The Rant Gets Personal

by A. E. O'Neill

[Originally published August 13, 1999]

Every day, technology is giving us new ways to exercise our inner bitch. It's a basic human equation that the more removed from one another we become, the easier it is to speak our minds, sometimes violently, sometimes with faltering self-censorship. After two decades of "psycho-babble" telling us not to keep our feelings bottled up, Type As now have endless forums to vent their petty annoyances.

One of these is gentlehints.com, a site that, for $12US, allows you to send a friend, coworker or relative stranger a nice, anonymous message about something too sensitive to be brought up in conversation (an appropriate "gift" will be included, such as a bar of soap for the overly perfumed or an egg timer for the overly talkative).

This buffer from human contact is supposed to take the sting out of receiving a personal assault on one's hygiene or other annoying habit.

In reality, anyone receiving one of these messages would take the fact that someone went out of their way to pay for the right to insult them from afar as an electronic slap in the face rather than a kind and "gentle" hint. If only this had applications in the real world. Note to the guy with the "Lost Parakeet" sign up on Beach Avenue: WAKE UP, your budgie's Meow Mix.

For those who prefer their rage on the more impotent side, there's Kvetch.com, a brilliantly designed little site that gets your juices flowing the moment you enter with the taunt, "It's another beautiful summer day. Aren't you glad you're at work?" The premise here is simple: surf the kvetches or add a kvetch of your own. Keep hitting the "Gimme another kvetch" button, or wait 20 seconds for the page to refresh and mini-rants on work, love, traffic, politics, you-name-it blow by at what passes for lightening speed on the internet.

My warning: It's addictive.

You start reading these little postings, from the simple ("Bring my damn stapler back, you self-serving ass!") to the quasi-poetic: ("no sleep, little recognition, highs and lows, sexual dysfunction"), and you find it's hard to stop reading. Eventually something like this one: "OPTIMISM: The only thing that keeps you from being naked on the roof with a deer rifle in your hands," makes you think maybe the only thing preventing all these victims of Cage Rage from going day trader isn't optimism, it's laziness...the same laziness that prevents us from getting off our asses and finding a way to tell that coworker to use some Arrid Extra Dry or straightening out in a face-to-face or voice-to-receiver session an argument that can escalate in email for days.

Maybe it's a trickle-up karmic side effect, but the homeless seem to be getting nicer (could be it's just Vancouver where "spare a smile?" has become as common as a request for cash); I was on my way home from work the other day and this homeless guy walks by and reaches out to offer me a bite of his sandwich. Automatically, absurdly, I found myself smiling a modest "no thank you." It didn't even occur to me to mutter "freak" under my breath until I was a few paces away.