Amber doesn’t like my website

From my contact form, Amber wrote:

You’re website is by far the most disgusting thing I’ve read. I am talking about your article on anorexia. I weigh 93 pounds and am 18, I am not anorexic but I do have health problems because of my weight. It is not okay for you to tell people they are fat and ugly, you have a right to say what you would like and so do I. You are a terrible fucking person, people like you make others feel discouraged and down, I’d like to see what you look like. You are wrong and fucking disgusting. Thanks for the horrendous read.

So many things to mock here, where do I begin?

Let’s do this sentence by sentence.

You’re website is by far the most disgusting thing I’ve read.

Let’s start with “you’re”. That means “you are”. It’s actually very different from “your”. It takes more effort to make the typo you just made than to do it right.

As for my website being the most disgusting thing you’ve ever read… really? Girl, you need to get out from under “you’re” rock. My site is pretty horrible, and that whole anorexic calculator is irredeemable. But the most disgusting thing you’ve ever read? Have you never read horror novels? Did you only discover the Internet yesterday?

Here’s some free advice: never EVER read Mo Hayder’s “Birdman”.

I am talking about your article on anorexia.

Okay, that’s a sentence I’m quite sure I cannot mock. Hell, you even used the proper “your” this time. Well played, Amber. Well played.

I weigh 93 pounds and am 18, I am not anorexic but I do have health problems because of my weight.

Here’s the thing about weight and age: they don’t mean a whole lot by themselves at a certain point. 18 is definitely past that point. How tall are you? If you’re particularly short, 93 pounds could in fact be perfectly healthy. If you’re extremely short, 93 pounds could be overweight. If you’re six feet tall, 93 pounds probably means you’ve recently died. So a little context here would help a great deal.

It is not okay for you to tell people they are fat and ugly, you have a right to say what you would like and so do I.

So in a single sentence, you want to tell me I can’t say something… and that I have a right to say whatever I want. Were you arguing with yourself while writing this?

And by the way, not for the first time, you really seem to suck at using commas. This should be two sentences. It’s not like I care about how stupid you are per se, but I could have had more fun if you’d given me more sentences instead of so many of these “smash all my thoughts together with commas” abominations.

You are a terrible fucking person, people like you make others feel discouraged and down, I’d like to see what you look like.

This time it’s three very distinct thoughts puked out with commas separating them. Kinda makes me think you wrote the email in Excel and then exported it as CSV.

You want to know what I look like, though? That seems creepy. You start off with a hate-filled rant and all of a sudden it’s “send me ur pic”? I mean of course I’m flattered, but quite honestly you seem a little too crazy for me. And honestly, if you’re 18 and 93 pounds, well that’s just way too (skinny|fat|healthy) for my tastes.

You are wrong and fucking disgusting.

Okay, I can’t disagree here. That’s another point for Amber.

Thanks for the horrendous read.

And thank you for the email your seven-year-old sister obviously wrote! Tell her she needs a bit of work on grammar and punctuation, but it’s not half bad for a second grader.

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On a more serious note: Amber clearly didn’t bother to read between the lines, which is kind of unfortunate. After I was told about a girl who used my site as an excuse to basically starve herself to death, I changed all the calculations to return actually valid results which fall within the safe levels of the more official calculators. And at some point thereafter, I appear to have disabled the calculator altogether. I guess I decided I didn’t want my site to function as a way for people to legitimize their disorders – but the overall joke isn’t something I feel needs to be taken down.

It’s still pretty offensive to people, and I won’t apologize for that, that was half the point of building it so many years ago. But it should be pretty clear to anybody who looks at it today that it’s satire and fairly harmless (though particularly rude).