User:Turcano/The Revenge Fantasy

Introduction

The Strawman

The primary temptation in doing this is that you believe it will make your readers see the rightness of your position and point and laugh at your target for making such a fool out of him- or herself. In reality, all it does is make you look like the lesser person, both for not letting the issue go and for bringing it up in a venue where the other party can't defend themselves. Additionally, it suggests that you didn't actually win the argument in question, because people who win arguments generally don't feel the need to pull this kind of shit.

The Reaping

This version is a lot like the Strawman option, but when you believe that murder is the wittiest comeback. In this case, humiliation is not enough; the target of your revenge fantasy must be made to suffer for the real or imagined pain that they have caused you. Whereas the Strawman option merely makes you look petty and childish, this option makes you look like a fucking psychopath. If you really feel the need to do this, first, don't put it on your website for everyone to see (especially in light of the fact that nothing that gets put on the internet ever really goes away), and second, take it as a sign that you probably have some serious issues that you need to work out with the help of a mental health professional.

Case Studies

Dominic Deegan

When reading Dominic Deegan, it becomes readily apparent that its creator, Michael "Mookie" Terraciano, never got over being bullied in high school.

Shortpacked!

David Willis, the creator of Shortpacked!, is a childish man with strong and readily vocalized opinions, thin skin, and an almost Bill O'Reillyesque need to prove himself right about everything regardless of the facts. And since a sizable percentage of the comic's strips already consist of portraying retail customers as stupid asshole strawmen as a foil for his put-upon protagonists (which may in fact be based on his own experience), it was probably inevitable that he would pull this tactic on his critics as well.

When readers complained about Willis' overuse of strawmen, he created a comic defending himself with an inaccurate definition of the term, which in turn generated more criticism. Hilariously, he responds to this charge by using a strawman of his critics spouting a strawman of the term "strawman" in an apparent attempt to create some sort of Strawmanception.

And it doesn't take a whole lot to set him off, either. For instance, he responded to a perfectly innocent question about a sex toy shown in one of his other comics by wildly assuming that his audience is ignorant of female anatomy and disparaging their collective sexual prowess in a manner that smacks just a little of projection. (You know, Willis, some people actually are capable of satisfying a woman without resorting to a twelve-inch piece of jiggly silicone. Just sayin'.)