You may know someone like this
I run into them all the time. They just love to tell you that you’re not doing enough or not doing whatever right but they won’t lift a finger to help. I wonder if there is a word to describe them? Non-actionable critics? Critical do-nothings? Stupid jerk heads?
I have a few words to describe them, which you can well imagine — or, if need be, you can find at Urban Dictionary.
They also exist in pixel form:
I think it’s the same (or very similar) personality quirk that makes people go to blogs and write invalidating, weird, argumentative comments. If we were to remove it from cyberspace and place it into a real world setting, it would be like a person coming to your house and taking a huge stinky dump on your front doorstep. No one has yet taken a dump in my living room (not including Bobo, but he’s a dog so he doesn’t count) but I have cleaned up many stinky dumps from my comments section. I don’t get it. I don’t understand it.
Pseudo-courage, made possible by net anonymity. Ninety-nine point something percent of the people who would crap on a blog post wouldn’t dare crap on someone’s porch. I have been fortunate, I suppose, in that relatively few such individuals have shown their feces around here.
Then again, the real reason for posting this:
It’s been one week since I loaded ole Donnaville with advertisements. In that one week period, I made $5.73. I was about to say that I saw my readership plunge but I just remembered Dustbury linked to me on the 21st and that always gives me a little traffic lift.
It ain’t Stacy McCain money, but it ain’t bad.
fillyjonk »
30 July 2009 · 11:20 am
Oh, my word. I thought I was the only one who had to deal with the “UR Doin’ it WRONG….but we’re not gonna help” types.
I like “Critical do-nothings” myself. I have a few of them in my “real” life. I’ve almost quit a couple of types of volunteer work I do over them.
Yeah, I never quite understood the people who will spend ten minutes composing a comment that tells the blogger just how they are stupid, ugly, and their mother dresses them funny. (Or whatever). Of course, the fact that many of those comments contain some kind of glaring spelling, grammar, or capitalization error makes my inner English teacher snicker and rub her palms together.
Really, what my parents told me all through junior high is true: someone who is rude and insulting to you is generally telling you far more about THEMSELVES than they are telling about YOU.
Cary »
30 July 2009 · 1:12 pm
I couldn’t agree more.
unimpressed »
30 July 2009 · 6:07 pm
Those same people that make the glaring spelling, grammar, punctuation, word usage (your, you’re; there, their, they’re; etc.) and capitalization errors are always quick to tell you that “Those things don’t matter.” Unless, of course, it’s the -other- guy making those errors.
In written communications, particularly when being critical of something or someone, the ability to frame those communiques without the aforementioned mistakes and errors is of the utmost necessity–a typo isn’t on the same level, obviously. IMO, that level of inadequacy does nothing more than send up the Ass Hat (Charles has a better term for it, but I can’t recall it at the moment) flag invalidating the response.
CGHill »
30 July 2009 · 6:19 pm
I’ve had several, although my favorite specification for rectal millinery is “keister bonnet.”
unimpressed »
30 July 2009 · 7:47 pm
Moonbat. The word I couldn’t come up with earlier was moonbat.
robohara »
31 July 2009 · 9:19 am
About half of the people I’ve met who act like that online are perfectly normal in real life, most of them even leaning toward “timid” and “polite”.
The other half, I continue to successfully avoid.