Oh Jar, there have been so many times that I've said to myself, "You would not be saying that to me if we were in the same room." To some asshat on the internet. It is particularly bad in Multi-player video games...
But this conversation boils down to the start of a bad joke – One asshole walks into a room full of assholes...
And yes, I too fit the category of asshole.
I agree that an introduction is the correct and polite thing to do in social situations. But, I am constantly reminded of my personal life and just how far I had fallen.
Pre-meltdown, my business partner once described me as, "The most gregarious guy he had ever met." In those heady days I would have to go to business functions, I could walk into a room full of real estate agents (assholes), politicians (assholes), and planning officials (assholes), put on a smile, walk over to one of these clumps of stinking human excrement and start talking, laughing and genuinely having fun.
Post meltdown, I was something else — I would do anything to not even go to a friend's dinner party, full of my friends. On the few occasions my girlfriend dragged me kicking and screaming to such events, I could be found standing in a corner, back to the wall, drinking one bourbon, one scotch, and a beer, eyeballing the crowd for threats, emanating menace, and flinging poo at those who dared approach me. She would introduce me to people and I would begrudgingly issue forth a few short, staccato bursts of words.
We live on a planet chalk full of broken monkeys. If PTSD isn't wrecking us, something else surely is. Most of the pitiful broken monkeys who are coming here are looking for HELP. They are covered in the shit that is their life, and are flailing about trying to get it off their fur. Some are broken in other ways. Some can read. Some cannot. Some were socially inept to begin with. Some were not. Some can string words into coherent sentences. Some cannot. Some are drunk (or otherwise impaired). Some are not. But they all have one thing in common — they are all assholes walking into a room full of assholes.
This room, and all you assholes in it, saved my f*cking life. When I first walked in, had I been met with hostility, I would have either reacted with hostility back or simply left — and that would have been the end of my story.
Maybe I'm missing something. But since I have been one of the assholes in the room, the instances of snake oil salesmen and others of their ilk, have been relatively few. When they walk in, we fling poo at them instantaneously and they leave. Then there are the girl(boy)friends, spouses, etc., who believe that they can walk in and receive help. They do need help, sure enough. But they aren't following our rules (and we be monkeys who believe in our rules). Usually, a simple, "This is a place for veterans only. The site that you want is..." is all that is necessary for them. To immediately start throwing shit their way, doesn't help them. All it does is cover them in more shit. Really the rest fall into two groups; Fellow PTSD monkeys and shit-stained pretender monkeys. IMHO, when either of these walk into the room and start ooking and eeking at us without introduction, it should be handled exactly as it would at a dinner party. Look at them and say, "Hello, I'm (state your name). And you are? Please introduce yourself to the room, let us know who, what, where and whatnot." It is really as simple and painless as that. After that, it very quickly becomes obvious what pile their shit belongs in.
