Page 39 of Kind of Famous
I clicked on the Private Messages link and opened an administrative request from Adamant to help Scott, aka MetalNation, figure out why he couldn’t log in. Scott’s email address was included. I grumbled in annoyance. I’d instructed everyone in the Admin Info thread to contact Ash about this kind of shit for now.
My order came up. I grabbed the coffee and pastry and moved to a table where I opened Scott’s profile and discovered that his email address on record didn’t match the one they’d sent and updated it. Then I wrote back to say:
Tell Scott to request his password again.
The next message was from some user I’d never heard of: Sandman. The subject of this was:Your blog post.
I sighed.
Sometimes people would contact me to respond personally to an article I’d written or an opinion I’d posted instead of just commenting right on the blog or forum. Stifling a yawn, I opened it.
If you want your band to be respected for their music, you might reconsider sending your army of mouth breathers to infest a well-respected reviewer’s opinion piece. You give the band a bad name.
That put Bon Jovi in my brain, and I hummed “You Give Love a Bad Name” as I hit Reply and set about typing a jaunty rejoinder.
Thank you for taking the time to share your opinion regarding my blog post. Perhaps you’d like to post in the comments section, as that is what they are there for. Unlike the reviewer you refer to, I welcome dissenting points of view.
I actually started out thinking our fans shouldn’t vociferously disagree with a bad review. Then I had a second thought: It’s entirely possibly the reviewer is deaf and/or musically ignorant.
I do appreciate your feedback, but in the future, bear in mind that I have 14,000 registered users and can’t always respond to every private message.
Have a good one.
And send.
That probably would merit a scorching reply, but half the fun of the Internet was kicking ass. After all, I hadn’t taken my fight to him. Unless of course, that had actually been Gabriel.
Wait.
I opened the original message again and hit the moderation tools link on it. The user’s IP address showed up, with an option to block or ban the user. I clicked a link to open another website that would locate the origin of the poster.
New York City. Interesting.
It wasn’t definitive by any means, and likely far-fetched. Still, who else would go out of their way to defend Gabriel as a “well-respected reviewer”?
I finished my coffee and muffin as I quickly read through the rest of my messages. Then I remembered I hadn’t checked back on the TotA site for a response from Jaclyn. As I walked, I pulled up her board to find a message from her.
Pumpkin!
It’s been too long! How are things? I have to admit, I’m curious to know why you’re interested in our sweet drummer boy, but I won’t pry. Much. :)
Not sure what you’re hoping to discover. I’m sure you’ve already read his bio on the blog. We’ve got some collected vids of him drumming. He tends to favor the DW Design Series for his toms and bass drum, and Zildjian cymbals . . . but somehow I don’t think that’s what you’re after.
If you want to know something specific, like about his temperament or whatever, feel free to ask. I won’t pretend to be the resident expert, but I’m happy to share what I can.
Jaclyn
What could I ask her discreetly? What would I think if she had started digging for intel about Walking Disaster’s bassist Mark Townsend out of the blue?
I stopped at the corner so I wouldn’t run into anyone as I typed a quick response.
Jaclyn,
One of my friends told me she met Shane recently and thought he was super cute. She wondered if he was seeing anyone and whether there were any red flags. I did poke around your forum a bit, but I don’t think she’s looking to dig up his whole dating history.
Pumpkin
She could at least point me in the right direction. With her lax moderating, anything terrible about Shane would still be on her forum somewhere. And the Internet was forever.
