Comments and Wars: Political
I have spoken rather severely to two commentators on this blog. One was a right wing self-styled pundit who advocated political violence and murder. I decided to block him from the site because he was too disrespectful and too violent. I am far enough left politically that most liberals and progressives look conservative to me. A result of this is that I do not find conservatives shocking or scary. I also find the doctrinaire left rigid and stifling – almost as much so as the religious right. This is yet another factor leading to my non-shock at conservative ideas. But the person I banned wanted to crow, here, about the 1973 death of Salvador Allende, and crowing over that death is not something I was willing to allow on this site.
Imperfect non-Bodhisattva that I am, I might be secretly glad if Dick Cheney did finally get himself killed on one of his hunting trips. I do not, however, advocate assassination of anyone, and if Cheney were killed in a hunting accident, I would not go over to the websites of his old friends and crow about it. That would be disrespectful to the dead, mean, rude, destructive, distasteful, and inappropriate in general. So I banned that commentator because he was out of line and out of control, not because I disagreed with his politics.
Comments and Wars: Personal
The other person to whom I spoke severely had made a comment, in response to someone else’s comment, which was dismissive of that person. For personal reasons he might not have guessed (although they are evident if you read around in this site), the comment was also hurtful to me. So I talked back, in no uncertain terms. I do not think he liked it. I may have spoken too strongly. But it is my site, which he visited and commented upon, and it was my response to a specific comment, not a comment on this person in general. I do not fault him for his comment, which was a fair one, although somewhat thoughtless in the context in which he made it. I really do try to speak more sensitively, and less thoughtlessly, on other people’s sites than that. I may not always succeed, but I do try.
As everyone knows, these kinds of things happen on weblogs all the time. That is why people devise moderation and comment policies. It can be very difficult to talk when you do not know to whom you are speaking, and you have only words on the screen.
This is why I try to maintain a neutral tone, and to speak to the words rather than the person who may be behind them. I am also somewhat tentative the first time I comment on someone’s site. I often limit myself to saying that I enjoyed their post, or that I liked the way they made a certain point. I do not know them, after all. Tread lightly.
Boundaries and Bridges I
Now two bloggers have posted criticisms of my loquacious, yet careful tone. A few weeks ago, I made a comment on one of their blogs, which that blogger did not entirely like. By the time I got back, they had apparently gotten some other, yet more upsetting flak on the same thread. It was clear to me that I should not have been there in the first place. By this point things were messy, and I bowed out as best I could.
This blogger (Blogger A) and another blogger I know somewhat better (Blogger B) then had a brief discussion of me on that thread. They made some assumptions with which I would disagree, but as I say, the entire situation was messy. I did not want to be involved, and I decided I did not need to be. I thought it best to just let them have their conversation. But the situation has stayed messy, however, through inadvertent errors on my part, although not by my choice.
Boundaries and Bridges II
I have been asked to respond. It seems that my tone is too unemotional for the tastes of some readers. They connect this tone to the fact of my being an academic. I am not working with my feelings enough. Some of my comments are wordy. Some have been taken as invasive. This is not a precise summary, but it is close enough.
Rather than respond on their sites, I have asked Bloggers A and B to speak to me directly, off site, if they really need to talk. The online discussion they propose looks to me like a huge energy drain. I could take a day or two off work, and really lean my energy into making that discussion take place in a constructive or at least a non-destructive way. But I have a lot of responsibilities, and that discussion does not look promising.
It looks unpromising because of the assumptions which have already been made. These assumptions suggest a great deal of projection on the part of Blogger A, a person whose writing I like, but whose behavior is very invasive. And I do not know either party well enough to feel comfortable doing this. And I am not going to apologize to Americans and to white people for being a professor. And I would consider it rude to ask these two bloggers, or anyone, what they have asked of me.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
all i ask from anyone i interact with is that if ever there is a difference of opinion or an issue with anything that they at least for one moment give me the chance to address it personally. i live in my own world a lot and dont always know what people are feeling. sometimes i do.
but i sense a lot of drama here i cannot discern, but feel the edges of, and i am left to guess at most of it. like many online peeks into life, there is much mystery in all these pronouns. so i hope i am not overlooking any references. and i hope that if i am now, or ever, involved in your feelings or life like this, you will let me know directly and not guess i am picking it up.
🙂
Hi Nez! To irritate me to the degree that someone else has, you would have to challenge me, in a blog post, to a blog thread discussion with yourself and one of your friends, someone who for their own reasons has decided I am their adversary, for purposes of teaching me to be more “emotional” …
I was tempted to tell these people to shut up because I am Native American and in our culture we do not poke sticks in people like that, except that I am not actually Native American, I just admire their way of not poking sticks into people the way these Anglos do.
Anyway, what I proposed to them was that they e-mail directly and we speak by phone, since they are mad at me – I do not want to work it out as a blogosphere Springer Show. I have not heard from them, though, so I guess the Springer show is what they want, I don’t know, maybe I will still hear.
damn. that’s a scary proposition. sounds like a coupla conkarerrrrs meng. public whipping? kinky.
i hear you on the sticks.
Yes, kinky as hell, and I wouldn’t dream of doing this degree of S/M, or this kind of threesome.
Actually one of them is OK, and has had my back on a few things before, he’s just on some kind of tear and may not mean it the way I see it. The other is bright too, good writer, but I think s/he is personality disordered, and I do not say that of many people. I could talk to him/her with some distance in it, as I do to many people, but s/he wants closeness and emotion, I prefer to choose my own partners.
To the people I am talking about, if you are reading this: you wanted my honest opinion of the situation, and you wanted to know my feelings, and now you do. And no, I do not find it appropriate to give your names, or to say these things on your own sites. My preference was to just leave it alone, but you done needled me.
It is the Springer show what they want, and to me honest and clear I have no clue who “they” are. I find it weird that someone wants to control how much “emotion” you put into a reply, or how much “emotion” they gauge.
Reading words will not do for many people. People want sides, allies, —-period. One person on their side can be wrong as day and they will refuse to see it much less acknowledge it. Emotional blackmail will be used. It is a form of silencing because who has the energy to actually engage with a brick wall. I admire people who really go the distance, but I do not, —cannot. I cannot stand to sit in my seat in front of my computer long enough to get through to people and who do not want to be gotten through to, and I am not being paid. I have to place a value on myself, because no one else will, and I am worth more than going back and forth unpaid and most of all, unappreciated.
I lost my temper last night with an idiot. And as you can see by me still using the word “idiot” I am still in no mood to deal with it. Perhaps after I give a little discussion on Hera today I will come back and deal with it. I don’t lose my temper that often on line, so there are some hot buttons that I need to think about.
I hope it all works out for you and you can leave it be in peace.
Gracias, CM! And you’re right. And it is really odd how these bad cyber-interactions can affect one: it is worse than bad in person interactions in that you do not know the whole person, and are not speaking with them in person.
Anyway, yes, I am more or less over this one. One of the people involved is someone I trust (or have trusted, anyway, for good reason); this is why I paid as much attention to the whole thing as I did.
It also helped to clarify even more (although it isn’t really necessary now) my whole ‘reeducation’ issue. So, that is all right as well.
Still, I do not know why people want to be on the Springer show. And yet they do.
[N. Ed. I added my responses in here a few days after the comment came in. It is really bullying, and I am horrified! Something I really dislike about bullies is, they come in and do their damage, and then, with a brief apology, bow out. However, they still got to have their fun and do their damage. My point: these half-assed apologies are not enough … especially coming from someone who, a bit downthread, apologizes but then says he still thinks he is right.]
I have a related, but tangential comment/question: why is it that 12 steppers are so unnerved by composure and calm, want to whip up drama, and then want one to join them in their form of repression? This is something I have observed a LOT in people who claim to be ‘in recovery’, and which I see going on here … in addition to the outrageous misogyny and a few other things.]
FS: Actually, its not the Springer show that I want (you should read the actual posts Moksha) – its depth, the recognition that there are forms of intelligence not learned in a textbook, that even intelligent people can evade the truth, that they often do, that education retards perhaps more than it provides.
Z: When did I ever say it didn’t? And why do you think you know ‘the truth’ about me – isn’t that a little presumptuous? When did I ever extol school or textbooks, for crying out loud?
FS: Reading your responses, Z, strongly reinforces these ideas and I say that as someone who has supported you and looked at you as a friend on this path. But truth and reality come before friendship. And, oh, how I’d hoped you’d be willing to try to see…
Z: That my writing style is too composed, this is your problem? I cannot figure out what it is I have *suddenly* done to you. You also have additional, true, real information, given to you by telephone and private e-mail over the past few months, about why, specifically, for reasons not having to do with me or my choices, I need to be reserved on blogs right now, even if I wanted to be otherwise. Have some respect. Anyway, it appears that you looked at me as a friend, then met AWQ who does not like professors, then decided to go on a campaign about me.
FS: We were going to a place (in the referenced conversation) that clearly, you didn’t want to go. Why can’t you admit that? Because there’s a particular image that must be upheld?
Z: No image to uphold. The blog is reserved, for good reasons. The problems with and about academia are ones I already spend enough time discussing in real time. But most importantly, I think AWQ is really unstable, and wants to externalize issues of her own. I do not know what your involvement is with her, but whatever it is, it looks unhealthy, and I do not want to join in. Once again, I am very well aware of problems with education, academia, professors, etc. This blog is about those things.
FS: What I’ve not heard one time, Z, is the “possibility” that you are not equipped to go there or desperately fear to go there. You have showed very bad faith here in your characterization, incredibly detached and myopic, very conservative. This is how education, in my un-learned opinion, embalms rather than illuminates.
Z: I do not want to waste energy with bullies, and on unstable people I do not know, that is true. What is it, anyway, that you and AWQ think you can show me? Why are you suddenly such wise experts on me? Why are you such wise experts on anything? It looks to me as though the ones who want to proselytize to others and feel superior, are YOU TWO. AWQ apparently does not like my writing style or the fact of my Ph.D., and has convinced you to feel the same way. I am not the one who goes on about having a Ph.D. and how great it is: you are the one who decided I did. Anyone can read this blog and see that I do not go on about that.
FS: But who am I? I have no doctorate, which means I don’t measure up to a D – R/P-H-D?? That’s what its all about?
Z: I never said that! You are the one who seems to have a problem with my Ph.D. and with your not having one. I don’t go around talking about it or vaunting it … when did you start to have this issue, why did it not come up until you met AWQ?
FS: You know, Paulo Friere talks about this very thing and I’m surprised that you don’t get it seeing as how you reference him on your blog. Education as indocrination as intellectual colonization, education that serves the status quo, that renders well intentioned minds harmless as they scramble for “expert” status, become branded as an authority and then speak from the Milky Way.
Z: Just maintaining anonymity and remaining an adult. This isn’t an academic blog or a teaching blog, and I claim no expertise.
FS: Well, I hear that voice of yours coming from the Ivory Tower, devoid of connection with many human traits and realities, neutered, shackled. I had no inkling that you wouldn’t get it or that you wouldn’t be honest and dig deeper. Sadly, I was mistaken. And with that thorough a buy-in to the academic system of privileged brainwashing, how could I have expected you to see yourself in it and what its done to you?
Z: Why is it that, having read my blog, you think I do not have severe problems with the Ivory Tower? Why do you think a composed writing style means superficiality? Why do you think YOU have secret knowledge and should be the one to make me “dig deeper”? Why do you think YOU have the right to impose this digging on me at random times chosen by you [and I guess this white girl]? And “being honest” is what, having the same thoughts as you do at the same moment, something like that? Having chosen a certain persona for the blog – not for academic reasons but for writerly ones – means I have an expensive degree and am brainwashed? Hunh???
FS: My mistake.
PZ: Your self-aggrandizing B.S., actually, whiteman. I am sorry, I know I am supposed to take this whole thing very very seriously, and I do to the extent that your behavior has been rude and insulting, but the concerns you have about what I might never have thought of are amazing fluff, and I have trouble resisting the impulse to just say go chill, rest your brain for a while.
[Again, these are Z’s responses written quickly, informally, and talking straight a few days later (straight talk having been one thing FS and AWQ wanted). Really! But I didn’t start this s***.]
Huh.
My very clean and simple advice, Professor Zero?
Do NOT go in there!
I wouldn’t touch that kind of conversation with a 10-foot pole. Mostly, my skepticism and cynicism with respect to this kind of meeting come from agreeing to way to many of them — in real life and online — then dearly, dearly regretting it. I walked in all sincere and open, willing to really work things through creatively to, hopefully, a win/win. Yes. We can do this, I thought.
Only to, time and time again, find myself ambushed. It wasn’t really about their wanting to meet with me to work things through. Not always, but usually, it was about their cornering me and clobbering me in some way (sometimes quietly and courteously) but cornered and clobbered is cornered and clobbered, any way you look at it.
I would never do this by phone, unless I had another person listening in that I trusted who would act as a witness. At least if you do it online or via e-mail, you have everything in writing if people start getting creative about what happens.
Why this deep concern over the fact that you are mind-y and sometimes seem somewhat reserved? Why these demands on your time, time you clearly do not appear to have?
Nah. There are red flags all over this. I’ve been in this kind of situation way too often. It happens to any of us who doesn’t take sides in the ways people want us to take sides. It happens to us when we make space in our interactions for all kinds of people and refuse to declare ourselves in various ways. It happens, especially, when we are peacemakers or our sensibilities are peacemaking (as I believe yours are). It happens when we’re a problem to someone because we’re in the way of some faux solidarity they want to create against some equally faux enemy. It happens because people like nothing more than to take out really smart, really articulate, creative, courageous, thoughtful, independent-thinking women. They like that a lot and it’s sick and horrible.
That’s my exceedingly biased opinion! But I feel protective towards you (and am also remembering all the times I’ve been in this situation.)
And also, what chasingmoksha said!
Heart
Also, in these situations, whatever can be used against you, will be used against you, but particularly whatever is important to you, whatever you’ve worked really hard for and are really proud of, because you’re vulnerable there, you can be hurt there. Don’t take the bait! It’s so easy to swallow but damn, pulling out the hook after hurts like hell!
Not to be hysterical. I’ve just been there too many times.
Heart
Profacero, I want you to know that I am hurt by the tone of the discussion involving you, FS and AWQ. I feel that you were treated so unfairly and disrespectfully. I left a comment over at FS in defense of your person. There is something I learnt when it comes to discussions. Once they cannot discredit your opinions, they attempt to demonize and discredit you to achieve their purpose. Never be ashamed or apologize for your intellect or intelligence or the process by which you have aquired it.
There is one thing I can discern and that is sincerity of purpose. AWQ is insincere. I can see through her. If there is one word I would use to describe you is : sincere…. ok 4 words: “sincere to a fault”. I got your back.
Hugzzz.
Asabagna
Well, I would have preferred to deal with this privately, and I should perhaps have not made this post public. I did try to anonymize it.
Anyway, since it is starting to seep out, I will repeat: I hurt Blogger A’s feelings three times that I know of, all inadvertently. I apologized. I also decided it was not productive for Blogger A and myself to interact. Blogger A has issues with me because of who I am: white, female, and a professor (Blogger A is white and a former academic).
I, for my part, have major issues with boundary invaders, and rightly or wrongly, I experience Blogger A as one such. For all of these reasons, I do not think there is any reason for some sort of mediation between Blogger A and myself: the normal thing is, let it lie, I’ll keep my distance.
This is all I would have planned to say to Bloggers A and B offline / by telephone. I do not know why Blogger B has such a strong interest in conducting ‘therapy’ (or whatever it is) with me. Yes, this blog is mind-y, and I am reserved – on this blog, and also in person, despite the fact of being *outgoing*.
If Bloggers A and B wish to see mind-y-ness and reserve as symptoms of unfeeling academic-ness and so on, that is their perogative.
I just re-read a post by Asa and then re-read mine and I do believe an apology is in order. I’m sorry, Professor Z, for my ugly tone and crazy zealotry. I truly got caught up in some stuff that I do regret.
What’s interesting is that I feel there is truth, quite a bit of truth in the arguments I was making; however, I did something that I’ve done before (and Asa knows this): letting myself go to far/be influenced by currents that aren’t necessarily my own. So Asa helped me see that I have to retreat into myself and take another look at my part in this.
Again, I am very sorry and hope to do better the next time this happens – hope to maintain my own personal distance from other people’s issues.
[N. Ed. days later: And/but: it sounds to me as though what you are upset about is not ‘elitism’ or ‘alienation’ but intellectual training, reserve, and measure – all of these being inappropriate in a woman. As far as being ‘real’ is concerned, when I saw how upset and angry you were, I asked you to contact me directly, and you did not. How, then, am I to believe that what you wanted was for me to ‘get real’ – or whatever? Given what you did, how am I to believe that you wanted anything other than a blog fight? And once again, what makes you think that you are a sage and a therapist, that you see into the hearts of people you barely know, and that you can show them the truth? And finally, with what right do you try to police anyone’s writing voice?
The whole thing just so smacks of male privilege (you) and white privilege (AWQ) – and entitlement, and middle class whining on both of your parts, it is hard to take seriously in the way you want it taken seriously.
And I do realize I’ve done the most railing at you *after* your apology, and not before, and that that has to do with the fact of my having sustained precisely the kind of attack you and AWQ mounted, many times before – you stabbed an old wound. BUT the thing which strikes me as so weird about what you have done is that it was such a GAME: let’s go mess with this person. Then I didn’t like it, and Father Asa had to step in and stop you … and you do not seem to think it is a problem that this whole dynamic is age appropriate in elementary school only … I am just shocked, shocked, is all, although the whole thing did shine quite a lot of light on what quite a lot of people are up to.
Anyway. Why are you so interested in slinging insults around the Internet? [I could, for instance, have put up a post about you, calling you, let us see, a crisis-loving 12-stepper with a Messiah complex, and insist that you come to me for therapy about how to think straight, but what in the world would have been the point of that?]
My point: the questions you have, about why I speak as I do on the Internet, what I think about academia, why I did not think it was a good idea to engage in battle with AWQ, etc., are in fact things I am willing to talk about. But I am not willing to be shanghaied into a blog fight. And, once again, you had already made a lot of decisions: I was a cold, unemotional, disengaged academic who thought she could do not wrong, and you were going to save me by opening me up to my emotions … it is all just too WEIRD. And suggesting that I must accept that engagement, or else be called whatever it is you want to call me, is blackmail.
MJ I just sent you e-mail! It’s cool, but whew … the thing is, MJ (this is in the e-mail) that although you are one of the bloggers who has the *most* real life info on me, I still don’t think you know enough about me, the person, to try this sort of intervention, much less via the blogs!
S***, you have seen me in person, you know my real name, you have some information on my life I would prefer did not even exist to be had, you have all of my e-mail addresses including my professional one, and you even have my phone number if I am not mistaken! With all that contact info, we have to have a fight, as if by proxy, on the blogs? !Carajo, ‘mano!
Funny thing: I knew from the outset that what would happen was, Asa would step in. He’s done it before, re other people, and he gets through. This is very nice of Asa but I’d like to think we didn’t need him as mediator. Grownups, you know?
Sha, as we say down here, you my friend, but you not my daddy!
Update to this comment: I edited, above, FS, with responses to your earlier comments. On this most recent one, the truth you feel there is in your ‘arguments’: I do not assume the kind of authority over other people you seem to assume here.
I really think you’re projecting issues of your own – you were always free to edit/delete my comments from your blog, for instance, or criticize/question them, but you never did. I could make comments on virtually anyone’s blog, about ‘issues’ I think they have, things I disagree with in them, whatever, but I am just not interested in messing with people like that, and what I surmise is only I surmise, anyway – I don’t actually know most bloggers too well, or have any way of knowing whether I am ‘right’ about them. On blogs all I do when I get a funny feeling something is wrong, is go away. Or if the blogger is someone I actually know, talk about it in real time. I found this whole thing as odd as I did because to me you are *not* just a faceless, anonymous blogger.
But what I see coming from you and AWQ is just – a couple of ‘whitemen’ upset about a woman maintaining composure and not following their line, feeling it isn’t ‘natural’ and so on, feeling they and their thoughts take precedence over everything else. And as I say, it’s great for us all that Asa keeps you in line, but the fact that he can talk sense into you eventually does not make it OK for you to keep going off at people. What you call being ‘real’ and ‘getting at truth’, I call being out of control and asserting dominance any old way you can. Like a whiteman. –Z
And, random and half-formed notes to self yet more days later: the reason I keep harping on this is that, while FS and AWQ may be discomfited by my generally calm and self-assured voice, the whole reason I have the blog is to practice writing that way. My actual problem is not trusting my own voice too much. It is not trusting it enough.
In Reeducation, I was told the same things as these two self-helpers now tell me: 1. they know me better than I know myself; 2. my intellectual work is a hiding place, they can just tell; 3. my composure indicates a lack of feeling; 4. they can intervene and show me my ‘true feelings’ to get me out of school (which, they believe, is a very different and much more artificial place than ‘the world’).
I seriously considered these possibilities when my Reeducator, also a 12-stepper like the FS, broached them. I let him intervene in exactly the prejudiced and oh-so-American way FS and AWQ wanted to, and I paid a very high price for doing so.
I realize that FS and AWQ can say I am racist and elitist not to put their desires for me before my own. However, I was already blackmailed in that precise way, by the Reeducator. He said that if I did not put his ideas before my own I was elitist and homophobic.
It was plain old self-serving bullying both times. And these excuses: “But I am gay, so I have suffered, so I get to mistreat you,” or (insert any other oppressed identity you would like in the [gay] spot), just do *not* make it, they are ridiculous.
These are my random thoughts on this matter and I ask once again: why is it that Americans so like to meddle with each other? Colonize, take over, tell each other to accept ‘the truth’? Perhaps they’ve just got to cut something, and they want to do it anonymously and with impunity.
Anyway. I could go on, but I have already gone on enough. I still say, this whole thing was a gold mine for the study of m.a.n.i.p.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.
And, more days later, note to self for the NEXT time there are a set of complaints about my voice, or my being a professor … I should have remembered and told these two, I have a whole long PAGE which just BEGINS to discuss my various discomforts with academia.
https://profacero.wordpress.com/what-is-a-scholar-i-xiii/
I should ask people to first read that, before they assume I adore and idolize things academic – and then read some actual, contorted academic prose, before they decide my short and simple sentences are ‘too academic’. And then we can talk … maybe … I have entirely too much to say and tell, and I have thought about it altogether too much, and I do not want to deal with random individuals (e.g. Blogger A) about it except as I choose. I really do not see what is wrong with that, why I am not with my rights to decide that.
And still more, still more days later:
I.
The reason why it was so hard to handle being attacked by blog commentators for having a voice which sounds too “academic” and authoritative to them is that due to my own experiences in academia, it was for a long time difficult for me to speak at all. I need to have some sort of voice, and this blog exists so that I can practice speaking.
My voicelessness problem, as I have pointed out at length elsewhere, had much more to do with the yet more severe authoritarianism of weak, commercialized psychotherapy and Al-Anon than with academia. Culture shock related to viewing of the evil side of academia is not to be discounted but I still say the worst is that sentence with which Al-Anon likes to terrorize people, “You have no power – only our discourse has power.”
Wicked though this may be, I do have the power to deal with academia. In psychotherapy / Al-Anon, I learned to feel guilty about this, ashamed of this. I was taught that I was not fearful enough, and that my fearlessness and sensibleness were inappropriate feelings. I needed to come to the ‘truth’ of powerlessness and fear.
That just isn’t the truth – except to the extent that I am now not only very wary of abusive people, unstable people, and addicts, as I was before, I am also very wary of M.S.W.’s and 12-steppers, most of whom, in my experience, trade in fear, like to impose authority, and will do whatever it takes to destabilize and control others.
Whatever its problems, and I really do understand them, academia in my experience is at least saner than this. And by saying this, I am not defending academia, institutions, and so on. Nor am I making a snap judgment. I considered the opposite point of view, and tried to live it, for *fifteen* years. I only did myself harm, and I did less good for others than I could otherwise have done.
II.
I think the other issue is, being asked to present oneself for consumption and evaluation all the time: this is something we do constantly at work, and it becomes exhausting / unattractive to do recreationally, especially with people one doesn’t know/doesn’t choose. In this situation, to deal with someone I did not know, who had a little bit of information, an impression, and an agenda, and who wanted me to act as material for it … felt like being cannibalized, or perhaps more accurately, scapegoated.
And then also – this whole blog chronicles me trying to figure out how to deal with the evil side of academia. And I think it is appropriate to decide with whom one speaks, about what, and with what degree of intimacy. And at bottom, I am so tired of being told it is not all right to be who I am, namely, an intellectual and creative, and a jovial but somewhat reserved type. And I am so tired of being sweet to people who want to change those things “for my own good.”
III.
Finally – the other thing that shocked me about this was that the setup came from Blogger B, someone I have met and who knows a little bit more than most readers about my current situation, and whom I have trusted. I could not believe this person set up a virtual drive-by, instead of contacting me directly and saying look, there is something I would like to talk about.