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I think this is only the second time I've ever been blocked anywhere. And that other time, the person was just having a bad day and I said the wrong thing. They unblocked me the next day.
This one was different. In amongst a small flurry of spam friend requests (I sure wish Myspace would add a spam button on the friend request page) I got one request from a real person. So I sent her a quick message asking if there was something in particular that prompted her to add me.
She sent me a one-liner that said "The first line of your profile." That was nice to hear. But at the time I read it I was in the middle of something else and didn't take time to study her profile closely and write a real reply.
About forty mins later I got another one-liner that said, "To be more specific, you sound like someone that I would like to get to know." Also nice to hear. But I didn't want to reply with just a one-liner of my own.
Email just isn't a very good medium for curt exchanges like that. Taking this situation as an example, after two emails I had gotten almost no additional information from her. Yeah, she might like to get to know me. I'm bright enough to figure out that general idea from the initial friend request. But was there anything beyond the first line that caught her attention? Or was she just surfing Myspace and added me on a whim? (Which I think is a perfectly acceptable answer. Go ahead and be open and honest about your motive, whatever it may be.)
So, I didn't have time to answer, yet. That's the nature of email. It's generally not an immediately-interactive medium. I had never intended to ignore her. In fact, I felt I was showing some respect by planning on taking time to type up a real answer. (I think I had to leave to go somewhere. Part of the reason I didn't have time to reply just then.) That's the nature of email. Right?
Several hours later I checked my email. Apparently, after I left and about forty mins after that second email, she sent one that said, "of course I could have been completely wrong."
Um. Okay. I see.
Oh, well. Not necessarily an insurmountable misunderstanding. I figured that the respect that I had intended would show when I did reply. So I went ahead and typed up a reply that I thought was pretty decent.
I apologized for not answering immediately, and stated simply that was the nature of email. Then I commented on how her friends list was dominated by members of the Howard Stern cast. I mentioned that I used to listen to Stern and generally liked his show. And then I commented on a Stern video clip she chose to include on her site that trashed Rachel Hunter. I asked why she happened to pick that video. Did she have something against Hunter? Just curious.
The reply I got back was a complete surprise. Somehow, she read my inquiries as attacks on those things I mentioned. She accused me of being the morality police.
Huh?
I chose to ask about her Howard Stern choices because I thought it was something we could talk about. I have never paid any attention to Rachel Hunter so I have no real opinion of her one way or the other. I was just curious how she happened to choose that clip. I'm eternally fascinated by peoples' motives and behaviors. Was it simply a random clip, just to see how to embed a video? Or was there something more to it than that?
Basically, she was annoyed that I didn't instantly answer her content-free one-liner emails. And therefore she was searching for reasons to dislike me. I tried to explain myself to her, but apparently she has blocked me. (I type up the email and hit send, but it never shows up in my Sent box.)
I wonder how often she perceives that she's wronged by other people. That sounds like a very rough way to live life.
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