Why the nasty replies?

Hey, I want a mac, but they are so spendy.

 

Oh no, now begins the PC vs. Mac argument.

 

Bill Gates Goes to Heaven

Bill Gates died and, much to everyone's surprise, went to Heaven. When he got there, he had to wait in the reception area.


Heaven's reception area was the size of Massachusetts. There were literally millions of people milling about, living in tents with nothing to do all day. Food and water were being distributed from the backs of trucks, while staffers with clipboards slowly worked their way through the crowd. Booze and drugs were being passed around.

Fights were commonplace. Sanitation conditions were appalling. All in all, the scene looked like Woodstock gone metastatic.

Bill lived in a tent for three weeks until, finally, one of the staffers approached him. The staffer was a young man in his late teens, face scarred with acne. He was wearing a blue T-shirt with the words TEAM PETER emblazoned on it in large yellow lettering.

"Hello," said the staffer in a bored voice that could have been the voice of any clerk in any overgrown bureaucracy. "My name is Gabriel and I'll be your induction coordinator." Bill started to ask a question, but Gabriel interrupted him. "No, I'm not the Archangel Gabriel. I'm just a guy from Philadelphia named Gabriel who died in a car wreck at the age of 17. Now give me your name, last name first, unless you were Chinese in which case it's first name first."

"Gates, Bill." Gabriel started searching though the sheaf of papers on his clipboard, looking for Bill's Record of Earthly Works. "What's going on here?" asked Bill. "Why are all these people here? Where's Saint Peter? Where are the Pearly Gates?"

Gabriel ignored the questions until he located Bill's records. Then Gabriel looked up in surprise. "It says here that you were the president of a large software company. Is that right?"

'Yes."

"Well then, do the math chip-head! When this Saint Peter business started, it was an easy gig. Only a hundred or so people died every day, and Peter could handle it all by himself, no problem. But now there are over five billion people on earth. Jesus, when God said to 'go forth and multiply,' he didn't say 'like rabbits!' With that large a population, ten thousand people die every hour. Over a quarter million people a day. Do you think Peter can meet them all personally?"

"I guess not."

'You guess right. So Peter had to franchise the operation. Now, Peter is the CEO of Team Peter Enterprises, Inc. He just sits in the corporate headquarters and sets policy. Franchisees like me handle the actual inductions." Gabriel looked though his paperwork some more, and then continued. "Your paperwork seems to be in order. And with a background like yours, you'll be getting a plum job assignment."

"Job assignment?"

"Of course. Did you expect to spend the rest of eternity sitting on your nice person and drinking ambrosia? Heaven is a big operation. You have to pull your weight around here!" Gabriel took out a triplicate form, had Bill sign at the bottom, and then tore out the middle copy and handed it to Bill.

"Take this down to induction center #23 and meet up with your occupational orientator. His name is Abraham -Bill started to ask a question, but Gabriel interrupted him. "No, he's not *that* Abraham."

Bill walked down a muddy trail for ten miles until he came to induction center #23. He met with Abraham after a mere six-hour wait.

"Heaven is centuries behind in building its data processing infrastructure," explained Abraham. "As you've seen, we're still doing everything on paper. It takes us a week just to process new entries." "I had to wait *three* weeks," said Bill. Abraham stared at Bill angrily, and Bill realized that he'd made a mistake. Even in Heaven, it's best not to contradict a bureaucrat. "Well," Bill offered, "maybe that Bosnia thing has you guys backed up."

Abraham's look of anger faded to mere annoyance. "Your job will be to supervise Heaven's new data processing center. We're building the largest computing facility in creation. Half a million computers connected by a multi-segment fiber optic network, all running into a back-end server network with a thousand CPUs on a gigabit channel. Fully fault tolerant. Fully distributed processing. The works."

Bill could barely contain his excitement. "Wow! What a great job!

This is really Heaven!"

"We're just finishing construction, and we'll be starting operations soon. Would you like to go see the center now?"

'You bet!"

Abraham and Bill caught the shuttle bus and went to Heaven's new data processing center. It was a truly huge facility, a hundred times bigger than the Astrodome. Workmen were crawling all over the place, getting the miles of fiber optic cables properly installed. But the center was dominated by the computers. Half a million computers, arranged neatly row-by-row, half a million ....

....... Macintoshes

....... all running Claris software! Not a PC in sight! Not a single byte of Microsoft code!

The thought of spending the rest of eternity using products that he had spent his whole life working to destroy was too much for Bill. "What about PCs???" he exclaimed. "What about Windows??? What about Excel??? What about Word???"

'You're forgetting something," said Abraham. "What's that?" asked Bill plaintively. "This is Heaven," explained Abraham. "We need a computer system that's heavenly to use. If you want to build a data processing center based on PCs running Windows, then ....
..... GO TO HELL!"

 

Exactly! It's always good to have a large, bald-headed friend with a bad temper.



Tom

 

OP, there have been quite a few threads over the years about the topic you raised, and about a gazillion threads about putting in a brace. Good luck with the search feature, which can be pretty bloody useless at times.

I saw a thread headline not too long (a few days ?) ago about cross-winds. I don't know if it was yours and did not open it, but I remember thinking the wording was provocative. I know some people think they have to spice up the thread headline to encourage readership; for for me at least, it is a turn-off and I tend to just skip the thread. Others might be inclined to acerbity or worse.

 

Use Google; it works well.

Tom

 

Yep. ^
Know the trick to search by website, in the comfort of your Google searchbox ?

 

Yep. Add siteriuschat.com to the query.

 

Let me preface everything with something that has already been said by numerous people. I think overall this is one of the better, more consistently reasonable forums of any type that I have witnessed and/or participated in. There are other websites and forums that I frequent and participate in, on various topics but as far as car ownership goes, especially Prius, Prius Chat is one of the few I'd define as an actual asset to any potential owner and/or owner.

As far as why the Nasty Responses, I think you have various psychologies that come into play. I've been around this forum long enough to have noticed that yes, sometimes Newbies will come in and evidently without doing much or any search at all, ask an often asked question. I think some veterans, or regulars get tired of hearing or answering the same questions over and over, and the temptation is to reply in a "snarky" or sarcastic manner.

The other more complicated psychology is born out of what actually makes this forum such a good place. It's love. A lot of the posters here LOVE their Prius. Sometimes that love, translates into something that is less than "Harmony between Man, Nature and Machine" manifesting in responses. It can get Nasty. I have started threads in earnest, but threads dealing with doubts or criticisms of The Prius, and when doing so, I expectedly get a percentage of "negative responses". In an effort to not get too defensive myself, I remind myself that people are vested into their automobiles on many levels. Financial, Emotional, Ego, Intellect, all get tied into the automobiles we choose to own and drive. This is magnified in a forum like this.

So whether it's the OP of this thread, asking about highway stability issues while driving a Prius, and/or it's a thread of mine communicating recent doubts about the 2010 Prius, since we are dealing with something that represents so many things to so many people, sometimes...and only sometimes, responses can become overly zealous. To be honest, that happens in Prius Chat or almost any open forum, whether your discussing a Toyota Prius and/or the local sports team. I'm as guilty as anyone, as much as I try to not take things too seriously, I find myself defending my posts or threads with an equal defensiveness. If I feel someone has misunderstood me, or misread my post, or unfairly accused me a negative motive, my intellect tells me to ignore it, but often my emotions sucker me into what is usually a futile attempt at defending my post or thread.

So again, this is a great forum. IMO way ahead of the usual curve for reasonable, supportive and understanding and comprehensive discussion and information. But like anything made up of "humans" it's not going to be perfect. Sometimes, and I certainly include myself within this definition, sometimes when things get "nasty", I think the best thing we can do is simply not take things so seriously. Communication should be and is, at least a two way street. You're never going to please everyone in every way you pose questions, criticism or doubts, and you're not going to please everyone in every way you present answers, affirmation and support.

 

+1

But....

There's also quite a bit of Prius-is-my-personal-identity-and-is-therefore-perfect aggressiveness too. Look at how many put-down threads there are regarding the Insight - it's a little disappointing to see how many people don't understand the intent of a stiff suspension. Honestly, a lot of people seem desperate to be part of the "winning team":
http://priuschat.com/forums/newbie-forum/70402-dumped-insight-after-3-months-prius.html

and god forbid you want modify your car in a way that some individuals don't agree with:

http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-prius-modifications/39810-fart-can-has-arrived.html

or you post your frustrations:

http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-prius-main-forum/60934-how-toyota-deals-lemons-badly.html

There's a reason some members are no longer active.

 

As a moderator of another large forum, I am quite aware that newbies, as well as oldtimers, sometimes need to be shaken into reality. An occasional barb or challenge can be quite instructional. Posters do occassionaly get and/or act offended when, in fact, they are frequently looking for more off topic conversation.

 

Another moderator of another forum concurring with above statement.

It's amazing when members that are consistently nasty resent being called out on it.

 

This nasty reply thread reminds me of some of our corporate engineers. They love to hide behind their email identities and send out nastigrams and try to intimidate. I develop mental pictures of what these people look like from emails and phone calls.

It seems that the nastiest ones turn out to be the meekest and mildest when you meet them in person. They would never say the same things to you face-to-face.

 

Oh, I agree with this, but that's part of what I mean when I say people become vested on many levels with the automobile they own and purchase. There is Ego involved, there is a varying degree of personal identity.

I just assume that if I'm posting something that is reflecting a doubt or is critical of The Prius, that I'm going to get a percentage of feedback that will absolutely NOT accepted it, regardless of how carefully, or rationally or even humorously, I try to present it. That's fine. This forum is frequented by owners and enthusiasts, and some are more willing than others to evalutate criticism.

Even in light of what could be considered a "Prius Negative" post, I'm more impressed with the sheer number of posters that are willing to read, evaluate and offer a reasonable opinion than what really is a few number that want me to consume fecal matter and end my physical existence.

 

Revisiting this article, it reminded me of this thread, a source of "nasty replies" against the 2010 Prius:

Review: 2010 Toyota Prius | The Truth About Cars

This review of the 2010 Prius contains a great number of quotable negatives. Best of all, the article author actually got in the car long enough to write up his "nasty replies" against the Prius. No originality is needed, just copy and paste Jay Shoemaker's June 8, 2009 review.

Bob Wilson