Several months ago, I had a terible expirience with MetsGrrl, whom some of you may know from her blog. The following is the story about how I became disenchanted by her and how it turned me off of blogging until just now. I feel ashamed to have let one cruel person alter how I felt about about anything.
When I first happened upon some of the many Mets blogs, I noticed that there was always a sense of comraderie. I would routinely ask ALL bloggers about themselves (as I pointed out to her, that is why many books have a small pic and bio on the author on the inside back flap) because readers for the most part want to know about the author of whatever you may be reading. In a way, it helps to make the experience more personal and on quite a few levels, more enjoyable. I had just started my own blog (which you are currently reading) and I was reaching out to other bloggers for their support and as I said earlier to better understand who they were and where they were coming from (I had not discovered HotFoot just yet). I had a nice back and forth with several bloggers including Cerrone from MetsBlog. I had also been posting on many other blogs with little blurbs and notes. I started to notice that I had received a response from just about everyone with the exception of MetsGrrl. This puzzled me as I was posting to her site more and more as she was echoing many sentiments that I had noticed first hand from an ex-girlfriend that became a Mets fan while I was with her. After a few days, I sent an email requesting why the lack of love was being shown to me. Allow me to break down her response (these are all quoted directly out of her email, grammar and spelling errors in all:
“Okay, I'm going to reply to this against my better judgement because i
know all it will do is get a negative response.”
OK, I am starting to feel that she is not a very optimistic person...
“…you started posting a ton of comments, asking to see my picture,
how old am I, etc. - all of this was weird and creepy and massively inappropriate.” I think I have more then justified all of this already. Granted, I didn’t explain it to her at the time that she wrote this (I did however in a later email, but we’ll get to that later) so I can give here a “pass” on this one. Even though most people would be exited to have a new found reader that is active on the site, she chose to view it as creepy. It’s nice to know when an author appreciates his or her audience, isn’t it?
“yes, all of that is completely irrelevant, and i guarantee you that you didn't write those
questions to matt cerrone or mike of mike's mets or any of the other mets sites.” Wrong! But thanks for playing, Chip, tell her what she has won. Actually she is right about one thing. I didn’t ask Mike those questions but that was mostly due to the fact that I wasn’t reading Mike’s Mets and didn’t have any clue who he was. OK, she got lucky on that one.
“and, you criticized my grammar, which is rich, given that - with all
due respect - you are hardly strunk & white.” As I noted to her, I don’t recall ever doing that, but I very well might have. I can not in any means claim that I didn’t do it, but if you could see any of my other posts (I think she deleted all of mine off her site) then you can see that I was always supportive. I apologized to her for this and noted that I must have been joking.
“now, i am quite sure that like most guys you will proceed to attack me and tell me how
i am paranoid and you were just being friendly. I don't care. i'm not going to engage in
dialogue with you about this. I don't have to link to you, reply to you or post your comments
and the more you relentlessly try to get my attention, the more i know my first instincts were right.” A nice open mind here, huh? Not even close to being sexist, right? I can only imagine that her first sentence indicates that she has done this to someone other guy. I guess because I have a penis, that means that I will follow every female that I come across online home and hide in their bushes and rummage through their garbage. Sounds like the logical explanation that I have now come to expect from MetsGrrl.
“I don't link new web sites or blogs.” To be fair (which I am trying to balance with being sarcastic) I do have to point out that she goes on to mention that she doesn’t believe in the “link exchange” and that it is “so 1995”, which quite frankly I “so” don’t understand. She might “so” be dating herself. (for the record, I was 14 then). I guess she doesn’t like advertising much? Maybe I should have just written my blog and hoped that someone would accidentally typed in “h - t - t - p - : - / - / - m - e - t - s - w - i - t - . - b - l -o - g - s - p - o - t - . - c - o - m”. She continues on about how I mentioned that I had started a few blogs before and that I discontinued them. What she did not know was that those were personal blogs that were written over several years (most in 2000-2003) and during a time when I really didnt do enough things to warrant a blog.
Despite my frustration and anger over the fact that a fellow Mets fan would be as harsh as she was, I tried to explain to her everything that was legit and that I enjoyed her blog. Here is my letter in it’s entirety:
"i understand your concern. and i apologize.
i honestly meant no harm. you dont sound like you trust many guys but hopefully you believe that. i do not know how that last statement is coming across since it is hard to convey mood with just text on such a small scale, but i do not intend for that to have any sort of "edge" or "bite". please take it with a grain of salt.
i have asked cerrone as well as others, including the guy over at mets walkoffs, their age and all that other stuff to. honestly. i have not asked jessica over at chicksdigthepitchersduel due in part to your less then warm reception to the question. i dont blame you for that as you did nothing wrong. it is society at hand that has dictated this sort of behavior. in hindsight, i should not have asked about a pic. i was merely trying to break down the coldness of this era that we live in. it is sort of a pet peeve of mine that we have this wonderful technolgy sitting front of us that we as a people can use to connect with each other about the things that we are passionate about (the mets) and instead, becasue of a handful of degenreates the exact opposite is achieved.
surely as a writer, you could understand that a person's age, sex, location, ethnicity, income and any number of other factors will weigh on how much stock a reader puts into trusting an author. if you were to read a book titled "Growing Up Poor in
sorry about the grammar thing, i dont really recall the details but i enjoy your blog and i dont believe i ever did anything in a malicious way. it had to have been meant as a joke. i cant be 100% on that but i really dont think that i would have attacked you and meant it.
as i said, i really do enjoy your blog and i hope you continue with the good content. i am fairly new to the blogging thing. yes, i did write other blogs that i did not keep but they were not really about anything, there by making it hard tokeep my attention. they were mostly done while i was unemployed and quite frankly, i didnt do much to warrant a blog.
i am sorry that you dont like my blog. not everyone is going to, i understand that. your dislike of it only makes me want to do better. after all, what good would any work be if not for some crtitics. i can only hope that you dont mind me still posting comments on your blog as i really do enjoy the community/family aspect of it. maybe you will still give my blog a chance and with some work, it will be good enough for you to add to your site. i apologize for assuming that all mets fans are willing to help out other mets fans as we are used to being down together. this is actually the second time that i have offended someone by assuming that and it is having me reconsider my theory.
if you would prefer that i stop visiting/posting to your blog, please say so and i will stop.
hopefully, at the very least you have read this and can see that there is a logical explanation for everything that "creeped" you out. and maybe, just maybe you will see that i am really just a rabid mets fan that wants to share his thoughts on them, and not a drooling pervert that i somehow have come across as.
i do feel a bit insulted at some of the things that you implied with your email, but as i said, that is not your fault. i can only assumed that some assholes have driven you to be "skeptical" of guy on the internet. but i pose this question, would you be as creeped out if i was a female? i openly invite you to view any and all of my information on myspace (link on my blog). it wouldnt take long to discover that i am not who you think i am.
once again, sorry for any and everything. and i hope that you do not hold a grudge.
enjoy the mets and hopefully, i will still be reading your posts come mid-october."
You would think that after my explanation, anybody with a shred of moral fiber would extend an apology or maybe a kind word or two explaining why she had her concerns but… nope. Not a single syllable. I guess she deemed me not worthy enough. Shucks.
Now that all of this out there, I will let the readers decide whether or not MetsGrrl is a stand-up, happy Mets fan or a disgruntled man-hater.
Bless her boyfriend/life partner’s soul.