The Internet is a weird place

That title bears repeating, The Internet IS a weird place. And yes, before you say anything, I realise that the internet is a decentralised computer network. I watched the Terminator movies. Many times. But that’s not the point. And neither is the fact that you can find the most stomach-churning pornography at the click of a button. That goes without saying. The reason I make that statement is that months after I wrote a disparaging post on this very blog about musician Mike Peralta, I’m still getting the occasional disgusted email about it.

Now, to clarify, the “feud” between Mike and I was completely manufactured. Logical would dictate that a musician from California and a part-time stand-up comedian from South Africa who’ve never met wouldn’t have all that much to feud about. What happened was, Mike and I “met” on twitter, and got to talking. We had a joke between ourselves that the two of us would create a fake “beef” between us, which would eventually be settled in a wrestling match on one of America’s many fine independent-circuit promotions. Mike and I would face each other in a match to end the feud, but would be attacked by two of the real wrestlers during the match, making us put aside our differences and join together as a tag team to face our new “enemies”. And, as is often the case, we jokingly decided to put our little plan into action. I posted two blogs about how much I hated Mike, and made several jokes at his expense on Twitter.

It was at this point that things got weird. Mike’s fans began to comment and/or email very insulting things to me. That was to be expected. But when I mentioned to Mike that I had more than 200 hits on those posts in less than a week, he told me that it takes him AGES to hit those numbers, if he hits them at all. That seems very strange to me. If you’re a Mike Peralta fan, surely you’d be more interested in what he has to say than what some random South African hater says about him? Apparently not. It seems that pro-wrestling promoter Eric Bischoff was right when he said “Controversy equals Cash”. It seems to be a strange quirk of human nature that people get personally offended when you insult not just them personally, but also the things/people they like.

For the record, I am a Mike Peralta fan, and I’ve even introduced his music to some of my friends. The fact that I didn’t mind playing the bad guy in this particular little game shouldn’t give random strangers the right to email me threats to my personal safety (I’m genuinely surprised that everyone steered clear of actual death threats- Mike must have the most chilled out fans ever) and hopefully this post will serve to shed some light on the subject.

 Actually, I take it back, the internet isn’t weird, but the people who use it are a strange, defensive bunch...

That is (hopefully) all.