I have lurked on lots of internet message boards, so I’ve seen seen much more than my share of internet jerkoffs. I’ve seen guys (and it’s always guys— at least the ones I choose to pay most attention to, anyway) making asses of themselves in so very many baffling (to me), pointless (to me) ways, just choosing the most ridiculous (to me) hills to die on; many of them would probably embrace that dumbass military metaphor for their virtual, textual crusades.

For example: this guy who was militant in his belief that you should never edit a message after you hit the ‘Submit’ button. He would call other posters out on their edits, shaming them for going back and making adjustments. Not like they had altered the content or anything like that— everyone hates it when people go back and change their post to say something different after they are taken to task for its content —but rather just to clean up language or add an extra sentence, or even just to fix a typo. He’d chastise them— if they were dudes —for being so uptight and concerned with how they came across. His argument was that you should just let it rip, at all times, because going back and editing is a sign of weakness. That’s a paraphrase, but it accurately communicates his philosophy of posting written messages on the internet. Don’t think, just post, and damn the consequences~! He described this practice as ‘running and gunning,’ like posting on a message board is a competitive sport. You just gotta leave it all out there on the field/court/whatever. Like it’s a sign of weakness to edit yourself, because, I guess, it betrays some kind of lack of, like, confidence in your own abilities. Own everything you say, be proud of mistakes or moments where you lack clarity or fail to make your ideas clear to others, because to worry about helping others understand your intended meaning is a bitch move.

As it happened, I actually was a contributing member to the community where this dude posted, and, in a stupid fit of pique, I decided to challenge him one day on some other nonsense he was talking. His response to my challenge was mostly dismissive, saying something about how I was a good poster, but I was also a ‘sensitive AIDSfag’ who needed to stop being such a pussy. Again, I took the bait and kept going back and forth with him, proudly proclaiming that I had edited my previous post (“TWICE!”). At this point, I was pretty irritated with myself, because the exchange reminded me why I usually never participate in any online communities. I was stuck between the intense desire to show how stupid this guy is, and the understanding that that desire— the desire to ‘win’ a conversational exchange, in any context —is fucking stupid. But I had jumped into this, and now I felt trapped: I had embraced his goofy fucking posting-on-the-internet-as-a-display-of-masculine-dominance approach, and I couldn’t deny that I was fucking feeling it. Regardless of what I understood intellectually about the situation, or how much I hated myself for it, I couldn’t back down, because I needed people to see me take this chud down. There was some perfect thing I could say, some devastating reply that would leave this goofus speechless and probably drive hm from the community and force him to reconsider his entire worldview. Someone had to take out the garbage, and it might as well be me. I knew that this was all bullshit, but I imagined all the praise, all the virtual high-fives I’d receive (and humbly reject, of course) for my service, and I knew I wouldn’t stop. Fortunately, he must have thought that my little bitch-ass wasn’t worth his time, because he didn’t respond to my taunt, allowing us both to preserve what little dignity we both had left.

Anyway, I absolutely glory in the fact that the internet allows us to edit ourselves, to go back and make our pointless, dumbass missives as perfectly crafted as possible, even after we’ve hit the button and shit them out into the vast, virtual world for no one else besides us (and, possibly, a self-selecting group of jerks who are only pretending to pay attention, so that we will pretend to pay attention to their crap) to ever read or care about. I wish I could go back and edit every single interaction, real and virtual, that I’ve ever had in my whole useless life. I would lose myself in these edits, and that would be the end of me in the sense of any kind of forward motion in my life, and I would not feel one bit of regret. I would go back and try to fix it all, and my goal would be to make it perfect, no matter how many times I had to redo things. I would listen and pay attention until I understood exactly what other people were saying, what they meant, and I would revise and revise and revise my own words, expressions, thoughts, until they understood me. I wouldn’t care that this is an impossible thing to achieve. I would keep revising forever; the thrill of the impossible— of actually understanding and being understood —somehow within my reach.

*EDIT TO ADD: