thirty seven roses

Yesterday, as I was pulling out of a gas station, I took a turn a little too wide. I didn’t hit anything, and nobody was beside me so it didn’t really matter. The driver of the car coming in the opposite direction, who was not effected by my wide turn whatsoever, took it upon himself to gesture at me very dramatically to let me know that I was a horrible driver and I should probably go kill myself. That’s what I took from his gesture, at least. Since he was already past me in the opposite direction, and I was on my merry way, I thought about what would have happened if I decided to pull back into the gas station and confront him. The guy was in his late twenties, beefy, and drove an early 2000’s Chevy Cavalier. He probably would have been stunned if I decided to pull up behind him, block him in, and proceed to scream some nonsense at him. This is not something I would ever do, however, I don’t like going after a competition I know nothing about.

Rob has told me several horror stories about cyclists and their encounters with vehicles. Most of the stories I would rather not know about since he rides his bike on the streets pretty frequently and every time he does, I fear for his life. Some drivers don’t respect the cyclists, some drivers get mad and run over their bikes, and some drivers shout out strange things to cyclists as they ride by their cars. There is a strong community over at Bike Pittsburgh dedicated to ranting, raving and getting revenge when a cyclist is scorned by a motorist.

Using the power of the Internet, it’s easy to identify that driver, his employer, his wife’s employer and his criminal record. I don’t think too many victims choose to maliciously retaliate towards their perpetrators, but is sure is empowering to have these little bits of information in hand.

Another way IRL road rage relates to teh Internetz is when people post rude, disrespectful or obscene comments on personal blogs. The commenter feels safe behind their shield of anonymity just as the driver feels safe behind their $36,000.00 SUV. Even if the commenter can be tracked, it’s not likely that they’ll face any legal action. I’m not sure what the general consensus is beyond deleting these types of comments. Maybe some content producers go to their perpetrator’s blog and post out-wittingly more disrespectful comments on their posts; I wonder what the statistics are.

There are so many factors that go into a road rage situation beyond the actual incident. If the driver has just been dumped by their girlfriend of 4 years, their dog just died and they ate a bad egg salad sandwich for lunch and you come along and cut them off in traffic, you’re bound to get a rain of hate, and it really has nothing to do with you.

I think the same idea goes for mean comments. There are shades of jealousy that are evoked by the mystique you can pull off on-line, you only post the photos you look great in, you only blog about the good time you had last weekend. You don’t show the world that photo someone took showing your back fat and you don’t post about the mold spores in your bathroom. If you do, more power to you, but most people don’t. Anyway, the image of yourself and your life that you portray on-line is at your own discretion, and if some long lost friend stumbles upon your profile or your blog, they’ll only get an outline of how wonderful you are doing and how successful you are. You might as well post that photo someone caught of you picking your nose, you wouldn’t want someone to get jealous of your life and start being mean.