Granted, it's not as awesome as it should have been. But just the idea of it is amazing. Just the fact that she's talking about herself and taking attention away from JJ is hilarious in and of itself.

Also? Coco overhead at 4:25 above.

Anyway, "Tell me about playing Jankovic: begins at 6:35 above and continues below. 

Bernard Tomic: I mean, this is just such a Bernie way to do things.

Andy Murray: He calls him "buddy"!

That being said, did no one explain to these poor kids that there is a functional purpose to holding up the umbrella? You're no Mary Poppins. You're not just accessorizing out there.

In light of the discussion this week about cyberbullying and Twitter abuse, which resulted in Rebecca Marino and Laura Robson deleting their Twitter accounts (Laura has since reinstated it) I figured I'd post this email exchange I had with Slate's Emily Bazelon a few years ago. Bazelon was working on a project about bullying at the time, the result of which will be released as a book this week. The book is called "Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy" and I'm looking forward to reading it. I've followed Bazelon's reporting about the issue over the years and the results of her research should be interesting. Here's a link to Bazelon's recent appearances on The Colbert Report and NPR's Fresh Air. Both worth a watch/listen.

When the project began she put a call out for stories about bullying and online abuse. I reached out to her to tell the story of the time I was targeted via this site. At the time I was publicly pretty quiet about it. I didn't fight back, I knew it was going on, and I tried to take the high road and ignore the hurtful things that were said about me and my friends. I told the story to my close friends in a "can you believe this hilarious story" tone but deep down, yeah, it bothered me. 

The thing is, it's all well and good to tell the victims of online abuse to suck it up, grow thicker skin, and ignore the vitriol from complete and utter strangers. But the bottom line is that we're all fragile people and I'm thankful for the fact that at the time of this incident I was in a pretty good headspace. It was easy then to dismiss what was being said. But had I been in a different headspace, had I been in a depressive state or if it was a time of my life when I was genuinely questioning myself, my self worth, and my self-esteem, things could have turned out differently. 

Because that's the thing. You never know where the target of your anger, meanness, or viscious comments is at the moment they read your shit. What can be, at least to you, a critical but mild comment, could be the thing that sets someone off. It could be, in that moment, the absolute worst thing that person could hear. We can say "oh, you're being oversensitive" and "toughen up", but isn't that basically victim-blaming? I can't think that's the solution here. 

Despite my willingness to stay above the fray I would be lying if said I didn't spend many sleepless nights wondering what I had done to suffer the wrath of these strangers. People who I thought liked what I did, who I valued as members of a community and who I thought valued me as well. Much of this incident still lives with me. I think of it often because the whole thing was so confusing to me. To this day I simply do not understand it. 

So here's my exchange with Bazelon. I'm now good friends with a number of the people who were involved in this gambit. I hold no grudges. It was the incident, not the people, that was hurtful. Because of that I've redacted names because I know a number of those who were a part of this feel absolutely horrible about it and have gone out of their way to let me know that. I've appreciated that more than they'll know.

But I thought I would share it because I hope people understand that even the most innocuous of things (from their perspective) can really fuck people up. And what you think might be a passing comment could burrow its way into a person's head for years. I've never been called a cunt to my face. But I have online. Funny how that happens.

__________

Hi Emily,

The Four Milkshakes of the Apocalypse - self-explanatory if you've read this far 

• Pestilence - Scarrie, because she is so annoying. She is like a swarm of insects attacking you, combined with a bad rash. She lurks/chats in the Crack Box all day and no human force can stop her verbal diarrhea. The Bubonic Plague had nothing on her.
• War - C Not, because she became a fascist and forced us to revolt, thus creating a bloody conflict that continues to this day. We are winning said conflict.
• Famine - Loathe All, because she is the least offensive of the Four Milkshakes, due to her scarcity of posts on FD. Apparently, she only posts/chats on FD when Kobol is aligned with New Caprica (meaning never).
• Death - Sodapoop, because she is the most boring person ever. She can bore you to death just by typing 3 words. The most fatal 3 words are: "I wish Dina..." If you see those words, you will die within 20 seconds. You have been warned.

In addition, they repeatedly harassed me on my site.  They had their own chat (which they stupidly left public and which is how we found out about all this) wherein they would call us names and "plan their attacks".  They would play a game to see how many times they could get banned from the site and they took an odd amount of glee out of the whole endeavor:

The Three Martyrs - [Redacted] for being the first three [redacted] members to be banned by C Not @ FD. Sometimes referred to as "our fallen heroes" and the like. 
   NB: as of 2009.04.18 [Redacted] has been banned twice from both the Crack Box and the comments; she is the reigning Queen of the Martyrs; bow before her, all ye pretenders 
   2009.04.21 - [Redacted] is banned from the Crack Box for a record third time! 
   2009.06.18 - [Redacted] is banned from the Crack Box for a record fourth time! This time for posting a speech by Winston Churchill. 
   2009.06.26 - [Redacted] tries to get posting rights back, but Scarrie sees her and makes snarky comments; they get into an agrument; 5th ban ensues 

As you can see, this went on for months.  Those who weren't banned would leave comments in code to each other slagging on me or my friends, making passive-aggressive comments with the intent to needle me.  It was ridiculous to the point that I just didn't want to bother blogging anymore.  So yes, as dumb as it all was it did have an effect on me because all of this ugly hatred was coming my way simply because I asked people to hit a shift key when they typed.  In addition, my site is ad-free and is purely for my own expression and here was this army of people who spent hours out of their day trying to cause me trouble, all despite the fact that I continued to let them comment on my site even though I knew all about this (high road and whatnot).  And just as a reminder, I didn't know these people.  They were complete internet strangers.  

I found the whole incident fascinating.  It was my first personal experience with the truly ugly side of the internet and again, I simply could not understand how this all stemmed from me asking for proper use of "their", "there", and "they're".  

Hope this is helpful.  If not, at least I hope it was entertaining.