Yeah, the Web can be vicious, as I found out the other day, when I had to ask a guy to stop using pics of me on his gay profile on Plenty of Fish.
I sent him a reasonable but firm email, and over the weekend his reply included this logic:
“…oh by the way once you put your pic on the net its out there and it comes with the territory dude…”
Actually it doesn’t, dude. The pics come from my blog, which I own, and you posting them is copyright infringement. When my friend Jenn, a kickass lawyer, learned what happened, she pounced on it and drew up a high-falutin’ letter (it contained the word “expeditiously”) which I sent to the legal department of Plenty of Fish.
But before I replied back to him, he sent me this:
“…now shut the fk up, I don't even log on to the sites no more…”
Well, since he asked nicely…
I waited to reply again. And then he sent me this:
“Hey dude I apologise I thight about it and if that was me id be totally pissed too yeah it was fked up, so ill leave it that dude…”
On the off chance this gentleman was capable of killing me and wearing a suit made of my skin, I chose to instead kill him with kindness, and I finally replied and thanked him.
He apologized again and even attached a couple pics of his real self, and I shifted to feeling compassion for the guy. It’s a little heartbreaking to think that people are out there who feel as if they’re not enough.
And to them, I’d say something I’d meant to include in the card I wrote to my friend’s son for his Bar Mitzvah, about things every man should know. When I was younger I spent years wondering what made someone charismatic. And what I found was that it’s not a flair for words or an ability to own a room – it’s simply owning oneself. If you’re a comic book geek, own it. Car’s a piece of shit? Own that. Your body type, your job, your clothing, your level of intelligence, the nutty way you walk, talk laugh, sneeze or cry, own it.
Make no apologies, and that is charisma, my friend. And no man or woman can resist it. Be good.
