3241 Pilin' On Hatin' On

Friday, May 6, 2011

Those who think history repeats itself will be forced to relive it.

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I've been stewing over this since Sunday evening's "The Amazing Race". There's a blog that TAR fans go to and comment on as the race progresses. I rarely comment there because I can't watch and type at the same time, but I read the comments during the commercials as the show goes on because sometimes others notice something I don't, and they are sometimes funny.

Sunday night one member of each two-person team had to make a colorful chocolate Travelocity Gnome by painting the insides of a two-part mold with colored chocolate.

Everybody loves the Harlem Globetrotters team. The commenters on the fan blog generally don't like the Goth team. They also aren't very popular with the other teams because they are seen as whiners.

Most of the racers painted parts of the front of the mold first, colors that didn't touch each other, and put that part in the cooler to harden while they started on the back - and then back and forth between the two halves.

The Goth girl painted much more of her front before starting on the back. She had just started on the back, note - a fresh blank back - when the Globetrotter went to the cooler to get his back, which he had earlier partially painted, and he found it gone. Someone had taken his back.

Now, I don't know why, but the other Globetrotter, standing on the sidelines, decided the Goth girl had taken it, and loudly accused her of it. I think it had to be some other team member, someone who had also partially painted the back and confused that of the Globetrotter with his or her own. The Goth girl didn't even get a back out of the cooler! She was painting a fresh blank back!

Now here's what pissed me off. The commenters in the fan blog (all women, not incidentally) piled on and lambasted the Goth girl for taking the Globetrotter's back! Even though they knew it couldn't have been her, they gleefully accused her of stealing and cheating. Nobody defended her. Some very nasty things were said about her, and the commenters reinforced each other.

This is why I prefer not to associate with groups of women. They were castigating the Goth girl not based on facts, but just because they didn't like her. "We don't like her. Let's make up stories we want to believe about her whether they're true or not and then kill her for those lies." I've seen that happen over and over in groups of women, and if you step in and say, "hey that's not true", they'll turn on you, too. Nobody is allowed to appeal to truth and fairness.

Too many people, and for some reason especially women, prefer to believe what they want to believe, in the face of all evidence to the contrary. And if it's about someone whom they don't like or who threatens them, they pile on with glee.

I hate that. I hate hate hate hate hate it.
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