NOTE: ORIGINAL SITE CONTENT! This site has gotten a good number of views over the last couple of months. So, as a 'thank you' to everyone that has come along to this sordid little hole of rejected work, crazy-ass rants and general nonsense and taken the time to read my 'inane chatter' (as my Dad would call it), I thought I'd do an original piece, exclusive to 'Quicksilver Stories'. Cheers guys. CQ
Just What is so Appealing About Insulting People Anonymously?
If you regularly read the content I upload to this site, you’ll know that I have spent the last 3 – 4 years working as a professional freelance writer.
During this time, I have written literally thousands of articles about hundreds of different subjects (everything from selling hammocks and writing about golfing equipment, to hotel and tablet PC reviews). I have been lucky enough to eke out a living by turning my words into money (the toughest form of alchemy there is, in my estimation).
I am not a part-timer; this is how I earn my living.
I’m not one of those people that calls him/herself a writer and then never writes a damned thing, or else somebody that toils away at a day job that has no bearing whatsoever on writing. I also do not self publish, as I see no reason why I should pay somebody else for the privilege of doing my own job. With all respect to those people (many of whom are far better writers than I) - we do not do the same job.
No. I’m the real deal. I live this shit every day and I (just about) scrape by every month.
...And yes, it is hard, but, the way I see it, as long as I’m doing something I love, then I am better off than 99.99% of the world’s population, most of whom hate their jobs and feel they have no option to do anything else.
So, a typical day for me begins at around 2.30PM, when I stagger into my home office, after pouring myself a (pretty generous) cup of tea - and begin working on whatever articles I have in my inbox. If it sounds luxurious, please bear in mind that I frequently don’t finish work until gone 5.30AM...
I’ve always been a night owl; I never slept much even as a child and I find that my mind is far more active at night. My work is just better, I suppose...
I’ve tried the whole, ‘up at 6.30, in the office by 7.00’ routine - and it sucks. My brain is foggy, my typing is sluggish and frankly, I can’t write for shit when I do that. However, when I cross that 10.00 – 11.00PM barrier, I just wake up. Words flow freely, ideas generate as fast as I can type them and every passage of every book I ever read is easily accessible (and seemingly library-catalogued) within my mind.
My girlfriend usually comes home from work at around 4.30 – 5.00PM and I pour her a cold drink and ask about her day. Usually, I put in a little more time in the office and don’t get out until about 6.00 (often later).
Then, we eat dinner, watch TV and she heads off to bed around10.30PM. A friend of ours recently described us as ‘ships passing in the night’, which is a fairly accurate assessment, it must be said.
I then give my girlfriend a cuddle and sort out something for her to go sleep to (like a lot of people, she likes falling asleep with the TV on). Then, by 12.00AM, I’m back in the office on the ‘redeye’ shift.
For me, this is far less strenuous than going to bed at 11.00 and trying to sleep through the night would be. Whenever I’ve had ‘straight’ jobs, my colleagues have always thought of me as being kind of dumb, largely because I was so tired during the day that I simply couldn’t think straight.
I know what you’re thinking, but no, I’m not Batman. I have an alibi for that...
Anyway, my job demands that I know a little about a lot and, in my current regular positions, I am called upon to write articles about subjects as disparate as science and technology, professional wrestling, TV shows, fitness and personal training, news and current affairs, and, of course, my beloved comic books.
I could (and probably should) provide light, easy to read ‘puff pieces’ for my various clients (and sometimes I do), but usually, I opt to give the reader their money’s worth and provide something a little more in-depth and satisfying. It actually costs me money to do this, but I do it anyway because, for me, it is a gesture of professionalism.
When you read one of my bigger, 6,000+ word articles (such as the ones I frequently do for sites like What Culture.com), you can rest assured that the piece you’re reading has been thoroughly fact-checked for bad info, any/all quotes are reliable and all information is as up-to-date as I could possibly make it. I do not send anything off earlier than the fourth draft, but even that is unusual, as I sometimes go as high as eleven or twelve drafts, just to ensure that the piece represents my best work.
...And I don’t get paid a lot, either. In fact, I work as hard (or harder) as almost anyone else I know, but I do it for less than a third of their income some months.
I write fairly quickly, but you can always be sure that the bigger of my articles has taken me several hours (some almost a week), by the time they are sent off to the editor.
The standard of online editors is not always that high either; I did an article once (I’m not saying for what site) that had taken me a week of research and writing. I was very proud of it; that is, until it was haphazardly hung, drawn and quartered by some chimp that had found his way into the editor’s office (and subsequently made a complete mess of an otherwise fine piece of writing).
On another occasion, I found that one enterprising editor had changed an article I’d written about comics into an article about movies. This, of course, led to some confusion in the ‘comments’ section, as movie buffs vainly searched the IMDB for movies that do not exist.
In those instances, the editor’s names are never mentioned, so all blame goes to me for writing a ‘bad’ article.
So, once the article is live, I then nervously scan it for signs of editorial ‘tampering’. Now, being ‘edited down’ or having your text altered slightly for clarity’s sake is a part of the business, but having 1,000 words sliced away, seemingly at random (and that’s happened to me) or jokes having their punch lines forcibly removed (that’s happened too) is bad for business (and one must be vigilant regarding such things).
Oftentimes, it is no more than 5 minutes after one of these painstakingly assembled pieces goes up that someone starts with the hate.
Now, I’ve read hundreds, maybe even thousands, of online articles in my time (many that I have disagreed vehemently with), but never once have I taken to the ‘comments’ section in order to call the writer an ‘idiot’ or his/her article ‘stupid’.
It’s just impolite. I may have disagreed, or corrected some mistakes, or even made mention of something that I felt the writer had overlooked, but it was always done politely and with respect to the author.
...And that was before I myself became a hired hack
Maybe the only time I did anything even remotely disrespectful was when Yahoo! ran an article that basically said that lying to your partner in order to avoid an argument counted as ‘relationship advice’ – and even then, the worst I did was share it on my social media outlets as an example of bad relationship advice.
...
I cannot put into words how utterly soul destroying it is to put so much time and effort into a piece of writing, only to be insulted by people that (in most cases, at least),
A) Can barely string a coherent sentence together
And
B) Begin their ‘critiques’ of my articles with personal insults.
Case in point, on a recent WWE article I did, some would-be ‘sports writer’ began his comment with the line “this list is laughable” and then proceeded to provide a long list of his ‘reasons’ as to why.
Now why, I ask you, if this person wished for me to read and appreciate his comments (which he presumably did, or else why would he have posted them?), would he begin by insulting my work?
Of course, I didn’t bother reading anything else he had to say.
Annoyingly, the word “laughable” caught on with a couple of other Internet-accessing parrots who then repeated it over and over (way to be original, guys). They may have been laughing, but I wasn’t amused.
There was another occasion where some complete idiot decided to post a lengthy ‘rebuttal’ of my article, which really only served to highlight 3 factors,
1) That he either hadn’t read (or had failed to understand) my article in the first place.
2) That he had very little knowledge of the subject that he was reading about.
3) He had obviously not read anything else I’d ever written, on that site or anywhere else.
“your so stupid!” began another ignorant, grammatically unaware commentator. Yeah, nicely done, dude. I’m obviously the idiot here...
“If you knew anything at all about (INSERT SUBJECT HERE)” goes another common opening salvo that I regularly get, before it transitions, clumsily and inevitably, into a long-winded way of saying “you would/should agree with me” (every single time, without fail).
Most recently, I had someone claiming to be an experienced journalist attempt to give me a lesson in article composition, via a comment underneath one of my published articles.
For fuck sake!
Even if he was/is an experienced journalist (and, for the sake of argument, I’m willing to consider it), why would he insult a fellow writer that way – and in public, no less? The site in question is linked to my Twitter account; if he really wanted to play the grizzled Perry White to my wide-eyed and eager Clark Kent, why not contact me privately?
Comments like “This didn’t even make sense” – which I received on a recent joke article I did, really don’t make you sound clever, they only serve to highlight that, by your own admission, you had trouble understanding the piece in question. Why not just call yourself an idiot and cut out the middleman? To borrow another Internet term: FAIL.
A bit of advice, guys. We really don’t read the rest of it (unless we happen to be slagging you off in our own articles, that is!). If you start with an insult, we usually just ignore you. A better way to do it would be to start by saying how wonderful the article was and then slowly segue into your relentlessly ignorant torrent of ritual abuse. Then you’d have our attention. Ouch.
The problem with these ‘trolls’ (as Internet parlance would have them named), is that their constant bile spewing deters the readers that actually enjoyed the piece from posting positive comments. It also means that we miss out on genuine criticisms that could actually be useful as reader feedback.
Now, I average around 20 – 50,000 views per article, so I have to assume that the vast majority of those people that read the piece, simply enjoyed it and got on with their lives without feeling the need to leave a comment.
However, from the point-of-view of the writer, it can seem like a trip to the phantom zone (ask a nerd) whenever one peruses the comments section of their articles, simply because the hate often outweighs everything else on offer there.
The real shame of it is that I do occasionally get some really nice comments from you readers and each and every one of them makes me feel like Shakespeare for a day, but I so rarely check the comments threads on the sites because of all the fucking trolls I attract.
Recently, one lovely reader actually found me on Twitter and shared my article around (and to you, sir - If I ever meet you, the drinks are on me!)
Anyway, the point I’m presently labouring over (and you’ll have to forgive me, its Friday afternoon and I’m very fucking tired) is that you might want to think it over a little before you blast the next article you read.
In all probability, the person writing it has forgotten more about the subject in question than you’ll ever know. This is definitely the case with my pro wrestling articles, where I regularly fend off arrogant, know-it-all comments from those who’s knowledge of the sport consists entirely of the last two or three years of WWE programming (and that’s being charitable). Many of these marks either don’t appear to know that wrestling is a scripted show, or else think of themselves as ‘insiders’ because they know what the terms ‘heel’ and ‘babyface’ mean...
In most cases, I’d actually be happy to read your disagreements (provided you are polite and you are offering me a valid point – as some people have), but I’m not here for you to vent your spleen to, or to act as a ‘virtual punching bag’ or else a surrogate for whomever it is that you are actually pissed off with.
Besides, some of you need to stop and think that I’m paid to write about professional wrestling because it is a subject in which I am well versed. I’ve read books, met wrestlers and watched it all my life. The editor I work with knows even more than I do, so they don’t give these jobs to just any old 15-year-old prick in a John Cena T-shirt.
I know my shit and I never, ever publish anything without the facts to back it up, or else displaying (usually in considerable detail) my reasoning if it happens to be an opinion piece.
If the author has made a mistake, or even if you happen to disagree with their stance, there is simply nothing to be gained by coming across as some sort of sarcastic, cynical malcontent.
My editors aren’t going to read your ill-considered, anger-driven tirade and hand my job over to you on a silver platter (although some trolls seem to be trying to make that happen). And, if you start out by calling me an idiot (or worse), I’m not going to read any further. All you’re going to do is attract other trolls...And I guess I just don’t see the appeal of that.
One ‘reader’ referred to me as a ‘whiney 16-year-old kid’ (or somesuch), which is, one would imagine, what he sees when he looks in the mirror every day (I’m actually 29). The difference is that when I was a whiney 16-year-old kid, I was writing, learning my craft and reading up on the subjects that I now write about for a living. I was not verbally abusing people within the industry I hoped to be working in one day.
I’ve said this before, but in many ways leaving such comments is the equivalent of drunkenly heckling a comedian; you ruin the show for everybody else and anybody that reads your ranting (who has half a brain in their head, at least) now thinks/knows that you are an annoying prick.
Basically, you’re kinda like those fat idiots in the pub that are convinced that they could do a better job than the players in the World Cup Final, but, in actuality can barely take a shit without having a minor coronary issue. My response to you is the same as it is to them; fuck off can you. You wouldn’t last five fucking minutes in my arena. Now get the fuck out.
Cheerio.
- CQ
PS – I do not reply to the comments on most articles I publish. However, if you wish to get in touch with me (for nice reasons), follow me on Twitter. I’m actually quite friendly (to non-trolls, anyway) and love hearing what people have to say about my articles, or any of the subjects I write about. Hope to see you there.