I don't know, but I dropped Madamina a line with a link to this thread.

It doesn't read as a joke to me. Perhaps madamina will enlighten us. If not, you could try MeMailing her - are you on Mefi, treepour?

Thanks, TPS and Miko. I'm definitely eager to hear Madamina's take on it, if she chooses to share it with us, but I guess part of my curiosity is the fact that it's been favorited so many times. That suggests I'm missing something . . . others perceived something (real or projected) that I didn't, and I'm very curious as to what that something was.

Well, MeFi just got through a long close look at favorites, and one of the interesting things that emerged is that a significant number of people use favorites as a bookmark, as well as using them to give a thumbs-up, and a few other reasons. If I were to project a little, I'd speculate that people thought it was a good story about a common experience: the gradual revelation that an innocuous-seeming person is actually a racist. And I think most of the favorites could be imagined to be saying something like "wow," "whoa," or "I might want to find this and relay it someday as a weird story about racism and the existence of modern-day Nazis." I know at least one of the favorite-ers in person, and I'm pretty sure he didn't favorite it as a way of endorsing the guy's viewpoint.

If it's playing the Godwin game, it's so subtle and convoluted that it's lost on me, at least.

It's kind of extreme, especially at the end, but sadly I don't think it's completely implausible, personally.

I took it pretty much the same way as Miko.

I think Madamina's horror story was motivated by previous comments noting that the subject of the post -- the kid who had put out the book about his classmates -- had written some pretty weirdly racist and homophobic things that most of the reporting and discussion had missed. So Madamina was just telling a story about a similar person she'd met in her own life who came out with some disturbing viewpoints in a similarly unexpected way.

I assume it's a true story which looks surreal because it's so condensed.

but I guess part of my curiosity is the fact that it's been favorited so many times. That suggests I'm missing something

One of my many many many problems with favourites. I turned them off and don't play the game anymore.

Madamina is on her way over to fully explain, but in short: it's true.

I think that it's a case of revealing some of the problems with having an overly-critical mindset devoted to developing obscure and unfounded taxonomies, hierarchies, and classifications. The implication seems to be that it's easy to slip from excessive judgement to outright prejudice.

And that these people are otherwise just like the rest of us. Dun dunn DUNNN!

I think THAT THREAD WHERE THE COMMENT IS would have been a better place to ask about it, for multiple reasons.

100%, horrifyingly true.

I mainly listed it because what this kid did was so close to what my... ugh, I don't want to call him my boyfriend, but it took a while for this to come out... what that other guy did. Really, why would you waste all the time you could be spending on MAKING or BEING friends with people when you can RATE them from the comfort of your own home?

He had a pretty heavy interest in German stuff in general, including genealogy and everything, so I didn't think much of it. But then the Mein Kampf thing came along. He swore he was "just curious," but I was not thrilled.

"Tell you what," I said. "This kind of weirds me out. What if you read one of my favorite books, too? Have you ever read Roots?" (It really is a great book!)

"Yeah... I'm not really interested in that kind of thing," he said.

He was just so gross. I feel like apologizing to all of you for even telling you this story. He was a 24-year-old virgin and listened to nothing but Blink-182. I should have known.

I'm sorry, okay? I'm doing much better now!

Nothing to be sorry about! Sometimes you just can't tell with people. They're nutty, people are, and often we like to give them the benefit of the doubt. You brought back an icky memory of a guy I dated very briefly in high school, who enjoyed the power and authority of his Eagle Scout uniform a bit more than normally seems healthy.

Wolfdog, I generally agree that MeFi might have been a good place to ask and get a quicker, more direct answer, but since this was a sincere enough question and wasn't an issue of poking fun at MeFi(tes), pointing to a trainwreck on MeFi, or playing stunts on MeFi, all of which are expressly out of bounds -- and since it seemed to be going all right -- it didn't seem to me that any action was necessary. But yeah, it's good for us all to remember that for people who are members of MeFi, there is MeMail and you can post or comment inthread to learn more sometimes. We want to keep a very good relationship with MeFi, and not give the impression that there's back-room gossip going on over here. I'm glad TPS let Madamina know, since it would be weird to stumble across this someday without having heard about it.

Madamina, thanks for coming along to discuss it. I hope you'll stay. You will find plenty of good company here in which to commiserate about our romantic mistakes of the past.

Sorry - that wasn't really a request for moderator action. The point was mainly that now we have a nice explanation of a comment that a lot of people might have been curious about, in a place where most of them will never find it. Not optimal.

Gotcha. I see your point.

I believed Madimina's story because it reminded me of this one guy I'd met for a lunch date and then through the course of subsequent conversations he got crazier and crazier. The straw that broke my camel's back was when he and I just couldn't see eye-to-eye about the validity of 9/11 conspiracy theories (he's the theorist, I am not).

Okay, I'm really late to follow up on this. Please accept my apologies.

Madamina, thank you so much for coming to this thread clarifying. That's really above and beyond what I was hoping for (which was simply an opinionated take on what on earth I was missing).

I didn't use MeFi mail because, I dunno, I didn't want to come across as somehow personally "confrontational" (for lack of a better word). Again, I thought I was just missing something, and was curious as to what that something was.

I didn't post it on the MeFi thread because a) I (naively) thought everyone got it but me and b) I didn't know how to word it so that it wouldn't come across as snarky. So this more relaxed MeFi-related space seemed like a good, non-threatening place to ask.

Wolfdog, you've got a great point, but I sometimes have no idea how to communicate tone online, especially in a place where some users, sometimes (and I'm not excepting myself from this) cultivate a certain degree of tonal ambiguity.

As for the actual anecdote, wow, Madamina, I just didn't want to believe it. But I don't think you're alone. I've dated guys who turned out to be really creepy too. And it's always left me feeling incredibly strange and self-doubting. Shouldn't the creepiness have been apparent from the beginning? Or was the creepiness just a cry for help that should have been met with a compassionate response? And what about ME attracted such a creep to begin with? Does that mean there's something wrong with me too?

Honestly, maybe my strong reaction to your comment had something to with my own unresolved feelings about my own encounters with creepy guys (and, who knows, maybe that's why it got a lot of favorites -- perhaps it hit some buttons in people who've had similar experiences). Again, thank you for sharing the anecdote as well as coming here to clarify. And, again, please accept my apologies for any unnecessary drama this post created.