The Comments I Get to include in the newsletters are often so hilarious, they sometimes beat out the stories in entertainment value. This week that obliviot would be Joe in Birmingham, England:
“This site steals all its story’s [sic] from the main stream [sic] media!” he posted. “He just rewrites other peoples [sic] work and has the cheek to charge people for it.”
Why that’s just shocking! A news commentary site that summarizes and comments on “legitimate, mainstream news” actually …uh… does just that? What a legitimate complaint …from someone who didn’t pay a cent. But indeed thousands happily pay to get more of it every week. If they didn’t get value, they wouldn’t pay, would they, Joe?
Not to mention there are thousands of stories on the site that he can read for free. There’s no paywall whatever. Hell, there aren’t even ads!
But That’s Not Even the Hilarious Part
The best part is that Joe signed his comment with the name “Judgement,” and his location as “earth” (and, of course, used a fake email address), because he doesn’t have the cojones to put his real name on his opinions, like I do.
Yet… if he didn’t sign his name, how do I know it? Because three minutes before he made that comment on the announcement in my blog that I was returning the True Stella Awards cases back to the Stella web site (I removed them years ago), he had left another comment with his real name, location, and email address. Slap … his … forehead!
Joe’s first comment was on the same page, to recite the “true facts” of the original lawsuit filed by Stella Liebeck. The problem: he not only got several of the “facts” wrong, I already covered Stella’s case in detail on the site years and years ago, with all the facts (from both sides of the argument; he conveniently neglected to note there were two sides in the case).
I can hear it now: “Wait… you didn’t publish my comment?! I’m gonna sue you!”
His second comment ended with a threat of a criminal nature, which (if I thought he had any actual ability to carry out) would definitely arouse the interest of the FBI if he was in the U.S., and maybe even though he’s not. The best part? I’d be able to give investigators his surname, too, since it’s part of his email address. D’oh!
Then It Gets Obliviotic
The biggest eye-roller of this whole thing is that Joe didn’t stop to think that of course web sites log every visit, recording the I.P. address of the visitor, so it’s extremely easy to put the two comments together even if they weren’t just 3 minutes apart.
Seems Joe gets his Internet connection from EE Limited, part of British Telecom. Big companies don’t think too kindly of customers using their facilities to make criminal threats. If the FBI didn’t care (or are too overworked to deal with a flea like Joe), I’ll bet British Telecom would immediately yank his access for violation of their terms of service, which no doubt prohibits criminal activity.
But then, “not thinking” is almost certainly Joe’s life-long M.O. He’s the type that blames others for their own shortcomings. They “think” it’s someone else’s fault they don’t have a job (or have a lousy one). They “think” it’s someone else’s fault that they didn’t finish school. And they definitely “think” it’s someone else’s fault that they don’t have a girlfriend — surely it has nothing whatever to do with having to live in his parent’s basement.
So as it usual comes down to the same thing that’s behind most of the This is True stories in general: they didn’t think.
And that’s what makes this not just a comedy, but a comedic tragedy.
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I’d love to see him try to do your job for a week. Not just the work of researching the news, but editing it for publication. I mean, the guy is zero for two in writing sentences using proper English already.
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What… you think he could hold a job for a WEEK?! 😀 -rc
Fair point.
I agree. When I had the time for premium, I had trouble with just the tagline challenge once a month, after Randy did all the rest….
Randy’s job wouldn’t be too hard. Surely all you would need is a subscription to pretty much every Florida news service and there would be plenty of content.
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FINDING the stories is the easy part. -rc
Why do I really wish you had published Joe’s surname? I feel like he needs his own personal flamer… Not that I would do such a thing!
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Well… how about for money? 😉 -rc
As a long term paid subscriber to This is True (who is, admittedly, way behind in his reading of the newsletter), I put it to you that the time and effort Randy spends scouring “the main stream [sic] media” for these fabulous stories, compiling them into a newsletter, maintaining his website, and many other ‘behind the scenes’ activities, has to be worth financial compensation. I regret not a single penny of the fees I have paid to This is True. I wonder how many hours a week Big Bad Joe works for free.
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I checked: you’ve been paying for coming up on 4 years now — and I appreciate your support! -rc
After 11 years of getting This is True I am shocked [Shocked!] that Randy doesn’t cover each of these stories personally!
If only you were more honest about it Randy! I mean if you’re going to summarize a news story you should at LEAST put the initials of the person doing the summarizing and the source. I would recommend putting something like this at the end of your summaries (RC/New York Times).
You have the audacity to curate and scour multiple news sources for the stories that make me laugh, shake my head or otherwise entertain me and convinced me to voluntarily pay for it for eleven years!
I’m tempted to protest by signing up another year, but I’m already on auto-renew so that won’t work, but I’ll figure out some way to protest this! As for Joe, he’s gotten more attention than he deserves already.
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Pointing fingers and laughing isn’t attention, per se…. -rc
I believe my friend, a Deputy Chief Superintendent at the Metropolitan Police, has retired. He laughed when I sent him a scam email which gave a London address and asked if he would put something down at the bookie on an over/under how long he thought the police would knock on his door.
To quote Bugs Bunny, “What a Maroon!”
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Bugs was a sage. -rc
As Worf would put it: what a waste of skin.
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😀 -rc
As Basil Fawlty would put it: You are a waste of space.
Are you sure Joe isn’t from Florida?
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Sadly, there are obliviots everywhere. -rc
This is True!
Just curious: can you tell if he subscribed to get notifications of replies to his comment? I mean the first one with his real address, of course, obviously not the one with his fake address. I’m wondering the odds that he’ll see this page
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That’s actually a very interesting question — and in fact I did think to check. But no, he didn’t, and he’s not a newsletter subscriber either. He wasn’t interested in an actual dialogue, he just wanted to jump into the middle of a conversation to spout his “knowledge”… and completely failed at even that. I’d guess the odds of him checking back and finding this page is less than 5 percent, and only that high because whoever shared the link to that page that attracted Joe in the first place might recognize his semi-literate style and point him here. -rc
I’m not into Virtue-signalling, or for apologising for other’s misdemeanours.
In this case, as a UK citizen, I am going to make an exception, and apologise for this fellows oblivdiocy. We’re not all that stupid this side of the pond!
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No worries: there are obliviots in every region/state/country — and, thankfully, brilliant people in every region/state/country. -rc
As a longtime Premium subscriber, you give me my money’s worth and then some. Joe shouldn’t be leaving criticisms; he should, instead, ask for and pay for an apprenticeship!
I remember getting those Current Events assignments in elementary/middle school. Most of my classmates would just bring in “the” big article from the Virginian Pilot, which was our local newspaper, and almost always from the issue that had been published the day before. I was the one that was constantly bringing in articles off the internet and able to explain my thoughts on them.
I never told my teachers that I found all of these articles because my dad shared his copies of This Is True with me. I’d read True, pick my favorite story, and track down the original article at the source. Which, I’m sure, is one of the reasons you cite your sources! Then I’d read the full article and formulate my own thoughts. I know there was at least one case where I read your summary, laughed, laughed harder at your tagline, then read the original article and came away with a completely different take on it than you had. (I think I almost wrote to you, but chickened out on the grounds that you were a Professional and I was ten and had no self-esteem, so I assumed that you’d either ignore my letter or laugh at my pathetic attempt to sound like I knew what I was talking about.)
“Joe” is the kind of obliviot that makes me wonder how he manages to fit his head and the stick up his rear end at the same time.
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I would have loved it if you had written me at 10 to say you looked up the story, and got something different out of it. (Of course, every story has MANY different angles to explore!) My goal is to get people to think more, and clearly you did. And, it seems, you still do! -rc