going to cope with the rest of your tertiary studies with such a reading ability. Especially if you’re a science student.

I really hate this lazy attitude to English, especially online. That it doesn’t matter because it’s the Internet, as if using proper English spelling and grammar is opional unless it’s for some sort of formal occasion. I think this is a dangerous thing to have because it teaches bad habits. It teaches poor communication skills. Is that really what we want to encourage in our children? Have we been reduced to seeing Gen Y as some sort of slave labour, there to work with a basic education and nothing more? I think we’re short-changing them and not tapping into their true potential, and society will be worse off because of it. They are the ones that will be teaching their children. Surely we should care about the knowledge they pass on and how they raise their kids. If we can’t get it right, what hope have they got?

Humans are stupid creatures who will pick petty fights amongst themselves for no reason at all. Religion turns people into sheep, no matter which one it is. I’m tired of it all. I want out.

I’ve always been a bit individualistic like that, I think. I don’t like being told what to believe, and I can’t stand to be around people who refuse to question their faith, or refuse to rock the boat. It’s not on. Use your fucking minds. God, Netjer, whatever, gave you a bright fucking mind and as much free will as you can cope with. Why must you give it all away and let someone else dictate what you believe?The longer I hang around in the Pagan community, the more I see the same things happening there. They just follow blindly. You’d think they’d have more sense, since they usually come from Christianity with complaints about being told what to believe, but apparently, that doesn’t count when it comes to Pagan faiths, because they’re totally different and so much better anyway.

Please. Tell someone who cares.

This is why I can’t bear to be a part of any religious group. I hate being told what to believe, and I will not be preached to. I have my own beliefs. They’re sufficiently eclectic that I just don’t fit into one place. So excuse me for being different. And it’s not even that my beliefs clash with everyone else’s. It’s more that while my path might converge and run parallel with some groups more than with others, they never meet, nor should they be obliged to.

I don’t even know if the Bawy year is responsible for this sudden influx of agnosticism or  not, or whether it’s just me being weird again. I think I need to be away from Kemetic Orthodoxy (KO) for a while. I need that freedom to work myself out and whether I can abide being affiliated with them again. I meant to do so a while ago, but never got around to it. Perhaps now is the time to step back from my shemsu vows.

Actually no. I’ve changed my mind. I think what I need to do is pull back and work out what being a shemsu actually means for me, not try and be something I’m not. As much as I want to pull back from KO, and I have thought about it for over a year now, I’ve never done anything about it. I think a part of my soul really does want to be KO, so now I have to work out what shemsu means for me, not what it means for everyone else.

A friend and ex-KO once asked me what it means to be a shemsu, and I couldn’t answer her then. I think I need to find an answer to this. Maybe then I’ll feel better about where I am.

Because I embrace many beliefs that aren’t KO and don’t strictly belong to one single other faith system. I am eclectic like that. I embrace bits of discordianism, bits of warrior spirituality, a few things I swiped from Isobelle Carmody, and other things relating to the country I live in. I’m a mongrel of a person. I’ve picked up a few things from learning about Indigenous beliefs as well, especially things relating to country.

I suppose I’m also tired of the politics within specific groups. There is a pressure to conform even if there’s no thing to conform to. The more you’re obsessed with Egypt, the better you are spiritually. Which is utter bullshit to me.

This isn’t one of my better worded essays. More a late-night rant I need to get off my chest. Maybe I’ll collect this into a better worded thing later, but right now, I need to get these words out. So deal with this semi-coherent rant. I need to sleep before I go to work tomorrow.

I hate most Chaser fangirls on principle, I hate them on sight if they use even the smallest amounts of netspeak, but the ones on Bebo take the cake for being the worst kinds of Chaser fangirls in existence.

Heh, and you thought myspace was bad? You haven’t descended into the pit of Hell that is Bebo.com. *shudders*

There is netspeak so prolific and so incoherent, it may as well have been written by monkeys bashing at typewriters. Hell, even Yoda is more coherent than these morons.Here’s a wonderful gem from one of the Chaser stalkerfanpages:
find out which chaser you are!
http://www.quizilla.com/users/limean…
Me sarah got craig reucassel! yay his sexy!
tell us who u got!!

Well, you’re clearly not brain dead, since you know your name is Sarah. Yay his sexy what? His sexy hair? His sexy chest? WTF are you on about?

You can spell almost every word correctly and out in full but need to abbreviate one you to ‘u’? And your grammar’s shit.

Although you get one point for managing to not fuck up the spelling of Craig’s name.

And this charming little thing:
i lovE thE chasErs war on EvErythig
OX.
brookE.

Hooray for random capital E’s? o.O

Is that an indication of her drug of choice there, hmm?

And this poor little thing is so distressed:
the chasers arent cumin back til the middle of next year *cries* NOO

So they won’t be cumin until June? Right. How does one go about becoming cumin in the first place? They clearly didn’t like it as they clearly aren’t cumin right now. And why would you want to even turn yourself into some spice anyway? Clearly all that means is you’re going to be eaten in some sort of hot meal.

I don’t know if this girl is serious or taking the piss:
andrew hansun
omg i luvvvv andrew!!! hes like, da hotust thing evaaarrrr
omg
i hope wen i c him this year @ da stage sho he propozes 2 me lol
omg that wud b so cool lol

-ALLiE

…I’m terribly afraid she’s serious. Her page is full of rainbows and stupid netspeak, just like that. I think she mentions how much she loves Andrew in almost every sentence.

*reads it again*

I’m not even sure she’s even writing in English. *blinks*

But that’s enough of me solely bashing them for their netspeak, typos and bad grammar. I could do that for hours, but it would just make my brain hurt, so enough of that for now. Moving onto other things.

The sheer stupidity on that place is appalling. Typical teenagers thinking they know everything and can rape and pillage the internet and take whatever they want without consequences. I shudder to think how many will turn up at the stage shows and drive me crazy.

They have no concept of what:
a) copyright means
What first drew me to hate them was that they’d stolen and posted some icons and banners void_stuff, who’s a friend of mine, made. They’d also stolen one of my banners, though they clearly have no idea what slash is, or if they do know, they don’t find it offensive, because they didn’t bother using that against me as I argued with them.

You can’t just go taking any image you find online and claim it as your own. The internet does not exist purely so you can rape and pillage anything and everything you want.

It. Is. Stealing.

Copyright needs to be respected, or people will come bashing down your door, getting you in trouble. Of that I was not bluffing about when I was arguing with them.

b) that copyright law exists online
By posting pictures you don’t own the copyright for, you’re actually breaking the Bebo Terms of Service. Though if that was enforced, the whole site would be shut down, I fear.

Call me a hypocrite, but I was never actually going to claim copyright on that banner. I know I stole the photo from The Australian magazine as I scanned it in. But it scared them enough when I threatened to bring The Australian into things, as they had a similar image uploaded, though not the one I scanned.

I’ve slapped Creative Commons licences on my graphics now, just need to get around to fixing it to the graphics I can rightfully copyright, like my fanart. They’re binding in Australia now, which is nice to know.

That they’re so naïve to be so unaware that copyright law exists online really quite disturbs me, though it’s a myth that a lot of people believe.

c) that you can’t just go posting photos of Craig and his family without permission because it’s an invasion of privacy and makes you look really quite stalkery and creepily obsessive.
But seriously, the main issue I have with the Bebo girls is that three days ago, one darling little braindead rat posted a photo to her Chaser groups photo albums that had Craig and his wife and their three children (which were all named). It was clearly something personal and private and not meant for stupid fanbrats like her to steal and slut around without thought to what they’re doing.

One of the first rules of fandoms involving real people is leave their families the fuck out of it. It’s an invisible line that you DO NOT cross under any circumstances. It’s just out of respect, you know? Their families aren’t in the spotlight, so give them their privacy. You don’t go showing and naming their children either. I know Ollie’s been in The War, but he’s Craig’s kid, not a member of The Chaser, so don’t try and justify it to me like that. It’s bullshit.

I spent three hours yesterday arguing with her friend in a bid to convince her that posting it was wrong and that she should have it taken down. There were emails fired off to Bebo and to ABC Legal about the photo as well, because we felt it shouldn’t have ever been posted.

Only two thirds of the conversation remains as the photo of Craig’s family was indeed deleted this morning, which meant our comment war went with it, but I do have the other two threads. I’m The Vanguard, Sarah Sarahson is the stupid fanbrat, Tegan C and Desiredeffect are on my side, and Underrated is another of the Bebo girls.

The argument began here, which is the banner they stole from me. Like it isn’t obvious where they nicked it from.

It then moved to the photo of Craig’s family, which is now deleted, but there was some stupid arguments there put forth by the girl I was arguing with as to why posting that photo was perfectly fine.

It finally made its way here, which is an icon my friend made.

I’m amused at how she kept bleating to me about “it’s just a picture there are more important things in life LIKE WORLD HUNGER.”

Bleating that 80 times a minute does not make you a) correct, b) more right, or c) more mature. It makes you look like a brain dead sheeple.

I won’t post the entire threads for you as this is long enough already, but I finally beat her into submission and got this as a concession of defeat:
den y did u say all dis shit? u should of just left it im tryin 2 but u guys just keepin rite back wit sayin i did this n that n im breakin da law lik serouisly ill talk 2 my friend n we’ll decide which piks will go n she’ll probaly get rid of the craig pik 4 ur sake ok?

Ugh. Talk about illegible. She’s basically saying I scared her shitless but I’ve made such a bother about it that she’ll talk to her friend and try and get the photo taken down, just as long as I leave her alone.

Is it just me, or does Sarah look like she’s stolen Corey Delaney’s famous glasses? XD

Following back to the profiles of two of the members of that group gave me some more lulz, but I won’t bother taking up any more time bitching about them, although the comments on both their pages make for amusing reading, and their conversations are mostly coherent English for a change.

Underrated and Chaser Fan.

Although I would like to give them the Trophy For Stating The Obvious:
anyway, in cnnn everyone looks younger yah random

No, really, they looked younger than they do now in a show they made 5 years ago? The mind boggles. >.< Garbage Man there, which is awesome. I was so annoyed when it disappeared off youtube.

And there endeth my rant about Bebo. I’ll be keeping an eye on them in case they cross that line again, and if they do, I’ll hound them again, just like I did this time. If I keep at it long enough, I might get them to take down mine and void_stuff’s graphics.

The Vanguard is watching and ready to attack.