The stupidest message ever posted on the Internet
People have been posting stupid messages on the Internet for as long as the Internet has been around, maybe longer. I always thought it would be hard to single out the single stupidest message.
Until now.
As you know, I often post dumb e-mails written to Raven-Symone by fans who don’t realize the address they’re using is not actually her address. I post those e-mails here in this blog. On Saturday, someone named “Shanae” stumbled across one of the batches of Raven e-mails and posted the following comment. Read it carefully.
hello whoever this is,
i just wanted to say, you are so SICK TO ME. i mean you are saying raven fans are idots and they are not. that is making raven look like a bad person. raven if you ever read this you just lost a fan because of this fake person. i thought i should become a fan of tia and tamara mowery. i am just saying, whoever you are,since the people that write to the FAKE E-MAIL ADDRESS are stupid,you are just making yourself look like a bigger dumbie. i am so sorry raven for saying that but it is true. if you ever get the time, look at what this person is saying online. look at what your number 1 fans are saying. nobody should even e-mail you because of this stupid person. i dont even care if you show this e-mail to your friends,family,and husband this e-mail because it is not going to hurt me. you can thank this SICK PERSON FOR ME WRITING THIS LETTER.thank you and have a nice day or night. i am still going to be a fan but you are my 3rd favorite person in the world.
I marvel at the stupidity exhibited here. Every single sentence is a treasure trove of bizarre leaps in logic, faulty reasoning, and outright dumbness. Here are the elements of stupidity that I’m able to identify:
• Some parts of her comment are addressed to me, and other parts to Raven. She tells me that by posting fans’ dumb comments I am only making myself look dumb. Then she apologizes to Raven for saying that. Wait, what?
• Somehow she thinks that saying Raven’s fans are stupid makes Raven look like a bad person.
• Somehow all of this causes her to stop being Raven’s fan, and somehow it’s my fault, like she has no control over it.
• She also has no control over her comment-posting; it was reading all the dumb e-mails that forced her to do this.
• Posting other people’s dumb e-mails makes me look dumb.
• “If you ever get the time, look at what this person is saying online.” Well, if Raven is reading this comment, then obviously she has already seen what I’m saying online. That’s sort of like saying, “If you don’t get this message, let me know.”
• Despite the top of the page saying “Eric’s Blog,” and despite the URL being EricDSnider.com, Shanae has no idea who is responsible for this website, or even that person’s gender.
• The implication that she has to choose to be a fan of Tia & Tamara Mowery (twins who were in the ’90s sitcom “Sister, Sister” and some Disney Channel projects) or Raven-Symone, but she couldn’t possibly do both.
• Calling someone a dummy but spelling it “dumbie.”
That’s what I’ve come up with. Can you spot any other signs of blatant stupidity? I think this is the kind of thing that’s so deeply layered you’ll find something new every time you read it.
November 12th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
I like how she starts off saying Raven lost her as a fan, then finishes by saying she’ll still be a fan, but there are now two people ahead of Raven in her celebrity scopes.
November 12th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
I’ll assume it’s the twins who have outranked her. Or perhaps it’s Eric times two.
November 12th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
I particularly enjoyed the line, “i dont even care if you show this e-mail to your friends,family,and husband this e-mail because it is not going to hurt me”.
Apparently she is suggesting that there is a possibility that if Raven showed the comment to her friends, family, and husband, she (Shanae) would be hurt (emotionally, I suppose). How this harm would (hypothetically) take place I am not quite sure of, but telepathically seems to be the only plausible option. However, she clearly states that it is not going to hurt her, possibly to imply that she has moved past Raven in her admiration of black-female Disney channel stars.
Or maybe she is just an idiot.
November 12th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Brilliant! The future of America, ladies and gentlemen. The future.
November 12th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
My favorite is:
i mean you are saying raven fans are idots and they are not.
No, we never called you an idot, just an idiot!
November 12th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Um, I really hate to say this, and I mean I REALLY hate to say this, but I think this letter is a fake. It’s just too good to be true. Of course I have no evidence to support me here, but I have a gut instinct that this is another “fake” e-mail to Raven.
…If it’s not, then I fear for our future more than ever before.
November 12th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Let me play devil’s advocate here. Obviously there are leaps in logic, faulty reasoning, and outright dumbness that Eric pointed out correctly. That being said, her main point is that once she found out how dumb Raven fans are, she became embarrassed to be a fan. She blames Eric because if he never posted the e-mails that Raven fans sent, she never would have seen how dumb Raven fans are. She is telling Raven to look at this and somehow put a stop to it, because it is giving Raven fans a bad name. Let me give you a sports example here to show what Shanae is saying. Say a website posted photos of the women at a Packers game. Showing that they are overweight and unattractive. A thin and pretty woman, who is a Packer’s fan might stumble upon this website and get mad. She might threaten to become a fan of the Lions or Steelers because she doesn’t want to be thought of like the women portrayed on this website. She might even say to the owner of the Packers, look at what this website is doing and put a stop to it. Now, if we replaced the fake websiite I brought up with Ericdsnider.com……..The pretty woman with Shanae………the Packers with Raven………the Lions or Steelers with Tia and Tamara……the owner of the Packers with Raven again………………we have a much clearer argument and it all fits and makes sense. The only flaw is that Shanae with the faulty logic and the bad spelling probably falls into the stereotype that she is so scared of being a part of. The pretty woman who is a Packers fan does not, and probably doesn’t exist anyway.
November 12th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
You guys, this is like booing at the Special Olympics. We should be applauding her efforts to use this– “internet”–, not laughing as she continually trips over her own feet. We’re all so going to hell….
O well, at least Eric will keep us entertained!
November 12th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
According to the writer, it’s not actually the posting of the messages that makes Eric look stupid; it’s the fact that the people even wrote them in the first place. Imagine that kind of power in the hands of the truly evil (not just the truly stupid)! I can make you look stupid simply by doing something stupid myself, only you would be publicly stupid and I could be stupid in private.
Beware the Stupid!!
November 12th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
I have an incredibly difficult time believing this is fake. It would take far more work to make this fake than it does to produce it in reality. I’m decent at mimicking other people’s writing styles…but I’m not sure I could imitate this girl if I tried. It lacks so much structure. Think about it. I’m sure anyone here could write a pretty incoherent stream of consciousness such as:
“whoever this is who is pretending to be Raven Symone is stupid and even more stupider because they’re posting stuff by other people who don’t get that isn’t Symone and I hate this person because Symone is awesome except now I hate Symone more and I’m going to give up and go cry to my best friend ever but hey Symone if you’re reading this please email me your favorite fan bye!” (add in a multitude of spelling errors, of course — I’m too lazy for that at the moment)
Likewise, I’m sure anyone could write a detailed logical argument (like the aforementioned Packer example) making the same points. But the ability to purposefully write a fake incoherent stream while conveying the voice of an author who is convinced every word is actually logical and reasonable…that would take a genius.
I know the esteemed members of the Writers Guild are bored at the moment…but I doubt even they would give themselves that horrendous of a task for entertainment.
Thus, our only other option is that our contributor is a genuine “idot”. Scary.
November 12th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
You know, I can see how this whole misunderstanding about the e-mail address could happen. Let’s say you type in a web search for Raven Symone’s e-mail address and ericdsnider.com turns up as the #1 result and the blip of text says, “These are e-mails sent to symone.raven@gmail.com, an address that does NOT … No matter how much you write to it, symone.raven@gmail.com will NEVER BE …”
So you don’t even click to see ericdsnider.com and find out what the significance of the phrases “will NEVER BE” and “an address that does NOT.” You just copy and paste the e-mail address and show off your best writing to impress your most favorite celebrity in the whole world. Or if you make a few writing mistakes, it doesn’t matter since your favorite celebrity is very down to earth- a real woman of the people. She understands since she talks like you do, saying things like “oh, snap” and stuff.
To make matters worse, someone else didn’t click to read the fine print either, and began posting the e-mail address on their bebo.com profile.
It’s just a vicious cycle that makes everyone look like an “idot.” (Note to author, use Firefox, it has a spell-checker-as-you-type feature than underlines misspelled words in form fields.)
But I especially thinks it’s funny that the author of the stupidest post on the internet says, “i dont even care if you show this e-mail to your friends,family,and husband this e-mail because it is not going to hurt me.”
She’s “writing” a comment on a blog post! How could she confuse that with composing an e-mail?
November 13th, 2007 at 1:47 am
When did the word “sure” become the word “possibly?” When people say they are sure of something the hyperbole is obvious. I’m not SURE just anyone could write a detailed and logical argument. However, Homerific stated that he’s “sure” anyone could do as much. As I read the initial logical arguments I’d have to say quite the contrary. Not just anyone could actually make any sense out this email/post and I applaud the effort.
November 13th, 2007 at 9:38 am
I can just picture this girl with a white board in her room ereasing Raven’s name from #1 on her favorite list and moving her down to #3…. priceless.
November 13th, 2007 at 11:00 am
@ Ben C.:
And crying uncontrollably while she’s doing it. Oh the vagaries of human kind! You’ve broken my heart Ben!
November 13th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I’m totally going to start calling people “dumbie” from now on. Pronouncing silent letters (especially in misspelled words) is more fun than boring old regular English.
November 13th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
To my “defining sure” friend: my “anyone” comment was meant to be a complement only to the other commentators on this thread, who seem to have risen above the level of adolescent internet l33tsp34k and can construct coherent sentences.
As far too much evidence supports, we know the majority of “everyone” cannot write such detailed logical arguments.
November 13th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
I laughed my [butt] off at “you are my *3rd* favorite person”. That’ll show her!