> Spacebar, in a later post, you said:

> > In your reply to my post, I need you to say
> > honestly that you do respect Rinkchatters and
> > that it was never your intent to hurt their
> > feelings. And that's /all/ I need you to do.

> I'll do better then that. Not only will I tell you that I honesty do respect RinkChatters and that it was never my intent to hurt their feelings, I'll elaborate further and tell you how incensed I am and how unreasonable it is that a stupid joke in the chat room requires me to make this truly trite affirmation, however true, of the honorability of my respect and intent.

I am sorry if anything that I said made you angry. I believe that you know -- but I'll say it anyway -- that this was never my intent. My intent was to answer your question by explaining as honestly as I could why I thought people might have been angry last night. I /do/ realize that you respect Rinkchatters and that you never intended to hurt anyone. But in the heat of things late last night, it was at times difficult to remember this. I clearly remember thinking, "Somebody else must have taken over Sam's computer, Sam would never do this!"

So. Poor word choice. I suppose I don't /need/ you to say that you respect Rinkchatters -- but I /appreciate/ that you did; and the fact that you have said that you respect Rinkchatters has /reaffirmed/ my confidence in you.

> Your post seeks to justify that your misconception that I *was* being disrespectful and uncaring was a reasonable conclusion. No way. I don't buy one single iota of your arguments and laughably extreme analogies to other situations. You may not like practical jokes; fine. But this one never had the potential to hurt people to the degree you're trying to suggest. I think it highly more likely that you are simply resentful that you were fooled.

All I can say in response to this is that I regret that you cannot believe me when I say that I am trying as well as I can to explain what I felt last night. I can tell you that I did not feel resentful about being fooled. I didn't even feel particularily fooled -- I said to Kaz! at one point near the beginning that it seemed to me that Dave must be involved in the whole thing. What I did feel was confused -- I was confused because I could not figure out the point of the "joke" was supposed to be. I noticed that people were being hurt and offended, or at least frustrated that BEER and BUTT would not go away. I couldn't see anything funny going on at all -- all I saw was frustration. And I was absolutely flabbergasted that a prank was being allowed to continue when it was absolutely obvious (to me, at any rate) that the joke was not funny; instead, people found it frustrating, and Wormwood, at least, felt hurt by what was going on.

I can appreciate /now/ that it was late at night and that it may not have been as obvious to everyone else as it was to me that the "joke" was unfunny and frustrating and hurtful. I can only ask your forgiveness now that I was not wise enough /then/ to see that. At the time, it seemed to me unjust that something that was, at least, frustrating and unfunny should be allowed to continue for so long and I could not fathom why Sam and Dave, who I had respect for, did not put an end to it unless they were /trying/ to cause the frustration that I observed.

That was what I /felt/. I apologize and ask your forgiveness for my own misunderstanding last night. But at the same time, I ask that you believe, at least, that I am telling the truth.

> > - Either Sam or Dave (I can't remember) said: "Yes! We actually RUINED THE CHAT!"

> This comment was made after the barrage of negative reaction came out of nowhere, and I was sitting back, stunned. My comment was more like, "Yes. We actually RUINED the chat." As in, a sarcastic resolution to the apparent fact of things. The comment was made in total disbelief.

I was standing in Kaz!'s room, trying to understand why Sam and Dave took so long in ending a prank that was unfunny and hurtful (and I'll apologize again for my misunderstanding about this). I read this comment. I thought, "They're HAPPY that they RUINED the chat?" I didn't know how else to understand this comment.

I apologize for this misunderstanding as well.

> > - Stephen said something to the effect of "Sam has been PMing me throughout the evening. He's making a funny joke by ruining Rinkchat."

> As Stephen said, he made that up.

> > 3. Sam said, "Does anyone else want to leave? I'm serious. If anyone here finds this sort of thing offensive, I don't want anything to do with you." (The quotations, of course, are to the best of my memory but probably not exact.) Do you really not want anything to do with people who don't find it funny to scandalize and insult people? How about people who don't find it funny to be manipulated into being annoyed, angry, and frustrated?

> Read what I said again. I don't give a flying flip if any of you think it's funny. I'm concerned with you finding it "offensive." You, c0bra, and Wormwood found this "offensive." Morris, Ayako, and I think Kaz found it "unfunny." World of difference. That comment, by the way, was made in anger, fresh from the realization that anybody at all found the gag unsettling. Still, I don't think I want to retract it. But at least interpret it correctly. Whether you find it "funny" or not is something I only care about insofar as that helps me evaluate my attempt at humor and thereby refine my comic talents -- all that is of negligible importance in light of the rest of this stuff.

That was a rhetorical question. I didn't know how else to intrpret /your/ comment last night. I felt that you would never try to hurt or frustrate Rinkchatters on purpose -- and yet, in the heat of the moment, every comment you made seemed to indicate the exact opposite.

> Any way, to sum THIS post up, I think you're going off the deep end, and by this gross underestimation of me and my commitment to my readership, the integrity of this site, the immeasurably high value I place on it and its culture, the immeasurable respect and regard I have for it -- all things that I should think you would be well aware of by now, being not unfamiliar with the many statements I have made on the subject in the forum and in interviews -- is something that I find personally insulting.

I can say nothing to this except that I /did/ underestimate your commitment to this site, and that I am sorry for that. But at the same time, this underestimation occurred only for a brief period, in the heat of the moment, late last night, when it seemed to me that people were being hurt and frustrated. And so with this in mind, I will dare to presume to ask you if perhaps you could forgive me for this underestimation that you found personally insulting; I meant no insult and was only concerned for the frustration and hurt that I observed.

-SB