Goodbye, Cruel World! Part the Second

Yesterday, we left off just over six minutes into the podcast. And no, he’s still not done yet.

6:25 See, here’s how it works. These websites each have a couple dozen dedicated acolytes who camp out on my websites, this podcast, my blogs, and other places where I’ve walked through the web using the name my parents gave me. Their job is to nitpick, to find things they can blow up into some great scandal. And then, that scandal becomes part of the official dogma, the approved liturgy of this group of haters. For instance, these acolytes sniff the air, detecting fart molecules that I may have emitted at some point during the day. Then, if they find one, one person tells another person, two tell four, four tell eight, eight tell sixteen, and by the end of the day the story is no longer that “Bill Schmalfeldt farted.” The official story is that I stumbled into a Catholic church, took a wet dump on a statue of the baby Jesus in his manger. And this is accepted as true. Without question. Because according to the official catechism of these people, I am evil. My evil is proven by their word. Their word is not subject to scrutiny. Therefore, their word is true and I am evil. Now imagine the Google bomb that creates when a couple dozen hate-hardened acolytes start spreading their version of the truth across the Internet. Even sharing something as personal as a death in the family becomes a reason to hate me.

Bill, the problem is is that you say some pretty weird shit just about all of the time. People don’t have to look far at all to find something truly outrageous that you have said. Yes, it may be scandalous, but heck, YOU said it! So, of course, it becomes part and parcel of your story. And over here at Billy Sez, we post your precise words. If we are wrong, we correct it. So any part of a Google Bomb that we are part of reflects you accurately. If you don’t like that, change how you post things online. You are the one who is constantly devolving into scatology, who is fascinated with gay butt sex and convinced that girls the oppose you are whores and skanks. You post those things. It’s out there. It’s yours. So yeah, you own it.

As for the game of telephone, yes, it happens. It happens to all of us. It’s a part of life, unfortunately, and yes, the Internet magnifies that. Have you ever considered NOT saying so many things on the Internet, Bill? That might solve your problem there.

8:30 I have always documented and shared my life with my listeners and my readers. It has proven profitable when I was making money at it. Because when people think you’re real they’re more interested in what you have to say, whether or not they agree or disagree. But this group of acolytes, they don’t need to base their stories on the truth. The more outrageous the lie, the better they like it. For instance, when my mother died on March 8, 2013, I was at her bedside. As we have a huge family scattered across the nation, I kept relatives up-to-date on her condition via Twitter. When she died, I called the people who needed to be called and tweeted the rest. The acolytes entered that fact, that proven fact, into the approved liturgy, twisting it into “I sat there tweeting away while my mother died.” And that blatant falsehood is to be believed. Why? Refer back to the catechism: I am evil, as proven by the doctrine, as supported by the liturgy, therefore my evil is not to be questioned. And of course that makes it perfectly okay to use images of my mother in your avatars, photoshopped in any way you deem fit, to disfigure her, to paint her as a monster, to portray her as something less than the wonderful woman she was.

Here we light upon the root cause of Bill’s problem. He has ALWAYS documented and shared his life with his listeners and readers. Okay, fine. Radio hosts do that. I get that. I know an awful lot about Mark and Brian as a result of listing to KLOS for many, many years in the morning. But guess what Bill? They didn’t attack people, post their personal information on the internet, try to humiliate them and attempt to get them in trouble with their spouses, employers, law enforcement, etc., etc., etc., all while talking about their latest bowel movement. I think that’s the key difference. It’s kind of a big one, I think you would agree

When doing something in any medium, there is a level of unspoken appropriateness that when it is breached, it begins to leave distaste in the reader/listener’s mouth. Sometimes, it is needed. For example, I felt my stomach churning many times when I was reading the Rise and the Fall of the First Reich about the banality of evil that took place in that country over the course of Hitler’s rise to power. It was powerful. Gripping. The horror it recounted was necessary to the story, not gratuitous and was well done. If you have to recount gruesome details, make sure that they are at the appropriate level for the medium it is communicated in

While I was not active during the time you speak of here about your mother’s death-bed tweeting, I can, however, comment on the level of appropriateness of what you were doing. For fuck’s sake, man. You could have done it with an email chain to all your family members, rather than on what is essentially a public bulletin board. Hitting reply all is not a big deal, you know? It is the ghoulishness of the medium you chose to communicate about your mother’s every last twitch that shocks and offends the senses. And when you’ve got people who are already disgusted with you, well, that offense is magnified. It’s the nature of the beast. But yes, you did sit there “tweeting away while my mother died.” You just said you did. How is the truth not the truth? I wouldn’t call it evil, just a highly inappropriate, public medium for what much of polite society deems is a very private time. One that I think you will find most people will honor if you aren’t spewing it all out in a public manner. You should try it some time.

And the avatars? They were of the Star Trek salt monster for crying out loud. You were the one who took them for being something that they were not, and then yes, they were used to prick at you. Because you take offense so very, very easily over nothing at all, and it’s FUN to see the monkey dance. You created your own personal hell there, Bill. You kind of own it.

10:19 Speaking of wonderful women, my wife died a bit more than a month ago. The truth of the matter is, after a 19 year battle with an autoimmune condition called systemic sclerosis or scleroderma, her kidneys suddenly failed, her liver stopped functioning properly, she lost a bunch of weight, her body swelled, and she died. The acolytes took that basic info and blamed me for not forcing her to have dialysis. Which would have done her no good, nor would she have had it even if she had been a candidate for it. Therefore I abused my wife, I’m a wife abuser who killed his wife by denying her dialysis and thus it is given the imprimatur of the acolytes, is adopted by the doctrine, and is adapted into the liturgy. I can tell you what really happened, but you dare not believe it. Why not? Well, again, the catechism: I am evil, my evil is proven by the word of the acolytes. Therefore the doctrine and liturgy are not to be questioned.

For someone who documents his entire life online, you sure left out a lot of details. People filled in the blanks, based on their personal experiences with things that might have been on the periphery of what she was going through, or what they knew directly about that kind of death. Personally, I preferred to think that she wasn’t going through that kind of suffering. I don’t like what people have to go through in those situations, and I preferred to think you were being a little drama king who wanted sympathy but instead had a completely hale and whole wife waiting in the wings. It was much better for my psyche that way. And honestly, I’m sorry that was not the case. I’ve said so before, and I’ll say so now. I wish she hadn’t of died.

You have called many, many people abusers over the years for no reason – mostly wife abusers and child abusers. Are you really surprised that those who have observed you doing so jumped on the opportunity to call you one in return? It’s a shame that it had to happen during a time of grief for you, true, but if you had not done what you had done to others – specifically INNOCENT others – I think you would have found the response to be completely different.

I’ll post my final round-up of your “goodbye cruel interwebz” podcast tomorrow sometime. You kind of made this stale news, seeing as how you’ve already started up a new web presence, but I said I would fisk it, so fisk it I shall. No, I’m not linking to your new site. Because if you honestly want to be left alone, then you are off to a good start. Let’s see if you can keep it up.