Despite our best efforts to dissuade you, many of you have still decided to write to us with your problems, complaints and crises of the moment. We don't have a trained therapist on staff, and this isn't "Dear F*ckin' Abbey", but we DO have Bonnie, who has graciously volunteered her time and heartless perspectives in order to minister to (or macerate) the misguided, with "Dear Fuckin' Bon..."

June 24, 2001

From the everlasting "I don't get it!" files...

Dear Fuckin'Bon,

What would you do if you were moderator of a BBS and some sappy and very jealous bitch did nothing but flame you over every moderating decision you made?

I deleted all of her posts in order to show her that I wouldn't stand for that kind of thing and as such was dismissed for being petty.

It's not just fair. Like for instance this cow insisted that I when I moved her post to the correct forum I should've used cut and paste to leave the old thread behind and in order to create a new one for her and even went so far as to insist that the word "complaints" should have an apostrophe.

Then there was this other egotist that kept telling me that I my decisions would lead to everyone hating me and then even went so far as to tell me: "I told you so", after my dismissal.

So in the end I told them that I thought that either this sappy mole or egotistical wanker would make the perfect replacement for me and have such have gone off to persue other things. The thing was though they thought I was being nice in having chosen such candidates as my replacement.

Surely such stupidity has never before been so rampant as what it is on the BBS at Marilyn-Manson.com.

Oh, I'm dead sure it's been more rampant, so if that is your only frame of reference, you may want to broaden your horizons a tad.

What I am needing right now is for someone to reaffirm for me that I acted maturely and not just as a heartless bitch,

(And with a final grand flourish s/he demonstrates s/he didn't get "Heartless Bitch" at all.)

for such has been the criticism
that I have begun to doubt myself.

Pestilence.

Dear Pestilence,
(where is ol' Disease hanging out these days? Did you two break up?)

Let's see. In any given forum, there are rules of conduct for all posters. There are also TOS (terms of service) that must be followed by all, and it seems obvious that there would be a code of conduct for anyone chosen to moderate a forum.

Since forum participants are theoretically coming from all over the world; different people, different cultures, different races and societies, it seems like common sense that there will *always* be disagreements, differing opinions, and even occasional hostility.

If one takes on the responsibility to moderate, you should be prepared not only for shining happy people holding cyberhands, but for criticism- constructive and otherwise-, suggestions from the masses, and disagreements, both with your opinions and with how you choose to do things. By "being prepared" I mean that you should take them with good grace and as many grains of salt as necessary, and you should have the perspective and maturity to deal calmly and peacefully with these things for the greater good of the forum. This means not having a hissy fit and deleting all of someone's posts because you don't like them, their opinions or their suggestions. If you cannot do that, it would seem that you are most likely lacking common sense, maturity, or intelligence.

So you tell me, Pestilence, where did you go wrong?

bon