RL Anger

Roz

If someone feels absolutely no remorse about telling someone to kill themselves, I absolutely want to know it so that I can know exactly what kind of person they are.

Auspice

Years ago I had someone, IRL, who I had met all of twice, send me an email with a lengthy rant about how I should/would die alone, suffering, etc... because I wouldn't let her friend steal credit for a website I'd built.

...I admit I felt a bit of karma when she was found dead in her home a couple years later. I felt bad about it after the feeling had passed, but the feeling was there. $:\$

scar

@Auspice That's awful and such an ugly thing to have happen to you. I think having that kind of internal response, at least initially, is natural.

Auspice

@scar said in RL Anger:

@Auspice That's awful and such an ugly thing to have happen to you. I think having that kind of internal response, at least initially, is natural.

It's just such an uncomfortable feeling, afterwards? Like oh god, I was briefly happy that someone died.

But then again, I guess I'd be thrilled if Trump dropped dead, so I suppose in some cases it'd be warranted?

Misadventure

@Auspice If you didn't inflict that desire on someone else, its your emotions, and that's that. You have both the reaction to that death, and a more complicated and adult evaluation of that reaction. You didn't turn around and start telling everyone you disliked they should die.

scar

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

@scar said in RL Anger:

@Auspice That's awful and such an ugly thing to have happen to you. I think having that kind of internal response, at least initially, is natural.

It's just such an uncomfortable feeling, afterwards? Like oh god, I was briefly happy that someone died.

But then again, I guess I'd be thrilled if Trump dropped dead, so I suppose in some cases it'd be warranted?

Because you're a decent fucking person.

Meg

I have to admit, I get uncomfortable when even other people are gleeful about another person's death. Even a fictional character's death.

I can /understand/ having those feelings. But like-- reveling in it and celebrating? idk, man. Which isn't at all like your situation, @Auspice. I am just talking in generalities.

Auspice

I think the worst part of it for me was all the people praising her for what a kind/nice/loving person she was after. I think largely that was the sort of rose-colored glasses everyone seems to get when someone dies, though. Like suddenly we want to see the best in someone because they're dead.

Or maybe she was just really good at hiding the truly bad parts.

Normally, however, yeah, I'm there with you, @Meg. Celebrating death just feels uncomfortable. Like someone, somewhere is probably grieving. Let them have their grief and just... walk away.

surreality

There are some things that the schadenfreude fairy visits about, but health/family losses/death/major trauma/assault... just not on that list for me. I just quietly hope instant karma lets me know when it eventually catches up with them, because it generally will, in some poetic justice sort of fashion.

I think the 'meanest' one I can think of involves a woman I knew online who would send 'oops my top slipped hello nipples' or 'omg I didn't realize you could see I wasn't wearing panties in that pic! tee hee I guess you can tell I just got my waxing done though!' selfies to guys she knew were involved with someone online to try to 'steal' them, despite being married RL. Friend of mine was talking to her once on skype, and heard her lose her shit screaming jealous-rage bloody fucking murder at her husband for looking at a picture of a half-naked woman online for several minutes until he could get a word in edgewise, at which point he just whimpered, "...but honey, look, it's you! This is the pic you sent me the other day!"

I laughed.

I laughed really fucking hard and I feel precisely zero remorse for it.

That shit's still funny as hell to me.

Thenomain

@Meg said in RL Anger:

I have to admit, I get uncomfortable when even other people are gleeful about another person's death. Even a fictional character's death.

I think we are supposed to be allowed to cheer for the death of a fictional character, like at the end of The Terminator, or very often in Game of Thrones, though I understand the sympathy that crosses the fictional/reality divide in our mind, and respect it.

Meg

@Thenomain yeah, I wouldn't say it is wrong of anyone to cheer (except in the case of it being someone's PC and that person is already upset, but in that case it isn't wrong because of celebrating the fictional death but because you are being rude and incosiderate to the player), just that it only makes me personally uncomfortable. I'd never tell anyone not to or expect them to feel bad or moderate their behavior for it. Just admitting to a silly little thing on my end.

scar

@Meg said in RL Anger:

@Thenomain yeah, I wouldn't say it is wrong of anyone to cheer (except in the case of it being someone's PC and that person is already upset, but in that case it isn't wrong because of celebrating the fictional death but because you are being rude and inconsiderate to the player), just that it only makes me personally uncomfortable. I'd never tell anyone not to or expect them to feel bad or moderate their behavior for it. Just admitting to a silly little thing on my end.

Character death is rough to witness when it isn’t the player’s choice. A char on a game I used to play on semi-recently cough continually kept sharing valuable secrets with random PC’s that put my character and others in jeopardy, even after being confronted ICly and warned to desist. There were some definite cheers from the peanut gallery but the overall mood was just very wince-worthy when it was decided that they had to be ‘taken out.’ Not at all celebratory.

surreality

There's a difference, I think, between passive and interactive characters on this one. As in, I don't typically feel bad seeing a villain die in a movie or comic or book, but player characters (or well-developed NPCs run by people over time) are more interactive in real time, and there's a definite difference there.

Ganymede

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

Celebrating death just feels uncomfortable. Like someone, somewhere is probably grieving. Let them have their grief and just... walk away.

If I'm at the point that I want someone to die, chances are I'll feel nothing when they are dead. Neither joy nor remorse.

Because their life and death meant that little to me.

Auspice

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

Celebrating death just feels uncomfortable. Like someone, somewhere is probably grieving. Let them have their grief and just... walk away.

If I'm at the point that I want someone to die, chances are I'll feel nothing when they are dead. Neither joy nor remorse.

Because their life and death meant that little to me.

That's how I feel with hate. Hate takes effort. If I feel that negatively about someone... why waste the effort on them? I'm just going to feel nothing, instead.

Aria

I had a conversation with my boyfriend about this subject last year, specifically re: the death of flaming human garbage pile Antonin Scalia. The conclusion I came to was this:

I wasn't happy that the man was dead. I was happy that he could no longer inflict his particular brand of harmful bullshit on large swaths of people. Those are not the same thing and I feel absolutely zero guilt about the latter whatsoever.

YMMV.

mietze

Sick and tired of feeling like shit scraped off from the ground and onto a cracker. After getting a good six months mostly-respite, I'm back into the literal bone deep fatigue again. Right now it is every other day get my ass up and out of the house so my kids can have something fun to do and then spend the next day pretty much horizontal and dozing off and on.

Bone pain sucks. Fatigue sucks. Having to go through the "oh, you're fat, just lose weight and it will go away! Here have some antidepressants they help fat old ladies feel better!" conversation/delay of 8 weeks with a new doctor is just bleh to the point I don't want to pay some asshole $75 to tell me I'm old and fat. Thanks, genius, guess what, I can see that! Now can we move on?

But what little I know of my bio family history there is a lot of cancer/autoimmune disease on both sides. So woohoo! Off to make an appointment to be treated like crap until enough time elapses for there to be further investigation into symptoms than stopping at "Forty+, Fat, Female."

Paris

Yeah, the attitude of, "Wow, what did you do that you've got it so bad," is something that you get as a cancer patient and as a disabled person, and it's pretty... corrosive, I guess, to yourself and relationships. People don't get sick because of karma.

I certainly in no way deserved to get cancer or to be a paraplegic. Sure, I've fucked up, but that's not how it works. And yet, I have family and met strangers who think it must be 'some kind of karma'.

Ganymede

@mietze said in RL Anger:

But what little I know of my bio family history there is a lot of cancer/autoimmune disease on both sides. So woohoo! Off to make an appointment to be treated like crap until enough time elapses for there to be further investigation into symptoms than stopping at "Forty+, Fat, Female."

Have you had your thyroid checked?

(Check out Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. It's not an Anime finishing move. You're in the right age range; you have a genetic history of autoimmune disorders; and it disproportionately hits women.)

Pandora

@Roz Well now you know. I didn't kill her, so 'Sticks and Stones', etc.

I find it telling that in a day and age where there's enough real hate out there that Trump is president of the U.S., people are having fits about terms like 'Kill yourself' and 'Drop dead' and 'Don't be a dick/cunt' that have been around for decades before they were even born. It's like people are thrashing about looking for something/anything to be angry about in an attempt to feel relevant while the world is burning. I can say whatever I want, and anyone can respond about it as angrily as they like, and then we all go about our daily lives without the exchange making a bit of difference to anyone. Useless, but we're going to do it anyway.