May 12, 2003

Blogroll reduced by one

Amish Tech Support was deleted from the blogroll today. Although Laurence's posts are often filled with his own unique humor, I sometimes find that he shows very little compassion for others. I forgive some of the animosity displayed for those of Islamic faith, as it is evident that Laurence is Jewish, but I could not conceive of any reason for the last comment in this post.

The stupidity of the young lady resulted in her death. While the episode might be a good lesson for others, the pain felt by her friends and family is "real." They do deserve our compassion.

UPDATE: Laurence ragged a bit about my having publicly announced deleting his blog from my list of "QUALITY BLOGS." As the link had been listed for a lengthy period, I thought I owed my small readership, who might have noticed that the top link was missing, an explanation.

Another Update: Ravenwood - 05/12/2003 04:15 PM

De-Link Whoring

If I'm ever hard up for an Amishlanche, I'm going to consider publicly delinking Amish Tech Support. I noticed that last time Laurence featured me on a post, I got a good 150 visits out of it. Laurence's rant about recently being publicly de-linked is sure to net the offender 300 or more hits. Is he simply link-whoring? I'm not sure, but he trackbacked both the originial post, and Laurence's reaction.

Perhaps I could try a daily de-linking, and see how long it takes the law of diminishing returns to kick in. One of these days, I'll take the initiative to try that with Instapundit. Assuming Glenn would notice, I might get an Instalanche worth thousands of visits. Of course, the resulting hate mail might be a bit annoying, but there is no such thing as bad publicity, right?

Posted by Tiger at May 12, 2003 11:32 AM
Comments

I can't decide whether to tell you to piss off, go pound sand, get bent, or just blow you off. Since I have more than two options, I can't just flip a coin over it.

I may just have to hold a poll on the subject.

Posted by: Laurence Simon at May 12, 2003 11:42 AM

Well, you could keep me in your thoughts and prayers. I bet you won't, though.

Posted by: Tiger at May 12, 2003 01:54 PM

A far too high percentage of the humor in Amish Tech Support is mean-spirited. The post in question wasn't even funny in a tasteless way; it was just cruel.

I think the word is starting to get out about Amish Tech Support ... I had a public disagreement with Simon a month ago and received some e-mails where several people agreed his site had no class, wit or integrity. He ran one of those polls he threatened you with and a full 38% of his own readers said he was a creep!

I suspect Simon is going to be one of the first meltdown figures in the blog-sphere, as more and more people catch on to this guy.

Anyway, I wanted to give you some support. Good for you for tightening up your standards on your blog roll.

Posted by: IB Bill at May 12, 2003 03:22 PM

IB Bill: mebbe you could use a humor transplant?

Posted by: feste at May 12, 2003 10:23 PM

Hmm ... you know I once slipped on a banana peel. Really. Walking across an open-air fruit market. Lost my footing, hurt my back forcing myself to stay upright. Looked down, saw a banana peel. My back hurt for three days afterward. It was still funny. Q: How did you hurt your back, Bill? A: I slipped on a banana peel.

If I had been killed by that banana-induced slip-and-fall, I'd understand [in the afterlife] if people had to laugh a little bit. It would be hard to hold that in. I'd laugh, too.

But a 17-year-old girl, doing something whimsical and high-spirited, killed in a freak accident? No, that's not my sense of humor.

Posted by: IB Bill at May 12, 2003 11:40 PM

Whimsical and high-spirited? She fell at least a full story for doing something highly stupid and knowingly dangerous! Regardless of whether you find humor in her death or not, there's little question she was an idiot, not a free spirit.

Posted by: Aaron at May 13, 2003 12:19 AM