Thursday, January 22, 2004
(5:25 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Funny Story
I was once part of the English majors' listserv at Olivet, a liberal arts university in the Wesleyan tradition, and since I was an asshole at that time (I have since reformed), I used to stir up trouble among the participants by pointing out grammatical errors, etc. This would create a lot of discussion, which would annoy those inevitable poor souls who were on the listserv by accident, but normally wouldn't say anything because they were only getting an e-mail or two a week.
One of those poor souls was Marcus Butterfield, an aspiring attorney who had apparently switched from English to political science. After a long, petty argument, he finally broke down and asked (I paraphrase), "Can someone take me off this stupid list? I'm not an English major, and I'm not interested in your e-mails." I knew Marcus, and so I e-mailed him personally and said, "Wow, Marcus, did you know that the faculty reads the listserv, too?" He wrote back a few minutes later and said, "Yes, why?" I wrote back and said, "Well, you just wrote, 'Can someone take me off this fucking list?'" I eventually let him know I was just kidding, but I really had him going for a second.
I don't know what ever happened to Marcus, but his sister has a blog where you might be able to glean some information about him -- and to tie this back in with the beginning of the story, the last time I talked to her (online, when she was using someone else's screen name), she said, "How are you, you fucking asshole?" I asked her what she meant, and she said I knew, and then we decided to stop talking. A mutual thing.
In any case, I have since reformed.
