I have this mental image of guys from consumer products based websites - those sites that specialize in "hobbyist" sort of stuff, whether it be audio gear, or knives, or tools. The image is of a group of cranky, whiny old men who have confused their penis with the hobbyist gear. When "Melvin37056" argues with "Harold2932" so vehemently about the differences in performance of two pieces of equipment which nobody in their right mind cares about, let alone can discern, what Melvin is really saying is "Harold, fuck you. Not only is my cock bigger than yours, but my balls carry a fuller load, and I can shoot my cum across my front yard and hit my mailbox from the front porch."
I can't help it. It's so obvious. I just read a series of threads where a group of guys were bitching about a knife sharpener, and one guy misread the price, and came up with a figure of $315.00, which he felt was much too expensive. Somebody corrected him, and showed him that the correct total was under $70.
His reaction was both priceless and predictable: "Well, that's still kind of pricey."
Think about that one for a while - but not too long. Your brain will ache. More than Melvin's balls with a full load.
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I largely stopped being active on Facebook. After having one friend dump me after a 12 year friendship, another one stalk me by apparently waiting to message me until I show up live, and then hitting me with message after message. The latter also felt it necessary to post simply bizarre things to my timeline (like when he found out about my advanced liver disease, the fact I can't drink, and I posted something about drinking chocolate milk, which prompted him to post about enjoying wine, not milk).
There was more, but it got really bizarre, really quickly.
Then there were the "doctors." If I posted an update about my health status, I'd get inundated with comments about how I needed to try this alternative treatment or that treatment. I'd be told "facts" about the cancer I have, and about how I needed to approach treatment differently. It never seemed to occur to people that (a) they didn't know anything about the type of cancer I had (b) that my doctors and I were not totally helpless (c) they didn't understand the organic damage the cancer had caused in my body. Likewise, they never paused to think that just maybe, I had a decent psychological grip on what was taking place, and that when I talked about my approach, there was some valuable thought invested in that approach.
I got quite tired of wading through post after post telling me how I needed to do this thing or that thing, or even worse, telling me how I should feel. Especially when the people telling me these things had never suffered from cancer or any terminal disease, and had no idea how patients felt.
In essence, for whatever reason, a certain group of people felt compelled to invalidate whatever I claimed.
That gets really old, really quick.
One last reason I drew back from FB: there are a certain group of people who will publicly, over and over, praise me for being so brave, so strong, and how they hope for good change for me. They promise me, beyond fail, that whatever they can do to help me, they will do.
Then I ask a small favor - something that, literally, they can either do in two or three minutes, or they can't do at all - and I ask four or five times, receiving not so much as an answer until I realize: this is all just a game. They are not going to answer me. They never intended to help me; their only motivation was to show, publicly, how supportive and how good and how strong they were for the asshole with terminal cancer.
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There are a group of people who have decided, for whatever reason, that I should communicate only according to certain parameters which they determine. They have decided to help me; they refuse to let me use the tools with which I am comfortable - for example, they might refuse to let me use email, and require that I use some IM program with encryption, although I've explained why I won't use it, why it doesn't work for me.
In short then, I've come to realize that there are all these people who insist they will help me. Except the help has to come on their terms and their terms alone. Which, when you get down to it, isn't really much help at all.
