"I'm constantly surprised at what gets a reaction and what doesn't," Time funnyman Joel Stein once told me. Stein said he'd written pieces he was sure were viral classics, like his impassioned account of chopping off his mullet. Then... nothing. Not even a blip on the blogosphere. "Then I'd toss off some piece about peanut allergies, and suddenly my mailbox erupts."
This week I found out exactly what Stein was talking about. In recent months I've published exclusive interviews with Adam Carolla, Dr. Drew and Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black. Each piece appeared and disappeared virtually unnoticed. Then Monday I ran a brief comic riff about returning my iMac to the Apple store, perturbed that the computer didn't come with a Windows installation CD. Suddenly my inbox exploded.
"People like you make me sick," wrote one reader. "I will send a couple of emails off to your editor to let them know just how unqualified you are." "Dear Josh," wrote another reader in 48-point balloon type, "you are an idiot." And: "Your iMac is not the problem. You are the problem. There are so many moronic flaws in your article that I am surprised that you learned to tie your shoes or feed yourself." And: "The entire Internet is laughing at you."
On the post board, readers were equally vicious—and more creative. "You don't know anything about computers, yet you write a review about one," wrote one poster. "That's like me, as a gay man, writing an article about the best birth control." Another scoffed at my title, investigative reporter: "This article's title should be changed to 'I Don't Investigate Very Well; Allow Me to Demonstrate.'" Another reader empathized with my PC-to-Mac transition. "This is JUST like my experience," he wrote. "I rode a bike for nearly 10 years. I switched to a car and it didn't work the same, so I returned it two weeks later." And my favorite: "Mr. Kors: I am ashamed that your descendants learned to walk upright and harness the power of fire." (I left it to another reader to explain that it was my ancestors, not my descendants, that harnessed fire's power.)
The vitriolic posts reminded me just how flat the print medium is, how readers so angered by my piece weren't there to see me wink at the screen, chuckle at my pseudo-serious twists of phrase. It's a phenomenon Roger Ebert, now mute, wrote about beautifully last week: "[Stressing] certain words, adding inflection, adjusting pace... these areas are almost as important as the words themselves in getting a message across." With typed words alone, wrote Ebert, people will never truly understand him.
There were a few, of course, who did pick up on my comic intentions. "I have not stopped laughing from reading this article," wrote one reader, comparing my piece to one of The Onion's deadpan classics. Another said I reminded him of one of the great comic icons, Andy Rooney. Both of us, he wrote, sounded "old, tired, cranky, out of touch, and too fundamentally lazy to use even simple tools."
"He continued on that if someone were so embarrassingly inexperienced with basic computer function... they wouldn't dare write an article under their own name, listing point-by-point how little they knew because it would obviously be career suicide. I, having worked in retail and having experienced a customer who tried to return a phone because it 'didn't have good sound,' only to realize they had been holding it upside down, have considerably less faith in humanity and think you were actually serious."
You wouldn't think a stranger's purchasing and then returning a household appliance would be enough to get a reader frothing at the mouth. But for jtillwick, that was all it took. "[You] douche!" he wrote. "You should be ashamed." Last month I purchased a blender from K-Mart, then returned it when I realized it was missing both the "Grate" and "Liquefy" buttons. Glad I never told jtillwick about that.Follow Joshua Kors on Facebook: www.facebook.com/joshua.kors
Follow Joshua Kors on Twitter: www.twitter.com/joshuakors
Ha, ha, ha, man you are thick :) What he meant was that you're even further back the evolution line than the first guys who came upright. Do you get it? First there was you and then, after many, many generations came the creatures who stood up on two feet.
So… your favorite, huh?
No wonder it's your favorite comment
No, all the reasons he offered in the original article for returning are popularly-held misbeliefs and urban legends actually proffered by customers at Apple Stores when returning, so he's yet another consumer who heard good things about Macs at some cocktail party (or from the editor who chewed him out for his lack of technical savvy compared to the kids these days), so he purchased one to solve a problem without researching whether the product WOULD in fact SOLVE his problem.
So he's now covering the tracks that exposed his lack of computer literacy and failure to investigate before purchasing.
Let's hope he investigates his reports more carefully than he researches purchases (incl. blenders).
Don't you think it's possible that that's where he GOT all those reasons?
I've had a Macbook Pro for the past 2 years as my primary home computer after using PCs for far enough back that my first one had an amber monitor and DOS. (I still have my VIC 20)
But... although I did a few years as a graphic designer using Macs at work, most of my experience has been coding, and for the first few weeks I had the Macbook at home, I seriously considered taking it back too, for the same reason Kors gave. I was more comfortable with the Windows tools I used every day. I STILL use a Windows box at work (because that's what they have), and am still more familiar with Putty and Textpad than I am with Terminal and BB Edit. I know all the little shortcuts and macros I've created over the years.
I kept the Mac because it IS a well designed machine, and it has the first touchpad I've ever actually been as comfortable with as I am with a mouse. Gestures rock.
I don't KNOW that he actually meant the previous article as satire, but I think it's a reasonable explanation.
However I got here, it was interesting to read the original piece, responses and this follow up article. The internet can be a particularly ugly place under the cloak of anonymity. But also a fascinating one. I completely understand arguing passionately for causes close to your heart. Would I do battle over the honor of my powerbook? I just might. What continues to baffle me though, are people who are nasty just for the sake of being nasty, ready to take any side of an argument for the sheer joy they seem to derive from trolling and spreading misery. I wonder what the psychology behind that particular affliction is.
Anyway, regardless, thanks for posting the It Gets Better vid at the bottom of your article. Even if the connecting thread was gossamer thin, I don't really care. The more people that see the message of Dan Savage's heartfelt project the better, and Adam Lambert's message is particularly poignant yet empowering.
So I guess there's no reason you can't use both Windows and Mac. I'm not a Mac fanboy, but I do appreciate the great quality and construction of the MacBook - especially its lightness compared to, say, my wife's Toshiba laptop, which can actually cut off the circulation in my legs. To each his own.
As to why people are rude when have anonymity, that's easier: because they can be.
If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
For if the author of the original article can trot out the satire defense, then why cannot all the so-called "Mac vitriolic fanboys" do the same (where dismissing anyone over the age of 18 as a 'boy' is insulting, FWIW)?
Just another example of how some can rail against the insensitivity of others, without realizing how their poor choice of words and erroneous facts are equally as offensive to others.
You have to justify that. Somehow. Cognitive dissonance. An extra $200, OK. I like it. Double the price? This must be the best thing in the world, and I'll defend it as such. I honestly think that's what takes a disagreement about preference into the realm of vicious attack. Seriously. Everybody says Linux sucks, but you're all misinformed, and I don't really care what you think. See. No hatred. I saved $1000+. No viruses. Free software. Most things "just work". I'm happy. I don't even have to say that macs are bad. They're not. I just have to imply they're really overpriced and I get dismissed at best, or a serious angry debate at worst. In person too.
If a user is more tech savvy, I agree that they can save a lot of money and buy a PC then get rid of Windows and use Linux and have most things "just work" without the virus issues. Clearly, with this approach you can save money. However, I don't agree the macs are "really" overpriced. No point in debating facts and figures on this, there is plenty of evidence to back me up.
You condemn others for writing vitriolic things about you, but you yourself wrote something vitriolic.
I don't want to presume I understand your reaction, Mr Chan. Just please reassure me it's not an emotional reaction to criticism of an inanimate tool.
To a certain degree, the writer has blamed the readers for not assuming his writing was satire (reading the original I don't think it was... It was attempting to be humorous) rarely a useful tactic. However, this response article clearly goes on to state the premise of the original was true - he bought a computer, decided he didn't like it, and returned it. He used fact based or joking (both?) assertions to explain his conclusions and most of the readers didn't see the joke (if it was in fact a joke) and responded to the statements as if they were decriptively accurate. They sought to "explain" to the author the error of his ways, and in some cases to insult him for his apparent stupidity. It appears the author is not interested in either sort of response.
As you say, I assume Mr. Kors' experience is factual. As we all know, different strokes for different folks. I personally have a totally different and opposite set of experiences.
Why do people attack through anonymous words on the net? Insecurity mostly. By being nasty and vicious with their words they feel powerful. Whereas in their normal lives they are not. Cruelty is usually bred from being the victim; those comments most heinous were probably from people subjugated and oppressed and lashing out is their only way of redeeming themselves in their own eyes.
It's them not you.
It really is a "less filling" vs. "more taste" situation. I tend to believe the masses though - Mac lost in the marketplace. Period.
Great satire - too bad people need to attack your writing without having clue 1.
I don't agree that Mac vs PC is like "Tastes Great" - "Less Filling", or Coke vs Pepsi, but okay, most people get the analogy. I do encourage you not to follow the masses, I mean that in the general sense not as it relates PCs or Macs. But, do what works for you, without needing to assert that your choices are right for anyone else but you.