52 year old with an 18 y/o Yale beauty queen... right July 10, 2010 4:55 PM Subscribe

There's no way this is real. It's a goof, troll, whatever...
posted by mpls2 to MetaFilter-Related at 4:55 PM (253 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite

I concur.
posted by crush-onastick at 4:58 PM on July 10, 2010

Eh. I once knew a man who was absolute SLIME, and he somehow roped a very hot young girl into dating him. He was like 40+, she was 20 or younger. She was just super ignorant, and he was the first guy to pay any attention to her.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:00 PM on July 10, 2010

Ivy League schools must have some pretty low standards. The post was riddled with grammar and punctuation issues.
posted by litnerd at 5:03 PM on July 10, 2010 [26 favorites]

I dunno, the user's answers of other peoples questions seem to be in good faith. I think if they were having a goof they wouldn't have put the effort into those other answers.
posted by marxchivist at 5:05 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yeah, my first thought was that it was a fake question, on the other hand, I knew a damned lot of Ivy League girls dating much older men.
posted by kate blank at 5:09 PM on July 10, 2010

litnerd: "Ivy League schools must have some pretty low standards. The post was riddled with grammar and punctuation issues."

I use "fucking shitbag" and "bucket of cocks" in my online content all the time. I only used one of those phrases in my college application essay. So this question might not be indicative of her usual talents.
posted by Plutor at 5:15 PM on July 10, 2010 [25 favorites]

If it's a troll, it's a pretty unentertaining one. I've seen exactly what this young woman is describing on many occasions.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 5:15 PM on July 10, 2010

If she is at Yale - the gayest Ivy - I certainly hope she meets a sassy gay friend soon.
posted by greekphilosophy at 5:16 PM on July 10, 2010 [6 favorites]

Yale - the gayest Ivy
This is the kind of information I wish was available to me when I was a high school senior.
posted by jeoc at 5:19 PM on July 10, 2010 [38 favorites]

I use "fucking shitbag" and "bucket of cocks" in my online content all the time. I only used one of those phrases in my college application essay. So this question might not be indicative of her usual talents.

I'm not talking about word choice. I'm talking about using correct punctuation, pronouns, etc. Are Ivies really accepting kids who can't even use commas properly?
posted by litnerd at 5:20 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

The post sounds suspiciously like a recent Reddit AMA.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:24 PM on July 10, 2010

She mentions her "too damn aggressive debating boyfriend" in one of her other AskMe comments, which supports that this is a real question.

But then she mentions, in a toddler safety thread, that her doctor gave her some info about toddler falls. Which likely means that she has a child (people who don't have todllers aren't likely to be discussing toddler safety with their doctors). Single mothers aren't usually Ivy League-bound. I'd say the question is probably real, but that she may be aggrandizing herself a bit, which makes the question sound a little off.
posted by orange swan at 5:24 PM on July 10, 2010 [11 favorites]

I certainly hope she meets a sassy gay friend soon.

Yet another AskMe that could be answered with: "What are you doing? What are you doing? What, what, what are you doing?"
posted by piratebowling at 5:26 PM on July 10, 2010 [11 favorites]

I also thought this seemed bogus.

fancy this man more than peaches on a hot day
Really? Is this how the young people talk nowadays?

But in any case, there is some great advice in there that may help somebody.
posted by jeoc at 5:27 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Totally. I just read the question aloud to my sugar mama and she said "No way baby cakes. You better call that out".
posted by special-k at 5:27 PM on July 10, 2010 [6 favorites]

re,ally?
posted by special-k at 5:31 PM on July 10, 2010 [5 favorites]

i'm a coward so i was waiting for somebody else to point it out first, but HOLY HELL. i didn't think this was fake, but this girl is trying so hard to prove to us that she's "intelligent" that she does that "stick in an 'I' instead of 'me' because it sounds oh so proper" thing that makes my FACE TWITCH.

i was never ivy bound, but even at 18 (and 14, frankly) i knew how not to split infinitives, how not to say "him and i" when i meant "him and me," and how to spell "critique."

on the other hand, i don't use capital letters on the internet, so maybe i'm just a crotchety, 26 year old hag.

maybe the ivy-league thing is true and they have terrible standards (unsurprising). or maybe she doesn't know what an ivy is. or maybe i'm just way too bothered by a teenager dating a man who could be her grandfather. whatevs.
posted by timory at 5:34 PM on July 10, 2010 [6 favorites]

timory, you said it better than I ever could. Hypercorrection makes me want to punch babies.
posted by litnerd at 5:37 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm just waiting til we can delete stuff because people are clearly posting from their phone and can't be bothered to spell check or punctuate. That said, I think (as usual) that the question is real and that the world is just stranger than you think.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:37 PM on July 10, 2010 [7 favorites]

nannies discuss toddler falls with their doctors. hell, as a portrait studio employee, my doctor and i would sometimes talk about kid health issues and i'm blessedly child free. and hte comment about single mothers - um, ick, ew, and ick.

is it really so hard to approach a question in good faith or just move on?

even if this girl is trolling (i don't think she is, sadly), couldn't answering in good faith help someone else later who was reading it? maybe a 25 year old dating a 40 year old who treats her the exact same way - maybe to her they didn't ring as red flags, but maybe coming upon that thread will flip a switch. where's the harm in treating this as real?
posted by nadawi at 5:38 PM on July 10, 2010 [6 favorites]

Yeah reading this, honest to God, I couldn't get Bret Easton Ellis' voice out of my head.

"I went out to dinner with Christian, or at least I think that is her name, she asked me if I loved her, I didn't answer. I had just taken a Klonopin with the cute gay guy that works at Dean and Delluca's, he told me he was 25 but I'm pretty sure he was 17. Christian kept asking me about college, and I had no idea what she was talking about, I'm pretty sure she had a small creative writing class at Amherst, or perhaps that was Amy. By the time we sat down at Spago's I was already 4 martinis in and flirting with the bartender to Christian's disapproval, she told me I looked old but good for my age, when she asked what I wanted for my birthday I told her a boob job ..."
posted by geoff. at 5:39 PM on July 10, 2010 [18 favorites]

"But I've never once in my life heard a female state that men fawn over her"

i have. especially the kind of women who find themselves in may/december relationships that seem to be based on looks and money. do you think everything you've never heard can't possibly be real? what a small world you must live in.
posted by nadawi at 5:40 PM on July 10, 2010 [8 favorites]

Rutgers: Not an ivy.

I went to Rutgers.
posted by greekphilosophy at 5:40 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm willing to accept that she's in a crappy relationship with an older dude, but my guess is that she's trying to make herself sound better (highly attractive, very smart, etc) so she doesn't get an answer like, "look, you got yourself into this, and you should hold onto him because how much better do you really think you're gonna do on your own?" Not that anyone here would ever say anything as dumbshit as that, but I bet all this other stuff is just her building herself a buffer.
posted by phunniemee at 5:40 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Really? Is this how the young people talk nowadays?

I think that's more a case of someone hearing a turn of phrase and thinking it sounds nice, so I'm going to adopt it and start using it, making it a distinct signature Thing That I Say.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 5:40 PM on July 10, 2010 [4 favorites]

We always see the rich old bastards with arm candy, we're just not used to hearing the arm candy's side of the story.
posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 5:41 PM on July 10, 2010 [15 favorites]

Looks like she just opened her account. I didn't believe it, either.
posted by sdn at 5:44 PM on July 10, 2010

the peaches phrase is yet another example of the in-your-face overcorrection that she did all the way through her question. my, how smart she is.
posted by timory at 5:45 PM on July 10, 2010

We always see the rich old bastards with arm candy, we're just not used to hearing the arm candy's side of the story.

What? There's no story there. The story, I'd love to hear. How the hell did these two find each other? Were they dating while she was still underage? Is he one of her father's friends? This isn't a story, it's griping about a horrible relationship. And doing so in a really "I lead a life unexamined" sort of way.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:46 PM on July 10, 2010

Were they dating while she was still underage?

That was my question too, for some puerile reason, but the answer is no: "Him and I have been together since early February, so 5 months. I'm about to be 19 in a couple of weeks. x"
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:48 PM on July 10, 2010

Real, or not real, it's the basic "I love this person, except for X", and "X" is usually a big deal, crossed with the "I want to be in a relationship with this person, and I him/her to change his/her behavior, and he/she won't" scenario.

I think whenever an OP starts off with the presumption that their perfectly *clear* requests or requirements have been ignored by their partner because somehow they weren't clear, it's hard to see how it will end well. Because it's always actually them who is unclear about the nature of the relationship.

Who was the character who said, "X, just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand...."
posted by anitanita at 5:51 PM on July 10, 2010 [3 favorites]

I'm not talking about word choice. I'm talking about using correct punctuation, pronouns, etc. Are Ivies really accepting kids who can't even use commas properly?

It could be laziness rather than ignorance. I seem to recall arguments here and in other forums about not bothering with capitalization because it apparently doesn't matter as long as the reader can figure out what is being said. (I don't agree -- I'm annoyed at hard it is to read such writing.)
posted by desuetude at 5:53 PM on July 10, 2010

that's it, i'm taking a red pen to that thread when she's done with her yammering, printing that shit out and sending it to her. girlfriend needs a grammar lesson tout de fucking suite.
posted by timory at 5:55 PM on July 10, 2010 [4 favorites]

MetaTalk: I'm annoyed at hard it is to read such writing.

forgive me
posted by Balonious Assault at 5:56 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

Balonious Assault, this is MetaTalk. We don't forgive and give out out hugs and all that shit here — we administer spankings. C'mere and grab your ankles.;-)
posted by orange swan at 6:02 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm going to do this:
hearing a turn of phrase and thinking it sounds nice, so I'm going to adopt it and start using it, making it a distinct signature Thing That I Say.

with this: girlfriend needs a grammar lesson tout de fucking suite!

Anytime somebody does something stupid I'm going to say, "Girlfriend needs a grammar lesson tout de fucking suite!"

Okay, somebody do something stupid!!!!!
posted by jeoc at 6:05 PM on July 10, 2010 [10 favorites]

Hey, what happens when you put a hanger in an electrical outlet? ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT. Here goes...
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:07 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

WOAH!
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:08 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

YES, DO IT JEOC, I WON'T STEAL YOUR THUNDER.
posted by timory at 6:08 PM on July 10, 2010

i'm someone who is naturally suspicious of many things that seem like trolls because they just seem too outlandish, too well set up to provoke outraged comments

this seems all too real and uncalculated to me - young girl with some social and intellectual pretension meets a man with a need to verify his virility and "youth" with an inexperienced "trophy" wife that he can control and show off

it happens all the time and i suppose they both get something out of the deal - but i think she's beginning to wonder if what she's going to get is really what she wants out of life - good for her

and it seems to me i've heard that expression about peaches somewhere before - i think it's one of those country/southern things
posted by pyramid termite at 6:21 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm on the fence on this one. It seems genuine in a way I can't put my finger on, but on the other hand the combination of the cliché username (xbeautychicx, really?) and somehow managing to hit like seven different button-pushing topics in one shot make me suspicious. I mean, it's got a lot going on there. Misuse of ironic, bizarrely bad punctuation/spelling (but not consistently bad), the massive age difference, emotional abuse, sexism, irrelevant details about race, fedora-level self-aggrandizing nonsense about Ivy league schools (also irrelevant), boyfriend works on Wall Street (again, irrelevant). It seems calculated to start a shit-storm.

I concede that none of these things own their own scream "fake," it's just the combination of them all I guess.
posted by cj_ at 6:27 PM on July 10, 2010 [9 favorites]

It's not that I don't believe that such people and such a situation could and does exist. I just don't buy that this person would post on metafilter in such a way as to totally reveal all of her flaws. I suspect it's pure attention-seeking fiction by a 27 year old dude but I respect metafilters position that all questions that appear sincere and fit the guidelines should be allowed to stand for the benefit of future readers.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:28 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

I just don't buy that this person would post on metafilter in such a way as to totally reveal all of her flaws.

I don't know about that. It's my experience that people are actually pretty quick to show you who they are if you only know how to read the signs.
posted by orange swan at 6:32 PM on July 10, 2010

I nixed a couple comments here. I realize that making connections based on username/profile info isn't hard to do, people who want to go googling on their own can do so, but let's skip making it explicit in here. There's not really anything going on that demands going in that direction.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:33 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

But then she mentions, in a toddler safety thread, that her doctor gave her some info about toddler falls. Which likely means that she has a child

To give her the benefit of the doubt, it could be someone else's toddler. I'm a nanny and have discussed children with medical professionals many times, even though the children are not actually mine. She might be a babysitter or they might be her nieces/nephews.

(Just sayin' that in and of itself is not a red flag, though yes, WEIRD.)
posted by grapefruitmoon at 6:33 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Oh and calling someone 54 an "Old Man" in the title. Another thing that's going to grate on some people.
posted by cj_ at 6:33 PM on July 10, 2010

I came here specifically to see if someone had already started a thread about this being fake, fake, fakeity, fake. Because if not, I was going to start one.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 6:39 PM on July 10, 2010

Maybe we should also take into account that this person set their account up just a few days ago? Maybe they're not privy to all the Mefi hot button topics that might generate a response. Maybe we're trying to stare at a Magic Eye painting that's really just a smattering of colored dots.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:39 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

And maybe I'm just a naive Pollyanna who still gets trolled at Newgrounds. WHO'S TO SAY?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:41 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

i was never ivy bound, but even at 18 (and 14, frankly) i knew how not to split infinitives

But apparently not that there isn't anything wrong with splitting infinitives? Unless you're speaking Latin, of course. Which we are not.
posted by Justinian at 6:45 PM on July 10, 2010 [21 favorites]

Rutgers: Not an ivy.

I went to Rutgers.

Well, R-U rah-hah to you. I have a degree from Rutgers, an MA, and what I remember is that within an hour of arriving on campus for my recruitment visit, two people had told me that Rutgers had once been asked to join the Ivy League and declined. Poor Rutgers, just 20 minutes down the road from Princeton, and never seemed to forget it for a minute.
posted by not that girl at 6:47 PM on July 10, 2010

Oh and calling someone 54 an "Old Man" in the title. Another thing that's going to grate on some people.

To an 18 yr old, 54 is unambiguously old. He's very likely older than her father. I mean, I know some pretty sexy 54 year olds. But it's a perfectly realistic age at which to be a grandparent without any teenage pregnancy being involved.
posted by desuetude at 6:59 PM on July 10, 2010 [4 favorites]

But apparently not that there isn't anything wrong with splitting infinitives? Unless you're speaking Latin, of course. Which we are not.

that's why i later remarked on being crotchety. technically you shouldn't split infinitives, but it's totally okay to do it in this day and age. i know that. still makes me twitchy. sorry.
posted by timory at 6:59 PM on July 10, 2010

Does it make you as twitchy as people who refuse to use capitalization make me?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:11 PM on July 10, 2010 [21 favorites]

I knew someone would post here about that one.

I thought the post was probably either fake or highly exaggerated, but answered anyway, because if it IS real, it's disturbing (and frankly, disgusting). She is probably not as earth=shatteringly amazing as she claims, but it's not exactly rare for 18-year-olds that get male attention to think they're hot shit (until they realize that it's not special to have old dudes hit on you if you're youngish and have a vagina and boobs).
And it's totally fair for an 18-year-old to call a 54-year-old dude an old man. Because 54 is way old compared to 18.

As for the poor writing/Ivy situation, you guys have heard of legacies, right? ...and she probably wrote it on her phone.
posted by ishotjr at 7:13 PM on July 10, 2010

Having taught college freshmen, this seemed really real to me. Grammar and all.

Also, I follow this blog of a girl who sounds a lot like this--slept with her 50-y-o teacher when she was in high school, now writes "fiction" about it, and the peaches phrase seemed like just the sort of thing a little girl who is convinced she's worldly would say, based on this other, unrelated-person-who-i-don't-even-know's blog.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:15 PM on July 10, 2010 [11 favorites]

I'm willing to believe. Wall Street types and teenagers are almost equally shallow, that's how they roll.

I read the question as a product of wondering-about-one's-relationship-and-asking-internet-strangers-about-it-after-heavy-drinking. Yes it's got odd punctuation and uncharacteristic tone for someone entering uni but not for that person in the middle of a wet, melancholy evening in.

Hell after I've been on the turps it's all I can do it correctly use a semicolon to separate independent clauses.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:15 PM on July 10, 2010

(and earth=shatteringly should be earth-shatteringly, but then again, I didn't go to an Ivy, so I shouldn't be expected to type properly ;-) )
posted by ishotjr at 7:15 PM on July 10, 2010

18 year olds will date anyone. I've dated 18 year olds, and I'm just old, not rich.
posted by planet at 7:17 PM on July 10, 2010

Incidentally not only is 52 a normal age for grandparenthood, in the Australian suburbs it's a fairly unremarkable age for great-grandparenthood. 52 is old.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:19 PM on July 10, 2010

To an 18 yr old, 54 is unambiguously old.

Yeah I get that.. although I question if someone who "[fancies] this man more than peaches on a hot day" would actually see it that way. Either way, every one of the points I brought up is defensible/explainable on its own. It's the sheer volume of button-pushy stuff (many irrelevant, no less) all in one post that sets my bullshit meter off. And the username, which seems like it's taking the piss. I haven't seen anyone non-ironically use the xxxsexy*xxx in years.
posted by cj_ at 7:19 PM on July 10, 2010

that's why i later remarked on being crotchety. technically you shouldn't split infinitives, but it's totally okay to do it in this day and age. i know that. still makes me twitchy. sorry.

I know; I'm saying that I do not believe you are correct that you "technically" shouldn't split infinitives. The idea that you shouldn't is exactly the thing others are talking about; an incorrect result of hypercorrection.
posted by Justinian at 7:21 PM on July 10, 2010 [11 favorites]

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing: “I've seen exactly what this young woman is describing on many occasions... Is it really that absolutely crazy to think that what this young woman is describing is true? If so, I envy your insulation. What she's talking about is all too common, actually.”

Really? All too common? How many "very attractive" black 18-year-old women attending Ivy League universities have you known who are dating, and planning to marry and have kids with, 52-year-old white collar professionals working on Wall Street?

The unnecessary, nonchalant, matter-of-fact details are the hard-to-believe part, not the situation described. Honestly, who could read the first two sentences of the question and not say "wait a minute, huh?" The unbelievable part is that that straining of incredulity seems almost to be the whole point.
posted by koeselitz at 7:23 PM on July 10, 2010 [3 favorites]

Oh shit! I got distracted by the cortex deletion comments post, and then by the WoW post.

Girlfriend needs a grammar lesson tout de fucking suite!
posted by jeoc at 7:23 PM on July 10, 2010 [4 favorites]

I haven't seen anyone non-ironically use the xxxsexy*xxx in years.

Rest assured, lots of people still use it--some of them on their resumes.
posted by box at 7:24 PM on July 10, 2010

fancy this man more than peaches on a hot day

That phrase has never been used before on the internet (Google returns only this original Ask thread and a rss scraper; Bing gives us just the Ask). With the twitspace and myface the kids are using I would have thought it was something I missed. Then again it may have been a line from a book an ivy league bound person might read. As a product of state schools, I can never tell.

As someone who is closer to the old man in this questiion that has lived in the desert all of his life, I never once turned to peaches on a hot day. Watermelon was more my fruit of choice.
posted by birdherder at 7:25 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

you shouldn't split infinitives

You are the one who needs the "grammar" lesson. English is not Latin.

On preview: yeah, what Justinian said. You may also be interested in the literature on hypercorrection in US dialects, some of which is quite fascinating.
posted by Maximian at 7:26 PM on July 10, 2010 [3 favorites]

I was eating a peach while I read the thread. Does that count?
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 7:31 PM on July 10, 2010

Looking back on the thread, I really appreciate that you all answered it earnestly. I really admire your restraint...

because that has to be a troll.
posted by jerseygirl at 7:31 PM on July 10, 2010

seriously, anybody who is all too ready to run in and proclaim FAKE TROLL NO ONE IS REALLY LIKE THAT! why does it matter? what does she have to gain from trolling? what do you have to gain from calling her out?

if you think it's so fake, just don't answer it and move on. this callout puts the worst of metafilter on display.
posted by nadawi at 7:32 PM on July 10, 2010 [10 favorites]

oh honestly, who cares? Either give advice and go about your life or skip it and go about your life.
posted by new brand day at 7:33 PM on July 10, 2010 [3 favorites]

Fake or not, this question gives all of us an opportunity to share our advice and experiences for anybody who is reading the thread to benefit from.
posted by iamkimiam at 7:33 PM on July 10, 2010

This comes off as almost-real to me, I had a 2 year relationship with a 50-something at her age and was equally as deluded about the flaws and the lack of future ahead for us. She's probably lying about the high status of her/her dude though, and is definitely looking to say "everything is so awesome about my life, and yet it sucks quite badly at the same time! How can this be!" in the attention seeking yet self conscious way that being in a socially controversial can create. The core quests seem legit though.

Teenagers are weird.
posted by saturnine at 7:35 PM on July 10, 2010 [7 favorites]

Thanks for this call out, because it dredged up this AskMe classic from the far reaches of my memory. Well worth a re-read.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 7:35 PM on July 10, 2010 [10 favorites]

*socially controversial relationship

Dammit.
posted by saturnine at 7:35 PM on July 10, 2010

children dating adults do all sorts of things to make themselves seem older and wiser and more cultured. when i was dating men i had no business dating i would describe situations in much the same upfront manner, as if to say "i'm mature enough to know and handle all of this", although i realize now a decade later that i was portraying the exact opposite.
posted by nadawi at 7:36 PM on July 10, 2010 [3 favorites]

As I read that question I was just praying she would reveal herself to be the female counterpart to his more immediately apparent shallow, mercenary, cynical and manipulative sheer meanness.

No such luck; perhaps an inch of bravado over good-natured vulnerability is all I got out of it, and I can't imagine how she'll be anything but wreckage by the side of the road if she hangs out with this guy for even six more months.

Where are the black female friends who should be opening her eyes about this man? Was she raised by white people? Really, really ignorant white people?

You folks and your classist obsession with punctuation and pronouns; I do declare.
posted by jamjam at 7:39 PM on July 10, 2010 [4 favorites]

Completely believable. In fact, I think I have been on a date with that guy (or his clone) myself! There really are lots of guys out there like that, and lots of girls with daddy issues who date them.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:40 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

nadawi: “seriously, anybody who is all too ready to run in and proclaim FAKE TROLL NO ONE IS REALLY LIKE THAT! why does it matter? what does she have to gain from trolling? what do you have to gain from calling her out?”

Look, I'm for reserving some judgment, and I don't think we should go nuts saying things like 'you'd have be an idiot to believe this' or 'nobody would be so stupid or annoying, it's got to be fake;' if this is real, it's not cool to be insulting people... but –

It is important to make sure people aren't trolling the community by posting fake questions. That's an abuse of the community's trust, and it lowers the standards we all abide by when we're commenting here. I think it behooves us all to be careful about this kind of stuff, and that's why the mods actually delete threads where people are lying and asking questions that aren't real.

Besides, it's pretty damned obvious why people think that question is trolling. Whether it's real or not, it fits a classic trolling trope: the "give 'em a bunch of unbelievable or silly or ridiculous details, and laugh at them while they try to earnestly answer the question." That has to be the number one trolling style on ask.metafilter.
posted by koeselitz at 7:40 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

And, one more time: nobody here has said that 18-year-olds don't date 52-year-olds. That's the most believable part of the question.
posted by koeselitz at 7:44 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

She seems to be picking answers that are actually helpful, and she isn't baiting people with her responses. If she's actually a troll she's a pretty shitty one.
posted by millions of peaches at 7:46 PM on July 10, 2010 [8 favorites]

I think this metatalk post is fake. It's possible the entire internet is fake. In fact, I may be the only actual person on the internet, furiously maintaining millions of separate user accounts, trolling myself in a schizophrenic frenzy.....
posted by Salvor Hardin at 7:50 PM on July 10, 2010 [16 favorites]

"give 'em a bunch of unbelievable or silly or ridiculous details, and laugh at them while they try to earnestly answer the question."

and we only play into by getting up into a tizzy. i think that people just like to be the one to "catch" others so they can pat themselves on the back for how smart and unnaive they are.

the mods have already weighed in and said they don't believe it's trolling. quite a few women have said "i've known a girl like this/i've been a girl like this" - so again, what do you have to gain?

this type of metatalk thread is far worse for metafilter than some shitty relationship-filter question - it gives the idea that if someone doesn't have the sort of life, friends, relationships we do than they aren't welcome because we'll just think they're liars. maybe that's the sort of insular community you are in favor of, but i'm not.
posted by nadawi at 7:50 PM on July 10, 2010 [8 favorites]

It is important to make sure people aren't trolling the community by posting fake questions.

While I think this is true to a certain extent I think we've maybe had a handful of fully-identified trolling questions [I can think of one that I know of, and probably a few more that might have qualified] and many many more MeTa "this is a troll" threads. While I'm fine with having discussions about whether people think a certain question is plausible or not, there's a big difference between "this is a lulzy question that someone is asking to fuck with us" and "this is someone in an improbable situation" and/or "I can't believe someone could be that dumb/naive/ignorant."

I've already said that I'm much happier erring on the side of "Well it might be true, what do we have to lose by treating it as being true?" and would add in this specific case that this is a person who has an identity across the internet with this username so this would, again, be a long grift for very little payoff. Put another way, it's not her responsibility to convince you of anything. People are so worried that someone is a secret 4chan agent that they get all Sherlock Holmes on a teenager in a complicated situation. Maybe it's a 27 year old dude out for lulz. I sort of feel like you choose how you feel and you respond accordingly. I don't care if nerds are laughing at me. Why do you?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:53 PM on July 10, 2010 [33 favorites]

seriously, anybody who is all too ready to run in and proclaim FAKE TROLL NO ONE IS REALLY LIKE THAT

I'm not proclaiming this, just sayin' my bullshit alarm went off something fierce. If people go ahead and give good answers instead of getting all riled up in thread, I'm not sure it matters if it was an attempted troll or genuine.

"I can't believe someone could be that dumb/naive/ignorant."

I don't see anyone saying that? I'm not at least. Like I said, none of the details on their own are surprising/unbelievable, it's just the volume of irrelevant button-pushy details that makes me suspicious. I guess I know too many people that do this kind of stuff "for the lulz" (roommate that was active on LJDrama when it was still around) that I am more wary of it.

and would add in this specific case that this is a person who has an identity across the internet with this username so this would, again, be a long grift for very little payoff.

I'm not gonna go all stalker on this, but a quick google shows a bunch of obviously unrelated accounts using that same name. Not very convincing. I'm not comfortable with this kind of investigation, because a troll can and will just pick someone at random and pose as them.
posted by cj_ at 8:15 PM on July 10, 2010

I know, right? Is it really that absolutely crazy to think that what this young woman is describing is true? If so, I envy your insulation. What she's talking about is all too common, actually.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing

Did you read the thread? Because the questions, right or wrong, are not about the 'story'. Of course the generalities happen all the time. It's the specifics that sound fishy.

If we're taking a vote, I say half real/ half fake. Basics correct, but the story made more interesting. She's probably the secretary at an Ivey League school while taking night courses at the community college, and he probably trades stocks on his computer after coming home from his accountants job. And they're both average looking :)
posted by Dennis Murphy at 8:17 PM on July 10, 2010

They let all sorts of idiots into Ivy League schools.

(Columbia, class of '88. Well, if I hadn't dropped out, that is.)
posted by BitterOldPunk at 8:19 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

Fair enough. Play on. I can reserve judgment on this on, but it's true that it doesn't seem helpful for a bunch of us who frankly have a hell of a lot less information on the behind-the-scenes details about this question to spend all day debating over whether it's real when one of them has already said she's giving it the benefit of the doubt.

If the mods don't think it's a troll, and are willing to go with it, do we think maybe it'd be better to close this thread up? I don't think it's too hasty to do so, anyway; I think it's worth having some skepticism, but at the end of the day nadawi is right that a few dozen comments blindly speculating about someone's integrity aren't really going to help anything at this point. I say: close this thread up now.
posted by koeselitz at 8:25 PM on July 10, 2010

FUCK YEAH, RUTGERS!
posted by spec80 at 8:25 PM on July 10, 2010

Can I say that I think digging for details in someone's previous posting history to garner biographical details in support of an argument on whether or not a question is legitimate is creepy regardless of your position on the question at hand? No? Fine then I won't.

I will say that if this is a real person with a real problem a fuckload of you people owe her an apology. I know cortex addressed this to a degree but even the comments left standing make me feel more squicky than the original question.

Also I'm sure I was supposed to have used more commas in this comment.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:27 PM on July 10, 2010 [6 favorites]

I myself find that when I encounter a girl in a relationship with a slimebag, who is systematically destroying her self-esteem by constantly criticizing her appearance, achievements, and opinions, the best way to support her and convince her that such behavior is unacceptable is to make tacky, petty, and wholly irrelevant swipes at her grammar and writing ability.
posted by granted at 8:35 PM on July 10, 2010 [45 favorites]

Also in the half real/half fake camp - exagerrated, but the nugget of truth probably being "I'm an adolescent dating a much older man, and he's hypercritical of me and I don't like it."

It's not out of the question. At 18 I had a disastrous collison (underserving of the term 'relationship') with a guy who was 32 at the time. That's 22 years younger than the dude in the question, but still represents an exploitive manipulation on his part and shocking naivete on mine. This young woman's tone strikes me as authentic enough, though I doubt some of the specific details, too.
posted by Miko at 8:41 PM on July 10, 2010 [3 favorites]

FWIW, I like peaches on a hot summer's day a lot. And I like to technically and boldly split infinitives sometimes.
posted by Some1 at 8:44 PM on July 10, 2010

Is this the part where we start sharing recipes for peach cobbler?
posted by Evangeline at 8:48 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm not gonna go all stalker on this, but a quick google shows a bunch of obviously unrelated accounts using that same name.

A bit more googling via the skosh more admin-only info we have reinforces the notion of an existing identity that would require some seriously not-worth-the-payout trouble to falsify. I appreciate folks giving the uberscooby approach to this a miss, there's also no payout for mefi for that. It's fine to distrust or just dislike the question, but for the purposes of askme functioning as its intended folks need to either treat it as a good faith question or just move on to a different thread.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:50 PM on July 10, 2010 [5 favorites]

Mmmmmm, Peach Cobbler.
posted by SLC Mom at 9:02 PM on July 10, 2010

The best peach cobbler I ever had was this campfire recipe where you took, like, a #10 can of peaches in syrup and put it in a Dutch oven, and then dumped a box of yellow cake mix, dry, on top of it. Then you stuck it in the coals and an hour later, OMG.
posted by Miko at 9:06 PM on July 10, 2010 [7 favorites]

Oh, I forgot the stick of butter.
posted by Miko at 9:07 PM on July 10, 2010 [7 favorites]

I flagged, did standard troll due-diligence, and answered the question. I don't see how the thread, as it stands, isn't helpful for a relationship situation that patently exists in the big wide world, even if the specifics might seem slightly hinky.

This may mean I get eliminated in the group stage of the "Troll Or Teenager?" world cup, but it'll be less embarrassing than France's exit.
posted by holgate at 9:12 PM on July 10, 2010

miko - dutch oven peach cobbler is a gift from the gods, all of them. it's also called "dump cake" which i enjoy as a name.
posted by nadawi at 9:16 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

I like peaches grilled and served with ice cream. But I prefer crostata to cobbler.
posted by crush-onastick at 9:24 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Does it make you as twitchy as people who refuse to use capitalization make me?

Ugh, thank you for saying it first. Twitch twitch.

what I remember is that within an hour of arriving on campus for my recruitment visit, two people had told me that Rutgers had once been asked to join the Ivy League and declined.

Heh, there was a similar rumor at University of Delaware, where I went.
posted by amro at 9:25 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

You've probably all seen this before, but I hadn't.
posted by koeselitz at 9:37 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

I have clearly been broken by society. I kept waiting for the screen to fade to white with a stark message that "Lucky was killed by a drunk driver on February 15, 2010... You are missed, Lucky. Meow."
posted by greekphilosophy at 9:43 PM on July 10, 2010

This totally has to be fake; no way could a bright yet awkward young person with an inflated sense of self, penchant for showily twee turns of phrase, and a less-than-traditional relationship be a member of MetaFilter.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:01 PM on July 10, 2010 [47 favorites]

Like I said, none of the details on their own are surprising/unbelievable, it's just the volume of irrelevant button-pushy details that makes me suspicious.

i don't see why a person who is somewhat unfocused on what's really going on with her love life and the implications for her future wouldn't be unfocused in explaining her situation to others

and perhaps you have too many buttons that can be pushed
posted by pyramid termite at 10:02 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

yep, too many buttons, close this thread please
posted by koeselitz at 10:10 PM on July 10, 2010

Are Ivies really accepting kids who can't even use commas properly?

They have no choice. All the proper comma-users go to Oxford.
posted by mullacc at 10:42 PM on July 10, 2010 [16 favorites]

technically you shouldn't split infinitives

Even "technically," this isn't true. Splitting infinitives is not a "technical" or grammatical error. (See Strunk & White and many other usage books.)

It may be a stylistic error in certain contexts. But would those contexts include Metafilter posts? Nope.
posted by Jaltcoh at 11:02 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

We need to set this peaches girl up with the fedora guy.
posted by hermitosis at 11:48 PM on July 10, 2010 [3 favorites]

Also, timory, I noticed several sentence fragments and comma splices in some of your past comments. I learned how to write in complete sentences when I was only ... wait a minute, so what? We're allowed to write casually on the internet.
posted by Jaltcoh at 11:49 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

[I mean, I don't doubt that this situation is possible or even probable. However, when people in that situation have a problem and ask for help, they don't load up on crazy personal details in a declarative in the front-end of their question. They say: "I've got a problem with my somewhat-older boyfriend and his maturity," or "I am in college, and I'm dating this guy I really like, but we've got this problem relating." I just find it psychologically unconvincing; I've never heard anyone talk that way that wasn't faking something.]

Guuuuh, do you know any 18 year old girls? Unnecessary and distracting details which are only relevant in a tremendously convoluted way, the comprehension of which would require an altered state approximating recreational drugs, are a salient feature of every imaginable narrative.
posted by desuetude at 11:57 PM on July 10, 2010 [9 favorites]

Metafilter: Prompts girly coos.
posted by deep thought sunstar at 12:17 AM on July 11, 2010

To: All MeFites
From: Dr. Zira
RE: Nerds Laughing at Us

Thank you for your outstanding efforts to protect our community from nerds laughing at us. To assist our members in maintaining vigilance against the ongoing threat of nerds laughing at us, please review the following information to assist us with assessing individual threat levels pending final determination in the knockout stages.

2010 NERD CUP - FINAL DRAW

Group A
4chan Readers
Something Awful Readers
Slashdot Readers
Farkers

Group B
Those who enjoy the work of Ayn Rand
Those who detest the work of Ayn Rand
Team Jacob
Team Edward

Group C
Lawyers
Physicians
Fucking Hipsters
Militant Grammarians

Group D
Soccer Nerds
Football Nerds
Baseball Nerds
Figure Skating Nerds

Group E
Experts on Spanish Monarchy
Experts on English Monarchy
Experts on Swedish Monarchy
Experts on Kings and Queens of Pop

Group F
Mad Men Followers
Lost Followers
Doctor Who Followers
Gleeks

Group G
Large Hadron Collider News Junkies
EFF News Junkies
Photoshop Contest Junkies
"Boobies" Tag Junkies

Group H
Apple Enthusiasts
PC Enthusiasts
Univac Enthusiasts
Steampunk Enthusiasts
posted by Dr. Zira at 12:18 AM on July 11, 2010 [42 favorites]

We need to set this peaches girl up with the fedora guy.

Nope, I'm thinking banjo-guy is more of a fit here.
posted by smoke at 12:43 AM on July 11, 2010 [7 favorites]

my bets on the first round are :

slashdot readers - we're too boring for the rest

Those who enjoy the work of Ayn Rand - the rest will become so fed up, they'll just quit

Fucking Hipsters and Militant Grammarians will come down to a shoot out and one will trip over their own smugness. it's nearly impossible to predict which one.

Figure Skating Nerds - cleats have nothing on their blades. they will win by blood.

Experts on Kings and Queens of Pop - inbreeding always loses eventually

Lost Followers - they obviously have the most experience in slogging it out even though the payoff will never be worth it. you can't beat that sort of tenacity.

"Boobies" Tag Junkies - boobies rule everything around me

Apple Enthusiasts/Steampunk Enthusiasts - aren't these the same people?
posted by nadawi at 12:58 AM on July 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

Where are the black female friends who should be opening her eyes about this man? Was she raised by white people? Really, really ignorant white people?

If she is at Yale - the gayest Ivy - I certainly hope she meets a sassy gay friend soon.

What the fuck are you people, writers for braindead sitcoms?

I myself find that when I encounter a girl in a relationship with a slimebag, who is systematically destroying her self-esteem by constantly criticizing her appearance, achievements, and opinions, the best way to support her and convince her that such behavior is unacceptable is to make tacky, petty, and wholly irrelevant swipes at her grammar and writing ability.

Amen.
posted by rodgerd at 12:59 AM on July 11, 2010 [7 favorites]

Where are the black female friends who should be opening her eyes about this man? Was she raised by white people? Really, really ignorant white people?

What does this mean?
posted by jacalata at 1:22 AM on July 11, 2010 [6 favorites]

I love MetaFilter more than peaches en regalia but I call BS.
posted by fixedgear at 3:33 AM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I answered her question even though I love HOT peaches on a COLD day:

Brandied Poached Peaches
Gourmet | September 2003

Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 1 hr
Yield: Makes 8 servings
ingredients
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
2 cups water
5 (4-inch-long) strips fresh orange zest
1/2 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise
8 firm-ripe small peaches (2 to 2 1/2 lb total)
1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons brandy or Cognac
preparation

Bring sugar, orange juice, water, zest, and vanilla bean to a boil in a 4-quart heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Add peaches, stem ends up. Cover pan and reduce heat, then poach peaches at a bare simmer 8 minutes. Turn peaches over and continue to poach, covered, until tender, 7 to 8 minutes more.

Transfer peaches with a slotted spoon to a bowl or shallow dish to cool, reserving poaching liquid in saucepan. Lift out vanilla bean pod and scrape seeds into poaching liquid, then boil liquid until reduced to about 1 cup, 10 to 15 minutes. Pour syrup through a sieve into a small bowl or glass measure and cool. Stir in brandy (to taste).

Peel peaches and serve whole with syrup.
posted by availablelight at 4:18 AM on July 11, 2010 [12 favorites]

Really love your peaches wanna shake your tree?
posted by fixedgear at 4:21 AM on July 11, 2010

Really? All too common? How many "very attractive" black 18-year-old women attending Ivy League universities have you known who are dating, and planning to marry and have kids with, 52-year-old white collar professionals working on Wall Street?

A younger woman dating an older man, where the former adores the latter and sees a big future, while the latter is manipulating the former and being controlling? And where the younger woman on the brink of adulthood is a bit self-centered and affected? Yes, that is all too common. That might surprise you, but there it is.

A bit more googling via the skosh more admin-only info we have reinforces the notion of an existing identity that would require some seriously not-worth-the-payout trouble to falsify.

Well that's refreshing. Still, I had to wonder myself what the "pay off" would be in posting such a question anyway. Maybe it's some middle-aged dude who woke up one morning and thought, "Who could I coax into my diabolical web of danger and intrigue? Hm ... I know! I'll go to AskMe and tell them I'm a young woman dating some older guy who's playing with my head! Oh ho! The FOOLS will never suspect that it is actually I, the great internet manipulator, who has posted a frankly mundane and plausible situation for them! Muhahahaha!" But then, I have to ask, why should I care that hard? Who knows, maybe others will gain something from the answers given.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:31 AM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Any opinions on how well some beurre bosc pears would substitute for peaches in availablelight's recipe? because peach season is half a year away here, but the pears aren't bad.

I'd also be thinking of skipping the vanilla bean, but throwing in a small cinnamon stick instead; potentially a clove or two, and keeping the syrup hot, to pour over rich creamery vanilla icecream.
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:44 AM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Ubu, I made poached pears as well, and can't imagine why you could use the same bourbon treatment for them. I agree that vanilla bean doesn't sound quite as appealing with pear, but cinnamon is good--I might also add a few whole cloves as further warming spices.
posted by availablelight at 4:53 AM on July 11, 2010

and when do you add the brandy / cognac? is there a flambée step missing?
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:54 AM on July 11, 2010

*can't imagine why you COULDN'T use the same bourbon treatment
posted by availablelight at 4:54 AM on July 11, 2010

and when do you add the brandy / cognac? is there a flambée step missing?

I add the brandy (not bourbon, though bourbon is great with poached pears) directly to the poaching liquid, poured over the peaches after they're added to the pan.
posted by availablelight at 4:59 AM on July 11, 2010

now i'm imagining deep fried icecream flambeeing on the side of the peaches / pears (in hot syrup).
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:13 AM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

so hungry
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:14 AM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I've only been here a few months, but I've noticed an uptick in the paranoid "someone might be laughing at us" response to slightly bizarre questions; in particular, I'm thinking about the Russian girls saga, the bipolar boyfriend questions and the HOCD questions recently.

It's quite common for pre-teens to develop self-esteem issues as they enter the awkward teens and it seems like Metafilter is no different!
posted by Hiker at 6:09 AM on July 11, 2010

Where are the black female friends who should be opening her eyes about this man? Was she raised by white people? Really, really ignorant white people?

Whoa. Because only white people do stupid shit like dating men three times their age? We all know sisters wouldn't let a sister down like this! Stupid white women fall for older, richer guys. Women of color stick together, yeah!

Yikes.

To me, this is so clearly a troll, if you can call someone doing the Walter Mitty delusional thing "trolling." So I disagree with the mods, and find the moralizing tone of some of the defenders of the question's authenticity amusingly and earnestly sincere in its ignorance and self-assuredness, as I find much cultural-political discussion (especially of gender) on MeFi these days. The world as we wish it, no as it is, is so much nicer to live in. And on the internet, you never have to leave that utopia where everyone thinks JUST LIKE YOU about moral questions! Or else they're "creepy" and unethical scumbags. (Or straight men, which is pretty much the same thing around here sometimes.)

You show me one society in human evolutionary history where powerful older men don't have sex with beautiful younger women, and I guarantee you a career in anthropology for your stunning, paradigm-shifting discovery. Morality is a might thin veneer over our natures.

But unlike some, it doesn't bother me when AskMe is trolled. I find it amusing. And anyway, there's some good stiff girlfriend advice in there for all you would-be sweet young paramours to aging, egotistical finance guys.

What strikes me most, despite the OP's apparent narcissistic self-regard for her own purported intelligence and hotness (let me tell you someday about the 350 pound 35 year old phone sex worker I once met who specialized in playing a demure, slender, sweet young thing for her clients while she ate bonbons on the couch and watched TV) is her apparent lack of any self-awareness about the very significant power she does hold in this relationship just because she's a good looking young woman (assuming any of the story is true, which again, I think it isn't). That doesn't sound right to me. She's aware that she can make men swoon and babble all around her because she's just so young and hot, but forgets that ability as soon as she's with 52-year-old banker man? Yeah right. Get real.
posted by fourcheesemac at 6:45 AM on July 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

It looked kind of wrongish to me. Not full on troll or full on made up, just something where the person was looking for help but also not maybe describing their situation totally accurately. I'm glad it didn't get deleted, and it was nice to see people give what were by and large pretty helpful answers.
posted by Forktine at 6:45 AM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

> Apple Enthusiasts/Steampunk Enthusiasts - aren't these the same people?

No.

I notice that web developers, Linux advocates and anti-vaccine people didn't make the finals this year. The regional tournaments must have been tooth and nail.
posted by ardgedee at 6:53 AM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

> Apple Enthusiasts/Steampunk Enthusiasts - aren't these the same people?

No.

Because you can't hack Apple's hardware, AMIRITE?!

She's aware that she can make men swoon and babble all around her because she's just so young and hot, but forgets that ability as soon as she's with 52-year-old banker man? Yeah right. Get real.

Nah, she's still 18 and inexperienced with some of the more subtle mind games that can be played. He's got decades on her and probably use to deeper levels of thought, which makes the situation particularly gross to contemplate.
posted by new brand day at 7:07 AM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

okay, hi everyone, i realized and admitted in my very first post that i'm crotchety and annoying and refuse to write in capital letters. also i'm a hypocrite, etc etc etc.

also i don't know why i keep explaining myself and/or apologizing. obviously this is the internet and if i'm going to shake my fist at anybody else i should expect the same thing done to me. so, you know, shake away.

(but, uh, yeah... i was just expressing (mostly unjustified) vitriol. excuses and apologies all around. heh.)
posted by timory at 7:39 AM on July 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

while she ate bonbons on the couch

Do women actually eat bonbons, on the couch? I've never seen it outside of this cliché. The spoiled (fat, lazy, etc.) housewife (mistress, "[insert ethnicity] Princess," etc.) eating bonbons on the couch is, to me, the bereted French bicyclist with basket baguette of rhetoric.
posted by applemeat at 7:45 AM on July 11, 2010 [4 favorites]

Do women actually eat bonbons, on the couch? I've never seen it outside of this cliché. The spoiled (fat, lazy, etc.) housewife (mistress, "[insert ethnicity] Princess," etc.) eating bonbons on the couch is, to me, the bereted French bicyclist with basket baguette of rhetoric.

Oddly, I had the same thought. When I read this:

let me tell you someday about the 350 pound 35 year old phone sex worker I once met who specialized in playing a demure, slender, sweet young thing for her clients while she ate bonbons on the couch and watched TV

all I could think was: yes, do tell! Were you there, sitting in a chair across the room, watching her eat bonbons and talk dirty to strangers? Or were you both watching TV? Was it like a shared common room at a boardinghouse? Were you annoyed that she always wanted to watch Ghost Hunters and you were like, man the game is almost on!? Or is there even more to it than that? There's gotta be, right? Because you sort of built it up, like "let me tell you someday..." like it's gonna be this awesome, hilarious, weird story. Like, today, we can't handle it. But maybe if we prepare ourselves, brace ourselves for the craziness of a large woman talking to strangers - but yet acting not like a large woman - well, then, okay! I'm ready! Hit us with it!
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:54 AM on July 11, 2010 [18 favorites]

Long story, but I was sitting on the loveseat next to the couch. Actually, I think we were watching *Titanic.* And yes, she was eating bon bons.
posted by fourcheesemac at 7:56 AM on July 11, 2010

ah, she's still 18 and inexperienced with some of the more subtle mind games that can be played. He's got decades on her and probably use to deeper levels of thought, which makes the situation particularly gross to contemplate.

I guess we know different young Ivy League women. Me, I teach them year in and year out, and they are not as naive as this Asker, for the most part, about anything.
posted by fourcheesemac at 7:57 AM on July 11, 2010

Oh, and it was in a trailer in the middle of the Nevada desert. Phone sex operators can live anywhere.
posted by fourcheesemac at 7:59 AM on July 11, 2010

I guess we know different young Ivy League women.

You didn't get that she was talking herself up?

Oh, and it was in a trailer in the middle of the Nevada desert.

Website with streaming video or it didn't happen.
posted by new brand day at 8:01 AM on July 11, 2010

She's aware that she can make men swoon and babble all around her because she's just so young and hot, but forgets that ability as soon as she's with 52-year-old banker man? Yeah right. Get real.

1. Daddy issues
2. Pleasure of competition - your girlfriends have adolescent boyfriends. You have a man.
3. Money buys lots of fun things. See #2. Your girlfriends stay at their boyfriend's parents house, eat a hunk of grilled steak and an iceberg salad, are not old enough to go out drinking so you wait until the parents go to be and then snag beers from their fridge, and sneak out of the guest room at night to go the bf's room and fuck. Meanwhile, you go to the guy's beach house, have a nice dinner and a bottle of wine or so, and play grownup.
posted by Miko at 8:05 AM on July 11, 2010 [9 favorites]

You didn't get that she was talking herself up?

Oh, is that your phrase for "trolling?" Because yes, I did, and said I did, think she was a troll.

But of course if she's lying about the "Ivy League" part, the rest of the story must be true.

That was my point.

As for streaming video, believe it or not I have been alive longer than the web has been around. This was in 1993. I suppose some early web entrepreneur might have imagined a streaming video site around then, but for damn sure no such thing existed for the mass market.
posted by fourcheesemac at 8:13 AM on July 11, 2010

Wait, I found the streaming video!

Just kidding, fcm. Fat chicks doing phone sex shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone - it's the cliche-based-in-reality of the business anyway - it's the voice and creativity being paid for, not the body and looks, but the fantasy. And to me, the frequent appearance of the cliche also gains power by playing on the basic cultural trope of 'deceiving woman.'

As to the question, I'm skeptical of the details too, but there's nothing that unusual about the stripped-back-to-basics situation of a young women being with an older man who's taking advantage of her lack of experience. There's a chance that this is an attention-seeking troll post, but even if it is, there are plenty plenty of young women in similar situations could do well by the advice in the thread. Treating it as if basically real seems the best policy to me.
posted by Miko at 8:21 AM on July 11, 2010

The world as we wish it, no as it is, is so much nicer to live in. And on the internet, you never have to leave that utopia where everyone thinks JUST LIKE YOU about moral questions!

Nor on the other hand do you have to leave that utopia where everyone else has been fooled, no one shares YOUR keen and unwavering insight into an apparently ambiguous insight, they're FOOLS not to see what you see.

Everyone here is boxing at shadows. That's a given going in, and part of why, as jessamyn described yesterday, these sorts of threads really aren't great: there's not much to do here except opine at one another. As far as that goes, the opining goes a bit better when it takes the form of relatively respectful exchanges of ideas and comparisons of experiences and such, less so when it comes down to people taking turns dismissing other people's experiences or opinions because those are Obviously Just So Wrong or whatever.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:36 AM on July 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

, but I would NEVER point out any physical flaws about him because what do I have to gain from making him feel self conscious?

Yeah, she even ignored the tumors she found on him while making out.
posted by jonmc at 8:40 AM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

She was sitting on the couch eating bon mots.
posted by fixedgear at 8:53 AM on July 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

Peaches & Herb: 'Shake Your Groove Thing .'
posted by ericb at 9:07 AM on July 11, 2010

Miko, I just wanna say that I find it odd that you contrast:

eat a hunk of grilled steak and an iceberg salad,

with:

have a nice dinner

I mean, where I'm at the former = the latter.
posted by Bookhouse at 9:27 AM on July 11, 2010

Oh, is that your phrase for "trolling?" Because yes, I did, and said I did, think she was a troll.
But of course if she's lying about the "Ivy League" part, the rest of the story must be true.

Weird, you seem to have a lot of black and white thinking going on here.

Is it really that hard to believe she's talking herself up, while also being manipulated by an older male, yet still have sense enough to recognize that something is off?

As for streaming video, believe it or not I have been alive longer than the web has been around.

My goodness, I thought people like that only existed in the movies!
posted by new brand day at 9:28 AM on July 11, 2010

> To me, this is so clearly a troll, if you can call someone doing the Walter Mitty delusional thing "trolling." So I disagree with the mods, and find the moralizing tone of some of the defenders of the question's authenticity amusingly and earnestly sincere in its ignorance and self-assuredness, as I find much cultural-political discussion (especially of gender) on MeFi these days. The world as we wish it, no as it is, is so much nicer to live in.

I love you, man, but you're sure sounding like a dick here. It must be so nice to be so utterly sure of yourself!
posted by languagehat at 9:29 AM on July 11, 2010

"American college students live in a society that is, by historical standards, incredibly well-educated, literate, and word-oriented. Yet most college students don't write very well. It doesn't seem to matter where I've taught—an Ivy League college, a big public university, a small liberal-arts college, even an online course. Nor did it matter what I taught—introductory or upper-level courses; Shakespeare, political science, political theory, organizational behavior, or international business (I've had kind of a wide-ranging academic career). Even from bright students I kept seeing the same problems: poor thesis statements, pomposity and overuse of the passive voice, rambling paragraphs, awkward quotations, and unconvincing use of evidence. I've seen more bad writing in my 15 years of college teaching than I care to think about."

from http://nutsandbolts.washcoll.edu/

Random samples I found on various Ivy League forums. I didn't spend much time searching:

"if we drank out of glass, we'd have to wash the glasses. plus, thered probs be broken glass everywhere."

"it would also be hilarious to see marxist Broockman--who spends most of his time railing against all institutions of privilege, such as yale, being white, and all salaried professions--joined up with a bastion of old-boy power."

"Yea but he didn't say Yale's 'best' or Yale's 'co-ed' societies....he said 'Those all male secret societies' if my copy and paste skills are correct...in which case you would know nothing about...because...they are secret."

"What the summers comment was really funny but yea it would be nice to know what happened."

"If your parents aren’t sure why they’re paying for an Ivy League degree — well, they’re finally right."

"I went to Princeton and while I agree with the writer about some things I actually think her experience sounds much more well-rounded than mine."

"well i went to an ivy league sch too...one of the top ones too. I'm smart and pretty good looking...but these qualities don't help you in the relationship dept. You need to learn modesty -- as opposed to what ppl here are saying."

"...while im glad that the staff of "On Harvard Time" are commenting"
posted by grumblebee at 9:44 AM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

cortex: “Everyone here is boxing at shadows. That's a given going in, and part of why, as jessamyn described yesterday, these sorts of threads really aren't great: there's not much to do here except opine at one another.”

Then why in god's name is this thread still open?
posted by koeselitz at 9:57 AM on July 11, 2010

the internets will break if people stop opining at one another
posted by pyramid termite at 9:59 AM on July 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

Then why in god's name is this thread still open?

Oh yeah, way to ignore the Flying Spaghetti Monster believers, you heartless redneck!
posted by new brand day at 10:01 AM on July 11, 2010

Then why in god's name is this thread still open?

Because we're holding out hope for decent discussion and we usually only close threads if there's a compelling reason to close them, not the absence of a compelling reason to keep this thread open.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:06 AM on July 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Fake or not, this question gives all of us an opportunity to share our advice and experiences for anybody who is reading the thread to benefit from.

"Benefit"? Really?

She asked about communicating with him and dealing with him on a more mature level.

She never asked about getting out of the relationship or should she stay in the relationship. She said "I don't want to break up", meaning: "this isn't what I'm asking about".

Yet almost all of the reposnses were snarky, shallow "dump him ASAP" answers.
posted by L'OM at 10:08 AM on July 11, 2010

There ain't no revolution, its evolution, but every time I'm in Georgia I eat a peach for peace.
posted by Sailormom at 10:21 AM on July 11, 2010

Because we're holding out hope for decent discussion

Recipes anyone? Preferably low carb?

P.S. The question falls so squarely within the realm of probable it is completely unsurprising to me, but than again I'm not a grammar/punctuation nazi nor do I quibble about how people semantically put together phrases.
posted by P.o.B. at 10:30 AM on July 11, 2010

Recipes anyone?

I had grilled flounder with peach and cranberry salsa a few nights ago, along with roasted brussel sprouts sprinkled with rosemary. Delicious!
posted by new brand day at 10:51 AM on July 11, 2010

Group B
Those who enjoy the work of Ayn Rand
Those who detest the work of Ayn Rand
Team Jacob
Team Edward

OK, I guess I'll have to out myself here: I'd totally choose Edward over Jacob.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:55 AM on July 11, 2010

"I beg you each, enjoy a peach, but please don't touch me plums"
posted by blueberry at 11:23 AM on July 11, 2010

damn, link was supposed to be to this...
posted by blueberry at 11:24 AM on July 11, 2010

The question may be bullshit, but as I don't see anything to gain from it (unless, okay, there's some long con working here in which the poster puts herself out there as a naive young thing who's interested in older, monied men, and some guy reading it says, "Why, hello! I am an older, monied man who would like to have sexy sex with an eighteen-year-old girl like it was my profession, am I not? And this gentleman she speaks of sounds like quite the cad! Why, I do believe I will drop this defenseless creature an email and see where it goes from there!" and then...but really, there are simpler ways for a young woman to attract an older man, like basically waving at him and smiling, and much better cons to run, I'm sure, so I'm sort of doubting that's what's happening here), I'm more inclined to believe it's real than not. The potential for plain old lulz seems limited, at least to me. I dunno. This is a situation that does occur in the real world. I don't think it's so bizarre that it raises a flag. What am I missing?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:36 AM on July 11, 2010

So I'm the author is this question in the first place. I got pissed when I found this thread for different reasons 1) I'm just as real as everyone else here and posted an issue I wanted advice for it. 2) My grammar skills are not indicative of my intelligence, I'm posting on a fucking social website not writing for an admissions essay. 3) I have nothing to gain from being dishonest when all of you are complete strangers to me.

I find it very disappointing that questions the members here post are trashed like this.
posted by xbeautychicx at 11:57 AM on July 11, 2010 [36 favorites]

Welcome to MetaFilter!
posted by fixedgear at 12:04 PM on July 11, 2010 [13 favorites]

Surprise, people will question your credibility on the internet. Sorry you had to find out this way.

It's a pretty ugly thread. Not one I'd be happy to find after posting an AskMe.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 12:12 PM on July 11, 2010

Yeah xbeautychicx, don't take this personally. I know that's hard cause, hey, you bore your soul and problems on the internet and a bunch of nerds jumped in and questioned your intelligence and candor. That feels really personal.

But this is part of learning how this community works. We've almost all made mistakes when posting here and that's how we learn how the community works and how to better behave here.

No doubt a lot of users have sent you mail trying to explain a little more about what in your question (and posting history) raised red flags. Sort through some of the jabbing here and in your original thread and listen to the people who really are trying to give you some good feedback about both your problem and how you are using the site.

The longer you stick around, the more you'll see that threads like this are less about the people they discuss and more about the site and the community standards. Then it will stop feeling so personal and nasty.
posted by greekphilosophy at 12:12 PM on July 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

"My grammar skills are not indicative of my intelligence, I'm posting on a fucking social website not writing for an admissions essay."

That's fair enough, but Metafilter is a community with both formal and informal rules, customs, and accepted behaviors that exist in order to allow us, as complete strangers in an online forum, to relate and communicate to each other in an experience that is different and better than say askyahoo or any other forum online.

Conscientious writing (ie hitting that preview button and double-checking what you wrote - remember that for those Ivy League classes you're going to be taking) is one of those informal rules that if you break, people will read as information about you.

This is particularly relevant because you are brand new to metafilter and people don't know you except what you tell us about yourself. Also you threw what is in fact a molotov relationship cocktail of grah, and drama into Ask-Me.

Consider this trial by fire, and welcome.
posted by stratastar at 12:23 PM on July 11, 2010 [11 favorites]

I've been on Metafilter for over a year now, and looking back, at the beginning it was much like walking into a room of complete strangers to me who all know each other well and starting to talk out of my ass. Like many other people, this has at times resulted in making an ass out of myself or doing stuff that makes the hive mind all grumbly. This community has pretty nuanced, unwritten norms that I still find tricky to parse out. The thing is, I don't think there's a great way to go about it other than being respectful, listening more than you talk at first, and realizing you're going to trip sometimes. That's to be expected until one day you wake up and over your steaming plate of breakfast beans, you realize, shit, I'm one of them now.
posted by emilyd22222 at 12:24 PM on July 11, 2010 [5 favorites]

Yikes, this thread is embarrassing. xbeautychicx...you're brave for popping in here and standing up for yourself. But greekphilosophy is right...this place is, well, weird like that. Any one of us can point to a misunderstood or wacky post in our early histories. Not saying it's right, but take what you can from it, and from the original thread. I hope you stick around...you will come to love us jerks, I promise.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:24 PM on July 11, 2010

Oh and I'll have you know I'm currently sitting next to stratastar and reaming him out for his ironic misuse of commas in that post.
posted by emilyd22222 at 12:25 PM on July 11, 2010

But this is part of learning how this community works. We've almost all made mistakes when posting here and that's how we learn how the community works and how to better behave here.

I disagree that this is an example of the community working. This MeTa should probably been given the hook after cortex's comment. Content-wise, there wasn't anything wrong with the question. Presentation could be better, but that could be said of most FPPs and Asks. Rather, people need to learn to accept questions on the terms given and not run to MeTa whining "Troll! Troll!" when something rubs them the wrong way; it leads to behavior that is more damaging to AskMe's utility than someone getting secret jollies by tricking people into thinking a fake question about a fairly mundane subject is actually a real question about a fairly mundane question.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:28 PM on July 11, 2010 [9 favorites]

Yeah, it's really too bad that this became your introduction to many other members of the community, xbeautychicx. I think a lot of us forget that there are human beings that type the words we see on the screen. I'm guilty of forgetting this, too.

If it helps, I read your AskMe thread and saw many great answers in there. I think you should take this as the core of the community. I've been here just over 2 years, and have lurked for longer than that. There are members here that I've locked horns with that I pal around with now. I wouldn't stick around this long if I didn't feel the good being far, far stronger than the occasional and unavoidable ugly. Stick around.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 12:35 PM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

quietly adds May-December romances to the List Of Things That Do Not Go Well Here
posted by fixedgear at 12:35 PM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

You cant deny that this thread demonstrates something very important: that if you have a complex subject that you wish to ask about, you had better damn well frame it carefully to avoid meltdowns like this MeTa.

Naw, it demonstrates that people are too quick to post MeTas and play at being droll assholes at the slightest bit of pile-onable provocation. And I say that as an accredited droll asshole.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:38 PM on July 11, 2010

MeFi is now in its teens. It's downhill from here until it leaves to go to an Ivy League college.
posted by subbes at 12:43 PM on July 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

Piss off subbes.
posted by xbeautychicx at 12:45 PM on July 11, 2010 [6 favorites]

There's a lot of good discussion and participation that's occurred since cortex's comment (the least of which has included peach cobbler!) that couldn't have happened had the thread shut down. I'm glad it's still open, especially as it's allowed the OP to have a voice in all this mess. Also, a lot of the community norms get continually enforced by the users, not just the mods...which can happen when threads stay open and we pedantically jump around between what's right and wrong for us and the site, as well as what's delicious.

Besides, there's so much MeFi traffic outside the site, where people in similar situations to the OP are looking for advice...it would suck to not have these threads around just because we suspect this situation is not real for the actual person who posted it. And, who cares?

Btw Alvy, I don't think you're a droll asshole at all, fwiw.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:45 PM on July 11, 2010

Hope it gets better.

It will when people start posting some more recipes. There's a great peach cobbler recipe from Butthole Surfers frontman Gibby Haynes at the end of this June 1986 interview in SPIN magazine.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 12:48 PM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

xbeautychicx, I know sometimes that it's hard but don't take anything here as a slight. Just try to take what you can to improve yourself.
posted by P.o.B. at 12:52 PM on July 11, 2010

What's up with people who use the internet? They're weird.
posted by fuq at 12:58 PM on July 11, 2010

her apparent lack of any self-awareness about the very significant power she does hold in this relationship just because she's a good looking young woman
Most young women have absolutely no idea of the power they wield. Honestly, I was one and I had no idea. Now I'm old and I look at young, beautiful girls and I think, you fool! You have all this power! Wield it! But no, they are too busy being insecure and terrified, thinking they are unattractive, clumsy and foolish and, in between times, trying to figure out just what this adulthood thing is all about anyway.

Believe me, if I could turn back time and be 18 again I would find a deluded old rich man, marry him immediately and then poison him. Then I would swim around in a giant pile of hundred dollar bills while laughing demonically but unfortunately this never occurred to me while I was still in the trophy wife demographic. That's nature's way of protecting deluded old men, you see. oh hamburger, don't take me so seriously. They would be fifties.
posted by mygothlaundry at 1:00 PM on July 11, 2010 [33 favorites]

The original OP comes across as really insecure and pretentious. It's her pretentiousness that makes the post sound false, but I have no difficulty believing that she's a real person and that she actually talks like that in real life, or that she's dating a guy that's a lot older than she is, or that the guy realizes that she's insecure and takes advantage of that. Unfortunately, one partner exploiting the other's insecurities is pretty common.

It worth noting she she said she was "Ivy League bound." Presumably this means that she has aspirations of getting into a good university, not that she's in one.

I'm hoping that, as a new AskMe user, she doesn't realize that realize that there's such a thing as MetaTalk. She probably doesn't need us making fun of her grammar to make her feel any smaller.
posted by nangar at 1:06 PM on July 11, 2010

I'm hoping that, as a new AskMe user, she doesn't realize that there's such a thing as MetaTalk. She probably doesn't need us making fun of her grammar to make her feel any smaller

...

(Psst!)
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 1:08 PM on July 11, 2010

Alvy, I don't think you're droll.
posted by new brand day at 1:12 PM on July 11, 2010

To make some of more skeptical users aware let me clear up a few things:
1)I treat this website like a social posting website, not a SAT exam.
2)I chose to mention I was going to an Ivy League school in my headline to point out that I'm not some ditzy kid dating an older guy, I didn't want to deal with receiving responses that were irrelevant(little did I know..)
3)Of all the people in here that seriously denied the authenticity of my post, not 1 of you more mature, educated, and wiser adults decided to send me an email asking me to explain further, or ask for detail.(so intellectual).
4)I've admired this site for some while now and have no inclination to quit now that I've joined(I'm not going anywhere, you can't scare me away).
5)I value only reasonable, respectful opinions and comments(they taught me that at Columbia Univ.) So say whatever you like.
posted by xbeautychicx at 1:21 PM on July 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

You cant deny that this thread demonstrates something very important: that if you have a complex subject that you wish to ask about, you had better damn well frame it carefully to avoid meltdowns like this MeTa.

Actually, this makes me think "screw MeTa and any small minded person that starts petty shit. N

Neither of our responses are healthy for the site or community.

To make some of more skeptical users aware let me clear up a few things:

xbeautychicx, at a certain point, it's best to step away from a MetaTalk thread about you or your post, it tends to descend into a fighty mess (not that this one has been a shinning star anyway). I think you're close to reaching that point. Just let the haters hate and debate, you go elsewhere and exfoliate. Yeah, i shouldn't rhyme, so what

You don't have to prove anything to anyone here.
posted by new brand day at 1:27 PM on July 11, 2010 [5 favorites]

You don't have to prove anything to anyone here.

Precisely. Also, starting to think a lock might be a really good idea.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 1:29 PM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I chose to mention I was going to an Ivy League school in my headline to point out that I'm not some ditzy kid

Ivy League and ditzy are hardly dissonant. Give it a few years and that sentence will make you crack up, too.

Seriously, I'm sorry you are feeling hurt by the assumptions and interpretations that have been made here. But Stratastar is right, in that on a site where writing is valued and words are all you have, the writing of your question didn't serve you very well.

Speaking for myself, when what people here are saying is making me angry and making me want to get all fighty, I take a break and walk away from it, and let someone else have the last word. You don't win by engaging sometimes; when it's like that, it's better to just read a book or take a walk and come back later.
posted by Forktine at 1:31 PM on July 11, 2010 [6 favorites]

So, you're not breaking up with us, either?
posted by hermitosis at 1:31 PM on July 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

I plan to stick around. I regret putting something so personal on here and will now keep my business to myself but I still am fond of this site. Hope it gets better.
posted by xbeautychicx

I knew you'd be reading this thread, but when it came down to writing my comment, that awareness flew out the window, and I don't even know how that could have happened.

But I do know I did wrong, and I apologize.

I hope you'll stay around for a good long time.
posted by jamjam at 1:33 PM on July 11, 2010 [5 favorites]

This MeTa left a really bad taste in my mouth. Tearing apart Askers just discourages asking questions. Just ugh.
posted by Danila at 1:36 PM on July 11, 2010 [7 favorites]

in that on a site where writing is valued and words are all you have, the writing of your question didn't serve you very well.

This is complete and utter wrong. I think it is really bad to take Askers to Meta and pick apart their grammar. If it were unintelligible, the mods would have helped but that wasn't the case. It was snark, pure and simple.

People can't snark in AskMe (although they do try) so they come here to do it, like this is a private little hate club and not a part of the site.
posted by Danila at 1:39 PM on July 11, 2010 [6 favorites]

Just kidding, xbeautychicx. I'm glad you're staying, honestly MetaTalk can seem pretty harsh because of its backstage-area feel, but this is pretty much where we ask and say all the things that we don't want to (or aren't allowed to) say on the rest of the site. That way the community's horrible awkward phases don't wind up on public display. Well, not quite as public anyway.

Mefites tend to get judgy in the absence of certain kinds of information, because they immediately begin to project their own ideas onto a question or issue. That's why you see so many people getting hung up on your tone or your word choice. They're reading your question like tea-leaves, searching for traces of info that will fill in the blanks in your story. And by the time you jump back in to clarify, they already have their minds made up.

I say always err on the side of too much information when it comes to personal AskMe questions. And also always be prepared for no one to really get it.
posted by hermitosis at 1:40 PM on July 11, 2010

xbeautychicx, this is kind of off-model for us -- it sometimes transpires that an AskMe question goes down this road, but not often, and I'm kind of surprised this happened to yours. There isn't a good excuse for the douchebaggery that's happened here (and there is seriously zero excuse for it to continue now, you-know-who-you-are). This really hasn't been the site at its best. Sorry you had to deal with it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:41 PM on July 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

the rest of you low lives can die slowly. Thanks for reading :)

Yep. Every second reading here is a second gone sometimes.
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 2:05 PM on July 11, 2010

3)Of all the people in here that seriously denied the authenticity of my post, not 1 of you more mature, educated, and wiser adults decided to send me an email asking me to explain further, or ask for detail.(so intellectual).

To be fair, that's not something that happens a lot at MeFi. My impression is that the mods might write if they have a question, but beyond that, I wouldn't imagine writing to a user and saying "Are you for real, or what?" If it seems like there is a personal reason to ask a specific question, yeah, you might email a poster about their question person-to-person; but if it seems like a problem where the whole community is maybe being trolled, the norm is more or less to raise it as a community issue. I might be off base on that, but that's my sense.
posted by Miko at 2:16 PM on July 11, 2010

To add to what Miko said, there's a certain pointlessness about emailing a suspected troll to ask them if they're trolling.
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:31 PM on July 11, 2010 [4 favorites]

Jesus Christ, this call-out is upsetting. Some of the judgmental language in here ("18-year-olds will date anyone"? "Ivy League schools must have some pretty low standards"?) makes me ashamed for this website. I suppose all of you just sprang into being at the wise age of [greater-than-eighteen], fully formed and ready to snark?

Yes, there's a MetaFilter culture of "conscientious writing". Yes, she could have represented herself better. But honestly, what makes it okay for you to draw conclusions on the entire worth of her being based on one question? In the balance of harms, which do you think is greater? A community getting trolled, or an 18-year-old-girl already facing a tumultuous time in her life getting ripped apart by hundreds of strangers on the internet for being insecure and self-inflating and a shitty writer? Even after she posted here demonstrating that she knows you're talking about her, some posters continue to justify your attack on her by saying "sorry, but that's just the way it goes around here".

I'm sorry, I don't care how high-brow the level of discourse at MeFi is, there's no defense for being mean, ever.

Infuriating.
posted by Phire at 2:36 PM on July 11, 2010 [37 favorites]

One thing, xbeautychicx, that you might be aware of is that this community has an unfortunate tendency to view situations outside of their experience as "trolling." You know, "Oh, this cannot possibly be real. This must therefore be some elaborate hoax."

Some folks here, while I do not agree with their views, are so often regarded as trolls by others that I have come to believe that tendency to be a prime measure of how much an echo chamber a given community has become. This tends to occur in any internet community whenever it reaches a certain level of homogeneity and self-regard.

It's especially weird here, because there's a lot of chat about diversity, but that diversity support seems to be on a surface level of attributes viewed as something like pluggable personality traits you can just stick on your Mr. Potato Personality — race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, some selection from the DSM-IV, etc., like rolling up a character from Dungeons & Dragons. When the differences get deeper than that, you will see the behavior here, that so many are suddenly doubtful that, wow, people can be in these strange (to them) situations or have some completely different attitudes about life.

It's a shortcoming in a reasonably worthwhile group full of some fairly smart people with a wide variety of educations both academic and in life. It rankles now but later it will be something you will hopefully come to simply be on guard about and occasionally needle folks over when they get too "Not Of The Body."

So, uh ... welcome?
posted by adipocere at 2:40 PM on July 11, 2010 [12 favorites]

MetaFilter: shit, I'm one of them now.
posted by infini at 2:49 PM on July 11, 2010

I really, really hope that some of the people who yelled "troll" publicly (or if they don't have the cajones, privately), apologize to xbeautichicx, but I'm a pessimist, so I doubt it's going to happen.

I hope it happens for three reasons:

1) Because people here hurt xbeautichicx's feelings, and an apology might make her feel better. (It also might make me feel better -- feel that I wasn't hanging out in an ugly, suspicious, unmannerly place.)

2) I'm SURE some of the people who cried "troll" don't think they have anything to apologize for. I'm not talking about people who still think she's a troll. I'm talking about people who now think, "Ok. I was wrong. So what?"

It really depresses me that people think -- as some always do in these situations -- "I accused someone of something; I now see I was wrong; but there's no need for me to apologize, because my accusation was reasonable, given the info I had."

Via this ethical stance, you can accuse someone of ANYTHING -- being a child molester, whatever -- and feel no need to apologize if you learn you were wrong, as long as your accusation was reasonable at the time you made it.

The logical extension of this is that you can chase the "child molester" through the country side with torches, catch him, tie him to a stake and throw rocks at him. Then when you learn he isn't actually a child molester, you can say, "Well, I had good reason to believe he was at the time ... now stop whining about your broken leg and your concussion!"

I can't argue with this. It's a value difference. But it's one that matters greatly to me, and I have to put people with the opposite value in a little boxed area of my brain. That place where I list people I need to beware of in the future -- the people I think of as sociopaths or in-the-sociopath ballpark.

3. Some people seem to think that, when they've been proven wrong, the best thing is to just not say anything. To just slink away. To just go silent. This is a chicken-shit move. If you do this, you should be sitting at the children's table. Have the guts to say, "I still think she's trolling," "I now realize I was wrong, but I have nothing to apologize for," or "I was wrong, but I apologize." Don't just say nothing and hope it goes away. It doesn't.
posted by grumblebee at 3:02 PM on July 11, 2010 [11 favorites]

The logical extension of this is that you can chase the "child molester" through the country side with torches, catch him, tie him to a stake and throw rocks at him.

If you're going to indulge in hyperbole, you could at least throw in a few rabid dogs, and some castration with a rusty machete.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:12 PM on July 11, 2010

I got spanked hard in my first Askme, but you know what? I needed to be.

I was hurt, and annoyed that my good intentions & generally decent motivations were mocked, picked apart, and basically shat upon, but still, I learned some things.

I had some incorrect assumptions of mine questioned. I was forced to re-examine things I thought I already knew. All in all, the spanking was a good thing.

xbeautychicx, I hope you took away from your Askme question some of the wonderful advice about finding someone who treats you well, and some of the good observations about manipulations of your self esteem.

You are not a troll, but your bf is.

Good luck with everything, and glad to see you will stick around.
posted by Grlnxtdr at 3:14 PM on July 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

I love you, man, but you're sure sounding like a dick here. It must be so nice to be so utterly sure of yourself!

Yes, it's wonderful to be sure of myself.

As for the OP's self defense, I could be flat drunk and posting to 4Chan and I would still use the personal pronouns correctly. But then that's just I.
posted by fourcheesemac at 3:33 PM on July 11, 2010 [5 favorites]

Can we decide a few positive courses of action for the future? I have several suggestions:

1. If you're going to accuse someone of something, you should link to the thread. Mpls2, as the author of this thread, it would have cool if you could have put a link to it in the AskMe thread to let the original poster know what's going on. A person shouldn't have to stumble across a thread like this later, after its gotten a head of nasty steam.

2. Anyone who reads a thread like this should check the AskMe thread to see if a link has been posted there, again to let the original poster know something MeTa is going on. Hurray to Burhanistan, who actually did that. It only took one of us (including me), 18 hours or so to do that, despite many of us commenting in MeTA about the subject, We can and should do better than that, especially if we're going to enjoy that warm, glowly feeling of being a member of Metafilter.

3. Remember you don't know everything. People are strange and funny at times and there are plenty of them out there who will do things or be in situations you can't imagine and never dreamed of. Take it as an opportunity to learn something, rather than enforcing your limited world view.

4. Enough with the snobby "You have typo's in your writing, therefore you aren't smart". If you're educated as you think you are you should have learned the fallacy of that line of thought a long time ago. That said, there's no reason to completely let crappy writing breed on the site, nobody wants that. There's nothing wrong with leaving a helpful note or mefi mail, just don't be a condescending jerk about it, ok?

tl;dr: Don't not to be an asshole and try to help out the community you're a part of.
posted by new brand day at 3:35 PM on July 11, 2010 [11 favorites]

OK, grumblebee, I'll take the bait. Let's see what I said in my earlier comment:

I'm willing to accept that she's in a crappy relationship with an older dude, but my guess is that she's trying to make herself sound better (highly attractive, very smart, etc) so she doesn't get an answer like, "look, you got yourself into this, and you should hold onto him because how much better do you really think you're gonna do on your own?" Not that anyone here would ever say anything as dumbshit as that, but I bet all this other stuff is just her building herself a buffer.

And compare it with what xbeautychicx said later when she came in here to post:

2)I chose to mention I was going to an Ivy League school in my headline to point out that I'm not some ditzy kid dating an older guy, I didn't want to deal with receiving responses that were irrelevant(little did I know..)

Now, I would say that I got pretty close in my interpretation of her post from a troll/not-troll perspective, so I don't think I've got anything to apologize for. But what does that accomplish? Saying that others should come back in here and respond to their earlier comments isn't productive, and it's not going to go anywhere good.

The best thing to do is to back slowly away from the room, stop commenting in this now completely unnecessary thread, and let xbeautychicx and everyone else get on with their day. No need to perpetuate any of the bad feelings.
posted by phunniemee at 3:40 PM on July 11, 2010

That said, there's no reason to completely let crappy writing breed on the site, nobody wants that.

Just a helpful note; you could really do with a semicolon instead of a comma before the 'nobody'.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:40 PM on July 11, 2010 [4 favorites]

Conscientious writing (ie hitting that preview button and double-checking what you wrote - remember that for those Ivy League classes you're going to be taking) is one of those informal rules that if you break, people will read as information about you.

i'm laughing, because those who prattle on about such crimes as split infinitives, comma misuse and cute expressions about peaches are saying a LOT more about themselves than they're "detecting" about those they're inspecting

come to think of it, most of xbeautychicx's detractors are much more trollish than she ever dreamed of being

god forbid this kind of thing ever gets common in our society

COP - hey, detective johnson, we just found this note in a walmart parking lot by a girl who says she's being held captive in the trunk of a SUV

(detective johnson looks at note, wads it up, and throws it in the wastepaper basket)

JOHNSON - she's misspelled 2 words, said the guy was meaner than a boar in a peach orchard, hangs out at walmart and is in a SUV - i don't see why we should bother with her
posted by pyramid termite at 3:45 PM on July 11, 2010 [4 favorites]

Just a helpful note; you could really do with a semicolon instead of a comma before the 'nobody'."

I hope a dingo eats you.
posted by new brand day at 3:49 PM on July 11, 2010

The logical extension of this is that you can chase the "child molester" through the country side with torches, catch him, tie him to a stake and throw rocks at him.

If you're going to indulge in hyperbole, you could at least throw in a few rabid dogs, and some castration with a rusty machete.

I was confusing, because I wrote "logical extension." I'm not sure where that came from. As far as I know, there's no such phrase as "logical extension." What I meant was "logical extreme," as in "your view, if taken to extremes...."

Had I been clear, I'm assuming you wouldn't have responded that way. Because "taking something to its logical extreme" isn't hyperbole. It may be, in some cases, some other sort of error, but it's not hyperbole.

If someone says, "I should be allowed to spank my kid, because he's MY kid, and so I should be able to do what I want with him," and I reply, "Oh, so you're saying it's likely that one day you'll choose to burn your kid alive, and you have a perfect right to do that," THAT'S hyperbole.

If I say, "taken to logical extremes, your notion that your kid is owned by you and you can do whatever you want to him means that you can kill or torture him," that's not hyperbole. That's logic.

If the dad then accuses me of hyperbole, he's refusing to, in good faith, examine the boundaries of his claim. His claim was that he has the right to do ANYTHING to his kid. Does he mean that or doesn't he. If I say something un-extreme, like, "So you're saying you have the right to give him a time out," we learn nothing.

When one is examining a point of ethics, it's important to define the extremes. Without doing that, there's no way to say anything universal about it. I often don't see what's wrong with my behavior until someone points out what would happen if, say, everybody started doing it.
posted by grumblebee at 3:50 PM on July 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

phunniemee, I wasn't talking about you or anyone in particular. I'm very aware that some people claimed that they were SURE she was a troll. I can't remember who that was.

But what does that accomplish? Saying that others should come back in here and respond to their earlier comments isn't productive, and it's not going to go anywhere good.

The best thing to do is to back slowly away from the room, stop commenting in this now completely unnecessary thread, and let xbeautychicx and everyone else get on with their day. No need to perpetuate any of the bad feelings.

I just want to get our positions really clear. I'm not trying to catch you out on some point of logic. I just want to be sure you understand me and I understand you. From my (probably prejudiced) point-of-view, our positions are...

ME: if you falsely accuse someone, and later agree that your accusation was false, you should apologize to that person.

YOU: no, you shouldn't. There's no point.

IF that's in fact how you feel, do you EVER feel there's a point of apologizing? When.

Sorry if I'm misunderstood your position.
posted by grumblebee at 3:55 PM on July 11, 2010

On the internet, no one can hear you scream.
posted by kaibutsu at 4:09 PM on July 11, 2010

Apologize for what? I never said the OP was a troll.

Nor does her appearance in this thread, high dudgeon and all, change what I think.
posted by fourcheesemac at 4:10 PM on July 11, 2010

...let xbeautychicx and everyone else get on with their day. No need to perpetuate any of the bad feelings.

Not before I get to say that I'll take punctuation illiteracy any day over that "I'm just too cool to use caps" attitude. I'd use a killfile for those comments, if it existed. Then again, I'm old and crotchety and will almost certainly be found one day soon barricaded in a tower aiming a rifle scope at all the uptalkers who are ruining the world.
posted by CunningLinguist at 4:10 PM on July 11, 2010 [6 favorites]

Yeah xbeautychicx, don't take this personally. I know that's hard cause, hey, you bore your soul and problems on the internet and a bunch of nerds jumped in and questioned your intelligence and candor. That feels really personal.

Um, bore your soul? She put a hole through her soul? That isn't even close to a typo. Intelligence indeed.
posted by futz at 4:12 PM on July 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Apologize for what? I never said the OP was a troll.

Nor does her appearance in this thread, high dudgeon and all, change what I think.

Was that in response to what I wrote? Because, as I said, I was taking about people who had accused her. If you didn't, I wasn't talking about you.

IF you accuse someone of something and then find out you're wrong, you owe that person an apology.

If you don't find out you're wrong, you don't owe him an apology.

If you didn't accuse him, you don't owe him an apology.
posted by grumblebee at 4:13 PM on July 11, 2010

Hope it gets better.

It's actually better than it used to be.
posted by amro at 4:13 PM on July 11, 2010

and dhoyt returns !!
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:23 PM on July 11, 2010

Metafilter: we bore our souls.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 4:33 PM on July 11, 2010

That isn't even close to a typo. Intelligence indeed.

because what this thread is missing is more people being dicks.
posted by nadawi at 4:46 PM on July 11, 2010 [7 favorites]

mpls2, please stop posting this kind of MeTa. Email the mods if you have future concerns about the authenticity of a question. And you definitely owe the asker an apology. It's the right thing to do at this point, and it'll be interesting to see if you actually bother to do it.
posted by mediareport at 4:46 PM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

but that diversity support seems to be on a surface level of attributes viewed as something like pluggable personality traits you can just stick on your Mr. Potato Personality — race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, some selection from the DSM-IV, etc.,

Oh, just those trifling little things? Aww, are they so very last year?
posted by desuetude at 4:54 PM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Um, bore your soul? She put a hole through her soul? That isn't even close to a typo. Intelligence indeed.

I really hope you never make homonym-based errors, because you should only be casting stones if you are without sin. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you never make mistakes like this -- though they are very, very common errors that most people make.

Here's something you should know about your fellow humans: we make them often. Please go easy on us.

I'm the son of an English professor who wrote over 25 books; I have only had four of my books published; I have a Masters Degree, but it's from a lowly state school. I write every day, and I proofread everything I write. Still, I repeatedly make such errors. What do you recommend I do to raise my IQ?

You see, I was taught to read back what I write. I read it aloud. When I read bare (when I should have written bear), it SOUNDS right. And, since it's a correct spelling (of an incorrect word), my spellchecker doesn't catch it. I'M FUCKED!

I was recently looking over one of my published books, and I found an error like this. I think it was wear/ware. I missed it and so did two editors. So we ALL need intelligence! I guess it's the diet. Too many Poptarts. Or maybe I masturbated too much when I was a kid. I knew I should have been reading Proust and diagramming sentences!

You know, it's possible to be a careless person who doesn't give a shit. But those of us who give many shits STILL make errors. (I mean except for you. I know you don't.) It's awesome that we make writing mistakes, isn't it? Because if you feel like humiliating someone and can't think of another way to do it, you can always look through his writing and find something dumb he did. It's like a blessing from Jesus that will always allow you to feel superior!
posted by grumblebee at 4:55 PM on July 11, 2010 [8 favorites]

I'd like to suggest that you're giving too many shits. Your work here is done. Go masterbait.
posted by found missing at 4:59 PM on July 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

I hear you. We disagree. One can never give too many shits about rudeness. Also, I'm out of lube.
posted by grumblebee at 5:01 PM on July 11, 2010

You know who else didn't apologize?
posted by fleacircus at 5:01 PM on July 11, 2010

I treat this website like a social posting website, not a SAT exam.

There's a huge space in the middle that you're missing. It's true, most MeFites tend towards the "SAT" end of things, and that's going to seem really uptight to you if you see MeFi as a social posting website, because we're not. There is an expectation of proper writing from most members of the site. Yes, we all goof up on spelling, or punctuation, or whatever, and sometimes we call one another out on it. Sometimes we even call ourselves out when we catch our own errors. No one expects that every question you ask, or every comment you leave, is written as if you were taking an essay exam. But every website's culture has an accepted style of communication, and MetaFilter's is mostly proper writing.

How you write on the 'net is part and parcel of how you are perceived on the 'net. Once people get to know you better, they'll be less likely to care than they were this time, since it was our first impression of you. But this simply isn't Facebook, nor do we want it to be. If you plan to post and comment here as if it were, you're probably not going to get the kind of reaction you're looking for.
posted by tzikeh at 5:04 PM on July 11, 2010 [8 favorites]

WT? USED TOO PEEPS GOT ALL UPPITY ABOUT USING CAPS, NOW THERE'S A THING 'BOUT NOT USING THEM? hUH? i gUESS yOU cAN't Please Everybody. ok, wHATEVER.
posted by Some1 at 5:04 PM on July 11, 2010

tzikeh: Not using this like facebook or myspace, but I'm not going to go slit my wrists if I goof up a post.
posted by xbeautychicx at 5:07 PM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

There is an expectation of proper writing from most members of the site.

Disappointing the expectations of such people is one of life's more rewarding pleasures, I find.
posted by enn at 5:09 PM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

"I find it very disappointing that questions the members here post are trashed like this."

But look at the delicious, delicious attention you're getting. :)
posted by Jacqueline at 5:18 PM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Disappointing the expectations of such people is one of life's more rewarding pleasures, I find.

You have disappointed me by writing that properly. OH I SEE WHAT YOU DID THAR.
posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 5:18 PM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

i fuck up grammar, i don't capitalize, i use dashes and ellipses like they're going out of style and no one starts nasty threads calling me a troll. at first the whole grammar derail seemed like grasping for straws to support picking on someone and now it's just a lousy attempt at saving face.
posted by nadawi at 5:21 PM on July 11, 2010 [9 favorites]

You know who else didn't apologize?

Carrottop?
posted by new brand day at 5:33 PM on July 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

No one called e.e. cummings a troll, either.

Metafilter: Nobody, not even the rain, has such small qualms.
posted by applemeat at 5:33 PM on July 11, 2010 [7 favorites]

Oh man, did I ever tell you about the time I had to do an oral report on a poem for an 11th grade English class and chose an e.e. cummings poem just to piss the teacher off? No? Seven glorious minutes, it stretched. Ah yes, those were the days...

l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness
posted by phunniemee at 5:37 PM on July 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

nadawi, because you don't capitalize, your stuff is harder to read. It runs together. I know it is cool to be all mavericky, but have heart.
posted by found missing at 5:37 PM on July 11, 2010 [5 favorites]

Apologize for what? I never said the OP was a troll.

What? Is this some sort of ironic commentary on the importance of proofreading?
posted by granted at 5:38 PM on July 11, 2010 [4 favorites]

i fuck up grammar, i don't capitalize, i use dashes and ellipses like they're going out of style

You almost sound proud of it.
posted by amro at 5:54 PM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

fuck up grammar, i don't capitalize, i use dashes and ellipses like they're going out of style and no one starts nasty threads calling me a troll. at first the whole grammar derail seemed like grasping for straws to support picking on someone and now it's just a lousy attempt at saving face.

You also like to mix your metaphors, I see.

(Although I have to admit that grasping at straws by the side of the tracks as your train is derailing is a gem of a combination)
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:59 PM on July 11, 2010

Maybe I'm overanalyzing, but I think the use (or lack) of punctuation on the internet has a lot more to do with style and identity within a community than an inherent expression of one's education or intellectual capacity. Do you write the same way on Twitter, or Facebook or Fark or MetaFilter? Is your handwriting the same as it was 5, 10, or 20 years ago? How about the use of totally, dude, like, insomuch, to be sure, however, fwiw, lol and on and on? Or how about the way we wrote comments and posts on MetaFilter before we were totally cognizant of the norms around here, and walked in with our own experience of online communities and what was expected? I bet many of us have little 'tells' in our earlier posts of our 'newness' to this place, but over time we adopt the local style and register to some degree.

I know that for me, my earlier AskMe's were much more focused around who I was and my particular problems (and all the insecurities surrounding them), and much less self-aware or expertly framed for the ways to get the best response from this particular community. But hell, I still keep some of my own quirks; everybody does. It's what makes each one of belong and what makes each one of us unique. It's why we can read the first line of some posts and have a hunch exactly who it is before we get to the tagline. Or why we can read a first line and know that this is a new or nonconformist poster.

We're all smart enough to see an AskMe post for it's naivety about in-group knowledge AND its request for some relationship insight. We can address both at the same time, no?
posted by iamkimiam at 6:02 PM on July 11, 2010 [6 favorites]

UboRoivas, the word "derail" no longer just refers to trains (check a recent dictionary), so I'm thinking it's not really a mixed metaphor.
posted by amro at 6:04 PM on July 11, 2010

This has gone about as well as it possibly could have, kudos to the question asker for being way cooler about it that anyone had any right to expect.

I'd like to offer my opinion that this thread be closed quickly, before it takes another bad turn.
posted by chaff at 6:06 PM on July 11, 2010

You almost sound proud of it.

it's more that i think those who are worth getting to know won't give a damn about my stylistic choices.
posted by nadawi at 6:08 PM on July 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

See, now it took a bad turn.
posted by found missing at 6:09 PM on July 11, 2010

Yeah, I think we're probably in good shape to close this up. xbeautychicx, welcome to the family, sorry this was a bit bumpy but that's part of life as an active participant on the site sometimes. Hopefully you got something useful out of all this; drop us mods a line via the contact form down in the lower right if you've got further questions about stuff.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:11 PM on July 11, 2010

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