December 7th, 2011 / 12:36 pm
Contests

ToBS R1: Gmail chat people who are always visible vs. People who leave really long comments

[Matchup #21 in Tournament of Bookshit]

Gmail chat people who are always visible

We get it. You are always online and you want the world to know it. You are connected and plugged in and able to immediately respond to every electronic message appearing in your Inbox. You are there, waiting beneath the pale glow of your monitor, to chat and abuse emoticons and the English language typing phrases like i want 2 c u cum. You are the Motel 6 of Gmail—your light is always on, always green. When you’re busy, you do not hesitate to turn on the red light but still, you are there. Never, though, is your light yellow. Never does that light fade to gray. You do not idle. You do not step away from the computer. You do not stop typing. Your fingers are always tap tap tapping away, letting the world know you will not abandon your virtual post. You are the Internet presence. You are the bright e-mail light in the dark, dark night. We see the messages you leave, floating in the screen ether just below your name. You’re writing or you’re reading or you’re promoting the last thing you wrote. More often than not, you are passive aggressively communicating your displeasure about the state of the world or, as is usually the case, the state of your world. You are pithy or bitter or bitterly pithy but at least you are there. You will always be there. The rest of us, lurking silently behind the gray dot of feigned absence, we watch and we wait. Sooner or later, your time will come. Your light too, will go gray.

People who leave really long comments

We get it. You have opinions and your opinions have opinions and they are extensive and incisive and/or derisive. You share your opinions at every opportunity because what is an opinion for if not to be shared? Does an opinion even exist if it is not shared? Rather than tackle these existential questions, you polish and post your comments and preen in the attention you receive. You eagerly hope your comments will be Liked and responded to. Over and over, you fold yourself in half to self-fellate or self-cunnilingate and you think, “Damn, I taste good.” It matters little if the opinions you share offer valuable insight, intelligence, or wit. What matters is that you have shared how you agree or disagree with anything that has ever been said. You are not merely satisfied with sharing your agreement or disagreement; you must also explain why in excruciating, often inscrutable, obfuscated detail. You are the expert and the voice of (moral) authority as you bloviate everywhere but in a venue where such bloviating might be most appropriate—a blog of your own, perhaps, or a locked diary you could keep safely nestled beneath your pillow. Sooner or later, your time will come too. You will share one opinion too many and there will be nowhere left for you to comment because everyone will have you turned you away.

Roxane Gay

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WINNER: Gmail chat people who are always visible

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19 Comments

  1. Adam Robinson

      Hilarious: “You are the Motel 6 of Gmail.” 

      Thanks everyone! The Internet can now shut down.

  2. Leapsloth14

      I don’t see what’s so wrong with long comments, just the length, you know, like an exhaled breath of onion (red), olives (black), croutons or maybe toast cut into crouton accessories (plastic earrings!), and so on, or other long things like serpents or debt or that game Risk that takes all day and night and day and you’re thinking, “J better not have touched that fucking board while we were sleeping,” oh J, J, he used to have such a great personality but then got so into weed, so into it (probably because he never smoked until he was past 30), and then like his life became a cave, and he was all into tubings and Zeppelin air guitar and always talking about Vertigo, Vertigo, that stupid-ass bong he made from a water jug, those big-ass water cooler jugs that supposedly we gather around on Mondays to talk about the Saturday Evening Post (1930s) or the assassinations (1960s) or HBO dramas (1990s) or whatever the fuck though that seems like a bit of an urban myth or just like quicksand or the word cerulean or some written thing, something no on actually does but you see it there on the page and so it has that reality and enters the actual Reality, like with The Mafia actually naming themselves after Godfather, the novel, and Catch 22 bleeding into our actual conversations and like donning a hat, that word, donning, when most people just put the damn hat on their head–they never don! They never don! And so there you go, another opinion, like people have opinions, like salads, lettuce or spinach? Conan or Leno? Crushed Adderall or deep sea fishing? Who knows? I guess I’m saying Faulkner wrote a 43 page sentence and people still, still people (statues?) read him (some) or at least think of it, and that one book he went and wrote from a kid’s POV and that’s tuff, like writing comedy or sex scenes, you can miss that by a hair and suddenly it’s a bawdy thing or clinical or about as funny as linoleum (wait–that actually is funny, both to say and see) or Faulkner so drunk he’s out there plowing in his underwear and his wife is all like, Fuck, he won’t go to Sweden and I’ve never been to Sweden. Fuck Mississippi! This state doesn’t even have a city in it! This state is last in everything! (Not true, Estelle Oldham!! Mississippi often leads the nation in Gonorrhea rates.) This state is…” Tell Faulkner it’s Saturday when it’s Tuesday or some shit, he’s so drunk, he doesn’t use a clock and all that so twist the days, guilt trip him with some story about his daughter’s graduation, etc.., get your ass to Stockholm, he’ll give a big-ass famous speech, go back home (by steamer), plow, grow some peppers and tomatoes and such, shop at the bookstore in Oxford, join the Canadians in everything, long things like that, Canadians, someone told me today they were going to handcuff themselves to a refrigerator and mail the handcuff key to an aunt in Canada and then drive their self (and the fridge, I suppose) to Canada to retrieve the key, this as some art project, I think, I was confused, basically not listening because I was deciding on my bread options (this in line) and this while opening a banking account, why do they offer you a sandwich while opening an account, slow, slow service there, my friends, and other long things like in America like Moby Dick or pool alga or roadrunners or Baryshnikov (angry) or pictures sent via mail to a hotel or the rage, the demons, or general opinions on the purposes of life (to have one?) or abstract averages or shafts of sunlight or stairs or prophets or loving a boss or garden parties or aluminum water bottles or prejudices or handguns or agricultural stations, not just comments. Not just comments. I guess.

  3. Anonymous

      @readers:disqus my best friend’s aunt makes $87 an hour on the computer. and last month her pay was $7299 , she is one of many  learned Kelly Richard’s methods in “Online income solutions”… View More

  4. crispin best

      sandy baby that’s pretty hilarious but cmon sean got there first

  5. Tim Horvath

      Long comments rising like Lazarus on meth.

  6. Tim Horvath

      Yes! Let the spam sit at the grown-up table.

  7. Lincoln Michel

      Speaking for the always on G-caht population, I think most of are simply too lazy to figure out how to stop our smartphones from making it look like we are always online. 

  8. Leapsloth14

      Sandy, you lying whore. You told me you were broke last night and made ME pay for the fried bloomin onion!! Up yours, anyways, I just found out I won the Irish Lottery and I ain’t sharing.

  9. lorian long

      Over and over, you fold yourself in half to self-fellate or self-cunnilingate and you think, “Damn, I taste good.”

      yessssss

  10. Jonathan Safran Foer

      Can someone please delete this? It links to a site with a trojan horse. Anyone with PC who visits should run an up-to-date virus scan

  11. Jonathan Safran Foer

      It’s amusing that it’s there but those of us at work who have to have their entire computer wiped after a viral visit may be less amused by it

  12. deadgod

      no-tell motel vs. Boreas

      winner:  to Delfikon gramma among the plane tree widely spreading and towering, the willow tall and shading well and fragrantly aflower, and the cool waters of the stream

  13. Anonymous

      phlpn.es/829r8s

  14. Anonymous

      ai.vc/uj

  15. Anonymous

      50.gd/2g

  16. Anonymous

      liil.cc/chX

  17. Anonymous

      50.gd/2g

  18. Mr. Ian M. Belcurry

      I comment b/c I work in an office and I’m bored and I enjoy it. I don’t have gmail. I feel deep shame lol (and shame for using lol). hehehe

  19. Anonymous

      50.gd/2g