Hate Mail: When Not to Speak Up
Angry Fan Bois
Over the years I have learned how to have fun with some hate mail. Sometimes though it really confuses me.
I’m sitting here after two hours of unpleasant back and forth with someone I honestly can’t figure out. He seems to have an agenda that ends up being counter-intuitive to his own agenda if that’s possible.
It started as a response to a story run a few days ago on this site. I’m not going to say what story, because I refuse to drag it up again without any new FACTS to add. He questioned my professionalism, my integrity and was personally insulting in his opening email. On the plus side he said some nice things about LukeIsBack.com so I liked that.
Over the last two hours, the emails have come fast and furious and I have done my best to stick to facts. It quickly became obvious that I was dealing with a fan stuck in a very strong fan boy mentality. Nothing against fans, I’m one. Even the fan boy mentality can be understood. You want all stories to reflect well on your favorites even when the facts are neutral. But try as I might, I have been unable to explain that I can not stay “fair” while slanting things to believe only what he says I should believe.
Absent hard facts I can only report what is said, ask all involved for replies and do what I can to get to the bottom of the stories. Then I can either drag them back up or let you the readers decide where the truth lies.
Of course, all this guy had to do was send an email requesting to comment on the story. He would have been given equal access to tell ‘his’ side of the story. Instead we wasted two hours where he got to call me names and I got to bang my head against the wall trying to argue logic with someone unwilling to see that sometimes the most I can do for someone is give them the last word.
Perhaps that was too subtle for some people.
I just can’t decide if I more angry that I couldn’t get him to own up to his own faulty time line or that I wasted two hours trying to convince him that an email Thursday comes BEFORE a story run on Saturday. (The dates have been changed to protect the innocent.)
PS: Before I could even publish this, there are two more emails that contradict earlier points. I think I would have more luck debating philosophy with my six year old than getting this guy to see that maybe, just maybe he’s blinded by something other than science.
