One of the most interesting things about the internet is the sheer amount of drama it generates. While all of this is quite hilarious, it makes me wonder how people can get so emotionally wound up by things people say on the internet. Crying over what some idiot writes in an e-mail, or IM, or forum post is just plain retarded, because it's just some guy. Usually, the grieving process involves various angry e-mails, IMs to friends with quotes of what "the insensitive jerk" said, LJ posts with the names changed to creative titles like "person A", and cries for attention on public forums. It's absolutely incredible the amount of energy people spend this way. Perhaps the best way to illustrate the absurdity of this is to make a real-world comparison.

Bob, an everday office peon drives home from a long day at work, when suddenly he is cut off on the freeway. And he sees that it is Mike, from accounting! Bob, hurt so deeply inside by his co-worker's insensitive actions, quickly drives home and then cries for hours into his pillow. His sadness quickly turns to anger and a desire for pity, so he crafts 200 passive-aggressive post-it notes that he'll attach all over Mike's cubicle in the morning before work. Still not satisfied, Bob calls everyone he has in his address book, playing up the situation as a battle of good versus evil, that jerk Mike doing this horrible thing even though Bob has never done anything to Mike before. He absorbs the awkward sympathy from his friends, who don't really care but want to at least appear like good people, so they pretend to feel just awful about Bob's situation. All of these people will be buying caller ID the next day. As he hangs up the phone, Bob looks out the window and sees his neighbors sitting down for dinner. Oh boy, an audience! As the loving wife passes the mashed potatoes to her daughter, a mysterious stranger busts through the kitchen door, sobbing widly about a highway and accounting. He throws himself on their table, sobbing heavily and covering himself with their dinner. This lunatic's sobbing becomes so heavy that he proceedes to throw up all over their kitchen and inside their turkey, garbling something that sounds like "Ike" and "asshole" between vomits. The father of the household, realizing that they're dealing with a crazy person, tries to talk him down, much like attempting communication with a schizophrenic in the middle of a psychotic episode, while the mother makes a signal to her 8 year old son to call 9-1-1. In about 10 minutes, the family has convinced Bob that they are sympathetic to his problem, until the swat team arrives and fills him with enough tranqs to drop an elephant. Shortly before being shoved into the padded van, he shouts "Mike runied my life!", followed by a final vomit that lasts about 2 minutes, a new world record. The next day, the family sells their house and moves away, closing this dark chapter in their lives forever. And in the end, it wasn't even Mike who cut him off. It was John from procurement.

So next time you see someone on LiveJournal or on your favorite forum being a drama whore, remember the story of Bob.