Whee, Moron Mail™

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It’s been ages since I posted any Moron Mail™. I don’t get a lot of it any more, which is good. I don’t entirely understand why I used to, but I’m happy to have it stop. Perhaps part of it was that the internet was “smaller” so I was more visible. These days there are a bazillion jillion web pages out there and the morons have bigger targets, I guess.

Anyway, I manage several webrings and today I got this from a person who will remain unnamed an unidentified:

Hi, I was in the process of putting your code up on my blog sweetwaterdesignsat.blogspot.com but its messy and I have no way of altering it. It reads like this:
<< # women bloggers ? >> which looks ridiculous.
I’m unable to take out the extra figures in the html so I’ll forgo your webring..just thought I’d let you know why.

Uhm… okay.

The fact is, the symbols in the code are fairly standard for webring operators, and have been more or less conventional since at least 1998. Some of my rings do, indeed, use a more traditional “box” style code, but the ones for blogs use the smaller, single line code because 1) it’s a known convention 2) it’s meant to go on a blog, where space is usually at a premium and 3) this code won’t clash with anybody’s site deisgn. I chose this code style for several reasons, and there really is method to my madness.

Not, of course, that this person would know that. She’s the final arbiter of all things web and she knows what’s ridiculous and what’s not. I guess she showed me!

Anyway. I don’t care about her or her website. That particular ring is robust and thriving, even without her website and even with the ridiculous code. I was, I admit, somewhat taken aback when I first read the message, but the fact is, her perceptions are entirely her own, and her ignorance is entirely her own. If she wants to go, I hope she doesn’t let the door hit her in the arse on the way out.

I know this isn’t as scathing (or funny) as many of my previous Moron Mail™ entries have been. I’m not feeling especially sarcastic, just mildly annoyed and puzzled as to why someone would bother to write an email like that. It’s just a random, drive-by act of obnoxiousness, based entirely on the other person’s ignorance and passive aggression.