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Henry was 78 years old.
He had just lost his wife to a debilitating illness.
He had stood by her side until her very last day. She was all he had; they spent most their lives for one another, the pain of childlessness lurking deep in their hearts.
Henry now would prepare his own coffee and breakfast, make his own lunch, and cook his own dinner, wash his own dishes, and wash his own cloths. Alone.
He began once again to tend the garden. But his drive had waned, so had his strength.
So he set out one day, and purchased a small laptop with his meager savings. And to distract from his sorrow, he began to surf the web.
Then he came upon a Chat Room, where for the first time he found friends. His heart was no longer completely void.
But slowly he realized that his posts were going un-replied.
Then one day, someone posted: “Get a life, old man”
Then Henry looked at his life, and there was a hollow pain in his heart. He began to cry. He began to cry of all the pain he had endured. Until he sat stooped over in his rocking-chair. Dead.
This story is not true. But it could be.
Other chat rooms online are scattered with personal slurs.
This is what makes the CR different.
We have heated arguments, we troll, we poke fun, but we cannot make personal insults.
Wow! Pretty powerful, playtime. +100000
It really bothers me when I read some of the comments here. You never know what impact it can have on someone. Just because we are anonymous (most of us, anyway) doesn’t mean we don’t have feelings. It’s just as much of an aveira to hurt someone here as it is in person.
Other chat rooms online are scattered with personal slurs.
This is what makes the CR different.
m’heicha teisi we are different?
We have heated arguments, we troll, we poke fun, but we cannot make personal insults.
We don’t troll.
Real nice, go playtime!!
“We don’t troll” meheicha teissy we don’t troll
ITA. We can always express a different opinion, but the poster with whom we disagree should never be disrespected and belittled.
Wow playtime!
very impressive playtime a real home run!
playtime – Bob was a 14 year old boy who was bored once. He had a family, people in his class that he could be socialising with, hobbies with which he could occupy himself with. Instead he bought himself a laptop and, to assuage his boredom, he started to surf the web. He found a chat room and starting posting. Some of what he posted was fine but some of it was simply “hello, I’m bored”. He started to realise that a lot of the time when he said ‘I’m bored’ no-one would bother to reply. He started a club on the chat room but didn’t realise that it wasn’t necessarily something people would be interested in. Nevertheless he pushed the club in people’s faces at every opportunity to try and get people to join. Soon this became a little bit annoying. One day someone told him that it had become a little bit annoying and that maybe he could find some more constructive uses for some of his time. He thought about it and went out to meet up with some guys from his class who he found were actually quite cool and interesting people to be around. He picked up some of his old hobbies and realised that they were fun and useful. He even put a bit of time aside each day to just sit and meditate. After a few months he realised that he was now a more accomplished and emotionally stable person with a social life, interests and skills and that his relationship with his family had improved measurably.
This isn’t true. But it could be.
See, I can do it too.
P.S. I know it happens in stories a lot, but you can’t actually die from getting too upset.
Just my happence: +1000000
An in-joke for the Discworlders: oneoutofthree ain’t bad…
George was a nice guy. He wasn’t, however, perfect.
George found out about a job opening at a company he really wanted to work for. Before sending his CV he asked an obnoxious English teacher he knew to proofread it. The teacher pointed out some mistakes. George corrected the CV and sent it off. George was very happy he got called in for an interview. The manager told him how impressed he was with George’s CV. He said since so many people communicate in text-speak, he rarely received a CV without errors. George’s was one of just a handful out of hundreds. Unfortunately, the interview didn’t go well. The manager was surprised that someone who submitted such a perfect CV couldn’t speak properly. He told George he was sorry, but communication was very important in this job. He needed someone who could speak clearly and correctly.
George didn’t get the job. It was then he realized that he was missing an important life skill. Someone had tried to help him, but he was too stubborn to see it.
This isn’t true. But it could be.
I noticed a typo in oneoutofthree’s comment on j m h’s post. I would like to offer a correction:
Just my hapence: +1000000000000
Finally, someone said just what was necessary.
And said it beautifully.
jmh – He had a family, people in his class that he could be socialising with, hobbies with which he could occupy himself with.
not disagreeing with you in your theory, but you start with a very incorrect premise that actually is the basis for the rest of the story not being feasible.
Syag – And playtime’s premise was correct?!It’s called a hypothetical situation and it’s my hypothetical situation so I can write it however I see fit. My point was exactly that, you can’t go around making up stories to try and make a point because they are entirely arbitrary and can only say the thing you want them to say. So playtime’s story ended badly because he wanted it to and mine ended well because I wanted it to.
Okay, I have one:
Buddy used to visit a chat room. Because Buddy is very sensitive, he always noticed the small handful of posters who were nasty, self-serving and condescending. There was also a poster or two who were very in-your-face and arrogant, thinking that every thread they wrote was just what we’d all been waiting for. While most people on the site were polite and caring, these posters were either ignored or reprimanded in light and rare postings. Because they didn’t respond well to reprimand, people generally seemed to work around them.
One day another in-your-face poster started posting. This poster was neither rude nor arrogent but many found the posts annoying. Because this poster was obviously young, the other posters who were always quiet for the nasty and rude posters, seemed to feel they had a green light to put this poster in his place. One poster chose a nasty and condescending way to “politely” reprimand, and the floodgates opened. Even those who normally don’t condone this type of rudeness seem to be justifying the posters rudeness. Buddy, who silently found this poster annoying, was surprised at the contrast between these different responses. He discussed this contrast with a psychologist friend and they wondered whether this was “herd mentality”, “justified bullying”, or just bad middos.
JMH
Fantastic! nailed it +10000000000
haifa girl
well done you too made me laugh
Jmh- I was not under the impression your story was a response to playtime’s. His post was not considered when I commented.
To continue Syag’s story…
Shortly afterwards Buddy met Glod Glodsson and Lias Bluestone and went out and made Music with Rocks In.
playtime – A few points.
1. Never refer to yourself in the third person. You say I “proved the OP’s point” when you yourself are the OP. I know you probably didn’t mean it this way but referring to yourself in the third person can come across as a bit self-centred.
2. Actually the point disproves itself, and that is what I was showing. Saying “we just don’t know” opens itself up to infinite possibilities and so to assume any one of them because “we just don’t know” is pointless and logically incorrect as 3 will show.
3. There is a little thing in mathematics called “probability”. It means that out of the infinite “we just don’t know”s we can say that some are more likely than others. This is always contextual, I.e. given the information we have at hand we can say that, for example, it is unlikely that anyone who posts on the CR is a Zen Buddhist. Of course “we just don’t know” for sure (in an anonymous environment anyone could be anyone or, indeed, anything) but it is highly improbable. Although almost everyone here in the CR is anonymous it is quite easy to get a fairly good idea of people’s character, background etc. In other words we don’t know but we can guess quite accurately.
4. In your story gufa, if Henry is on the chat room to ease his loneliness presumably he has made his life-story known to others on that chat room (otherwise the object of the exercise is defeated) making it highly unlikely that the people there “just don’t know”. In other words, you cannot simply make a crude representation of a story and put it in front of us and say “here, look at this because it shows I’m right” when in fact all it really shows is that you wrote a story.
OP means opening post.
The Torah requires us to use more than the laws of probability to govern our dealings with and responses to people.
Syag – I know what OP stands for, but it was by playtime hence my point.
playtime – No I wasn’t trying to connect anything to anything. That was the point. I know the Henry story wasn’t true; I think I mentioned several times that you made it up. Which, again, was my point.
BTW, thanks for all the sarcasm.
I’m pretty sure OP means “original poster” not “original post”, hence referring to the person who posted the first comment in the thread. For example, you might say “I agree with the OP” meaning you agree with the person who started the thread, not that you agree with the opening post in the thread (although both are probably true).
JMH pardon my ignorance but except for the typo on the double “P” I fail to see what was “off”. I checked out the “CR Discworlders Club” but not exactly “getting it”…
oneoutofthree – It was a contribution to the Discworld reference game, being that “one out of three ain’t bad” is a quote from a book from the series (to whit, Soul Music).
Got it 🙂 guess I’m not that literature savvy… oh well
Jewishfeminist- I’ve seen it both ways and I thought it was pretty obvious that he meant it as post and not poster. But, as they say, whatever . . .
OP
abbreviation
noun:
(on Internet forums, message boards, comment pages, etc.) original post (or poster).
JMH sorry to be the sour note on this creative and thoughtful thread, but your (tongue in cheek?) statement that you can die of being too unhappy is just false. Hazal were not kidding when they equated humiliation with bloodshed. The news is full of tragic cases, the OTDs are spiritually dead of heartbreak, and the pity Yiddish expression,” men starb nit fun hunger, men strabst fun busha” is plainly real.
True, but not instantly.
Sometimes instantly. Once a two-L llama was shot and his wife died of grief on the spot.
The OP’s story is obviously false.
I have a life.
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