Keying her car?! What-the-what-what?

February 18, 2009 1:44 PM

Juvenile-RetaliationFilter: I'm amazed at some of the advice to retaliate in this thread, which would seem to endorse escalating the conflict rather than trying to find a workable solution. Especially alarming are suggestions of interfering with or causing the dogs discomfort in order to exact revenge on their owner (which this poster rightly objects to). Perhaps these are in jest, but the OP seems to take the suggestion to key her car seriously.

Just wondering if maybe people's concept of public spaces varies from country to country, or if people are venting their grudges against dog-walkers or what?

Anyhow I don't see where retaliation is a best answer to this problem or gets anywhere near reaching a better understanding or good solution, if community-minded spirit is valued (assuming it is). This sensible, straightforward piece of advice seems to be ignored, despite it's beautiful simplicity.

posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome to Etiquette/Policy at 1:44 PM (67 comments total)

Did you notice that the one marked best answer is nonconfrontational and mature?
posted by desjardins at 1:49 PM on February 18, 2009

I think it was a joke.
posted by chugg at 1:49 PM on February 18, 2009

These is all bah-leted. So, um, problem solved aside from some dudgeon, right?

And this might wanna go into etiquette rather than MeFi-related.
posted by klangklangston at 1:49 PM on February 18, 2009

I think people are venting against every crazy-seeming person that has crossed their path. I don't think the OP was serious about the car keying thing but yes that's a shitty thing to contemplate because you don't like someone's whistle. I was surprised people were being so sneery about this guy's problem but I think the tone got set early on and people who identified with the OP sort of rallied. Not our finest hour.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 1:50 PM on February 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I know. AskMe can be incredibly annoying. Yes, yes?
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:52 PM on February 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Taters.
posted by thirteenkiller at 1:53 PM on February 18, 2009 [3 favorites]

Ugh, just nixed some of the one-liner "do this mean thing" stuff. I saw that thread yesterday and removed a couple early things but it seemed to be going okay after that. Lack of flags on some of the stuff that has come along since got it under the radar, I guess.

What Jess said. We nix outright revengefilter stuff, but when the question is more of a "help me solve this frustrating problem" thing that's legit on its own right it's not that unlikely that at least a couple people will jump into full on venge-mode in the answers, and I always hate it when that happens. It's one of the crappier things askme is capable of producing, and I wish people wouldn't do it.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:54 PM on February 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Key and move on.
posted by chugg at 1:56 PM on February 18, 2009 [6 favorites]

"Why do you whistle?" "Where did you get that whistle?" "Do you ever whistle along to any tunes?" "Is your dog named Whistle?" "Have you read Ezra Jack Keats' Whistle for Willy?"

Totally mature, that.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 2:01 PM on February 18, 2009

KTMFA.
posted by matthewr at 2:03 PM on February 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

I have altered the post category.

Pray I do not alter it further.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:04 PM on February 18, 2009 [11 favorites]

In my country, keying a car is a sign of deep affection.
posted by Dumsnill at 2:07 PM on February 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

You wanna know how to get [peace and harmony]? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. *That's* the *[Metafilter]* way! And that's how you get [peace and harmony]. Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that? I'm offering you a deal. Do you want this deal?
posted by blue_beetle at 2:07 PM on February 18, 2009 [4 favorites]

Keying is so childish. The whistler should be killed. The whistler's family should be killed. Everyone who has ever met the whistler, and their families should be killed. Burn it. Burn it all down.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:12 PM on February 18, 2009 [16 favorites]

The World Famous: yes, I did disagree and now that you pointed this out, I'm feeling a bit foolish for posting this. I guess the revenge on the dogs thing bothered me enough to post.

Desjardin - yes I did see that but didn't think it was *that* mature, as Ambrosia Voyeur points out.

Cortex and jessamyn - thanks for the info!
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 2:17 PM on February 18, 2009

Tell you what, if I was walking along, minding my own business whistling to my dogs, and somebody came up to me and did some of the things suggested on that thread?
I'd get drunk and shit on their basement carpet. That's what I'd do.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:31 PM on February 18, 2009 [2 favorites]

This wasn't a serious problem (chimps are ripping ladies' faces off and eating them people! this is just a crazy chick with a whistle) and the answers weren't terribly serious and I think you are taking this all waaaaay too seriously jcifa.


Now can we discuss curbs on name length? Also, a waiting period for first callouts?
posted by CunningLinguist at 2:32 PM on February 18, 2009

The whistler's family should be killed.

Even the whistler's mother? That would rock.
posted by pracowity at 2:34 PM on February 18, 2009 [10 favorites]

Keying is so childish. The whistler should be killed. The whistler's family should be killed. Everyone who has ever met the whistler, and their families should be killed. Burn it. Burn it all down.

Or you could just get a cat.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:34 PM on February 18, 2009

You can't kill The Whistler.
posted by Mister_A at 2:36 PM on February 18, 2009

circumcise her dogs.
posted by qvantamon at 2:55 PM on February 18, 2009

Declaw them, maybe?
posted by mesh gear fox at 2:56 PM on February 18, 2009

You know what you need to do. You can't allow this to go on.
posted by blue_beetle at 3:02 PM on February 18, 2009

cortex and jessamyn: do you find that your duties as moderators take away from your enjoyment of metafilter? Does it get you down, dealing with this? I imagine you as being policemen of sorts, starting off fresh from the academy ready to make a difference and then some time later you're Al Pacino shooting a handcuffed suspect because it'll be easier in the long run.

Thank you in advance for your answer,
posted by boo_radley at 3:06 PM on February 18, 2009 [3 favorites]

boo_radley, they're probably busy with this thread.
posted by desjardins at 3:07 PM on February 18, 2009

It detracts at times. Everybody has a shitty day at work, and it sucks a little bit that those shitty days for me happen where I like to spend a lot of my free time, but it's temporary nosedives, not a permanent diminution of my enthusiasm for mefi. I really like this place, no less than and in some respects a lot more than I did before I started modding, and dealing with bad behavior or long-haul babysitting type days isn't nearly enough to get in the way of that in the long view.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:12 PM on February 18, 2009 [4 favorites]

Is this about me suggesting that if the poster wanted to be evil he should just give the annoying woman's dogs laxatives? (because my comment got removed)

Ok, I admit it's not a nice thing to do but compared to all the suggestions about harassing the woman with local gangs or trumpets or whatever I felt it was pretty benign.

And what is so discomforting with a bit of diarrhea? Most western dogs probably have the same health problems as their owners. A bit of cleaning out of the bowels will do most people and dogs good.

What it boils down to is just me having serious problems with people giving human traits to animals. We treat them as slaves and we generally have no problems killing them by the billions. Why do we project all these human emotions like "discomfort" on dogs? What makes them different from other animals? Do we need some kind of "only vegans can answer" filter? Are people just morally corrupt or am I just a nihilist?

Wait, that last question was kind of redundant but in the end I will only care about dogs once people stop treating other people like - you know - dogs.
posted by uandt at 3:12 PM on February 18, 2009

Finally, someone worth mocking.

/gets popcorn
posted by lazaruslong at 3:15 PM on February 18, 2009

Ok, I admit it's not a nice thing to do but compared to all the suggestions about harassing the woman with local gangs or trumpets or whatever I felt it was pretty benign.

Less-bad isn't a great defense. I removed a number of those other things once I was aware of them, too. If you want to go back and repost whatever helpful non-vengeful portion of your comment there may have been, that's fine.

What it boils down to is just me having serious problems with people giving human traits to animals.

That's fine, but that's something to work out on your blog or with your therapist, not by telling someone to poison a stranger's dogs in Ask Metafilter.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:18 PM on February 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

uandt: In what sense is "harassing the woman with local gangs" benign?
posted by boo_radley at 3:21 PM on February 18, 2009

That's fine, but that's something to work out on your blog or with your therapist, not by telling someone to poison a stranger's dogs in Ask Metafilter.

Sure, I admit to having issues and I don't really mind being deleted, it wasn't really a good answer. Just reflexively responding to callouts you know...

I'm more curious about the original question and why it is still up. It is really no different from asking "How do I get rid of the smelly homeless guy hanging outside my favorite coffeshop?"
posted by uandt at 3:31 PM on February 18, 2009

*has a conflict on the escalator*
posted by jonmc at 3:37 PM on February 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

boo_radley, I think you misread--uandt is saying that "harassing the woman with local gangs" is not benign. So not-benign that the laxatives seem okay by comparison.
(I disagree, but.)
posted by hippugeek at 3:44 PM on February 18, 2009

I'm more curious about the original question and why it is still up. It is really no different from asking "How do I get rid of the smelly homeless guy hanging outside my favorite coffeshop?"

Everything that happens happens in matters of degree along lots of different vectors, so I can't give you "it's no different" at all there, really; that said, I'm not sure your example would be deleted either—it'd depend (as a lot of things on askme do) on how it was presented.

If it was literally "How can I make this stinky homeless guy's life miserable so he stops costing me business?", we'd probably nuke the sucker and suggest the asker find a different way to ask the question if they really want it to fly on the green. If it was more constructively and thoughtfully asked as a "how do I resolve this situation well" type thing, it'd be fine.

From there, I expect it would get a some responses trying to address constructively why the "homeless people are smelly dirty nuisances" side of the question might need some thinking through, some constructive answers on how to actually deal with the guy in question (on a personal basis; from a store-owner's perspective; on a city social-services front; etc.), and probably a few obnoxious "taunt/torture the guy in this way or that" things that'd stand a good chance of getting deleted.

At the end of the day, we give people are fair amount of leeway to ask questions that don't necessarily make them look great or come with totally laudable premises, and we try to let people address those premises civilly in their answers. Straight up revenge stuff is gonna go; the stuff that falls in the grey area between clearly permissable and clearly fucked-up ends up being kind of a weird bumpy ride replete a lot of case-by-case analysis by the mod team and the occasional metatalk thread.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:45 PM on February 18, 2009 [2 favorites]

Keying is so childish.

I just think it's ineffective. The person might not even notice it right away, so there's no good cause and effect. They'll probably end up thinking it was some random dick, or some kids, and they'll keep on whistle

Now if you can actually leave a message in the keying, that might have an effect.
posted by smackfu at 3:54 PM on February 18, 2009

MetaTalk: The stuff that falls in the grey area between clearly permissable and clearly fucked-up.
posted by Bango Skank at 3:54 PM on February 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

NO U!
posted by turgid dahlia at 3:55 PM on February 18, 2009

"Give him a pen and a roll of paper to write on and suggest that he hitchhike across the country, keeping notes of his adventure. And tell him his friend Neal should probably go, too."

You also have to give him a lot of bennies.
posted by klangklangston at 4:19 PM on February 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

"Now can we discuss curbs on name length?"

Somewhere around forty characters seems reasonable to me.
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 4:21 PM on February 18, 2009

I have altered the post category.

Pray I do not alter it further.

Only you could be so bold.
posted by homunculus at 4:42 PM on February 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

I find your lack of faves disturbing.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:48 PM on February 18, 2009 [8 favorites]

Oh, so this is a Stars Wars thing, huh? Well meesa...uh...
posted by turgid dahlia at 4:51 PM on February 18, 2009

what
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 4:52 PM on February 18, 2009

I think people are venting against every crazy-seeming person that has crossed their path.

It's the one archetype Jung missed: Teh Crazee. She is everywhere, in parks with whistles, in movie theaters with crinkly wrappers, chatting up supermarket checkout clerks as the queue behind her bulges, straddle-parking two spaces, stealing mail, trying as hard as she can to ruin your day so you'll see her, react to her, remember her.
posted by terranova at 4:55 PM on February 18, 2009 [2 favorites]

Saber and move on, people.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:55 PM on February 18, 2009

Metatalk callouts.
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
We must be cautious.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:57 PM on February 18, 2009

Flagged as nub jub.
posted by fleacircus at 5:00 PM on February 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

As the OP I too thought some of the advice was a wee bit over the top- though strangely enough actually killing the whistler seems quite justified- and besides I doubt she drives.

These are a list of things that I wouldn't do- and I have rated them from 1-5 each in idiocy, impracticability and immaturity :

Co opt others to harass the person (Score: 15)
Cause her or her property physical damage (Score: 15)
Administer pharmaceuticals to her dogs (Score: 15)
Walk behind her blowing a trumpet, whistle or horn (Score: 15)
Offer her a silent dog whistle and dog biscuits (Score: 6)

My question was how to stop this (I find anyway) deeply anti social behaviour to cease- I didn't ask about revenge, nor how to injure someone. The question was fair- the situation well explained, and the best answer marked- so yeah, move on.
posted by mattoxic at 5:00 PM on February 18, 2009

Oh yeah, to what? Something more constructive and useful? Sshhyeah, right.
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:18 PM on February 18, 2009

so yeah, move on.

Oh yeah, to what?

Your next phase towards or further away from Nirvana.
posted by waraw at 5:50 PM on February 18, 2009

I find your lack of faves disturbing, but I still wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
posted by fixedgear at 6:08 PM on February 18, 2009

cortex and jessamyn: do you find that your duties as moderators take away from your enjoyment of metafilter?

Yes, but not as much as other people think it does. I get more creepmail than people think, but I get more fan mail than people think as well. I also have a short memory.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:14 PM on February 18, 2009 [2 favorites]

I also have a short memory.

Matt keeps us in all the paint we can huff.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:36 PM on February 18, 2009

The.
posted by Caduceus at 7:59 PM on February 18, 2009

Matt keeps us in all the paint we can huff.

I didn't realized the salaried staff got that too. It's what keeps me here.
posted by Meatbomb at 10:34 PM on February 18, 2009

The "harassment" suggestion was mine (though, I said "mock" which isn't nearly as threatening, thanks for exaggerating, though.) I stand by that suggestion.

Why? I live next door to an asshole like the whistler (until the end of the month - I'm already moving.) Someone who can't be bothered to have any common courtesy whatsoever, even when all reasonable and polite attempts have been made to compromise. Someone who knows there's ultimately nothing anyone can do about her and doesn't give a shit.

Know what? FUCK those people. I wouldn't harm the dogs or her property (i.e. key the car), but I'm sick of those people having it they way they want, just because it's easier for everyone else to cave to their utter selfishness.
posted by ctmf at 11:06 PM on February 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

The "harassment" suggestion was mine (though, I said "mock" which isn't nearly as threatening, thanks for exaggerating, though.)

How do you mock harass someone without it being completely ineffective?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:17 AM on February 19, 2009

I think ctmf meant to mock the person, not mock harass them.
posted by dunkadunc at 3:17 AM on February 19, 2009

The mock harassment is strong with this one.
posted by Kwine at 4:24 AM on February 19, 2009

There's not much you can do about the tragedians of the commons.
posted by pracowity at 4:28 AM on February 19, 2009

I think ctmf meant to mock the person, not mock harass them.

Oh.

*Makes new plans for the weekend*
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:13 AM on February 19, 2009

That's not Nirvana... it's a space station.
posted by quin at 8:55 AM on February 19, 2009

Newbie here. I felt compelled to respond because I, too, felt there was an inordinate amount of disturbing suggestions.
While providing pleasant revenge fantasies, such suggestions aren't helpful.
posted by pentagoet at 3:09 PM on February 19, 2009

Also, sometimes stuff CAN'T be fixed. So you can either rant or rave or shrug and get on with it...
posted by pentagoet at 3:13 PM on February 19, 2009

MetaTalk: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.


Oh, wait...
posted by deborah at 3:32 PM on February 19, 2009

Keying is so childish. The whistler should be killed. The whistler's family should be killed. Everyone who has ever met the whistler, and their families should be killed. Burn it. Burn it all down.

That's not Nirvana... it's a space station.

These reminds me of my usual advice in situations such as this.(about 3:00 min. in)
posted by P.o.B. at 8:15 PM on February 19, 2009

jessamyn writes "I don't think the OP was serious about the car keying thing but yes that's a shitty thing to contemplate because you don't like someone's whistle."

Much better, afterall she likes whistling, would be to surreptitiously install a tailpipe whistle tip.
posted by Mitheral at 8:18 PM on February 19, 2009