Unimpressed by “dignity”

February 19th, 2004 · No Comments

I’m sorry, folks, but I can’t resist. I thought that if I got another reply from the mad website hater, I wouldn’t post it, but this one is priceless. When I received the second email, I replied, stating that I thought an unsolicited series of insults in an email was a pretty poor way to start “bantering” with someone. In reply to that, I expected some sort of slightly sheepish, not quite apologetic note, or just silence. Instead, I got this:

Brian,

Can you please explain to me how you proved me wrong?? After taking a second (and very SHORT) look at your website, I came to the same conclusions about you. You are a pretentious snob. I didn’t see any sarcastic comments captioning your pictures from “Britain.” This shows how you are more impressed by things like “Europe” and “Abbey Road” than you are by “hard work” and “dignity.”

You may be FROM Alaska, but the point is that you SOUND like a snotty east coast kid.

You are a pretentious snob who is more impressed by glitter than gold. I’m sure it hurts you to hear that as truth often does cut people deep.

(name withheld)

There are many weird things about these arguments; that the author can draw a conclusion like “This shows that…” about me from some photos is one of the more amazing ones. I love the mental image I get of a giant scale, with a big 3-d map of Europe and a small Abbey Road, complete with the Beatles walking across it, on one side, and some gauzy political commercial-style images of “dignity” and “hard work” on the other. My critic certainly loves the quotation marks – I’m not sure what the intended effect is, but it’s safe to say it’s lost on me.

Tags: Travel