This month’s AJnet Archives article: Old fan mail!
Yes, that’s right, this site actually received fan mail at one point.
I’ve talked a lot about all the haters and the people I’ve offended over the years, but the truth is the site received way more fan mail than it did hate mail. Most of it wasn’t more than one or two lines, usually something to the effect of “Love your site, you rock!”, but a lot of people would also tell me specifically what articles they liked, why they liked them, and sometimes tell me stories from their own lives. I genuinely appreciated all the fan mail I received, even if sometimes the sender’s sanity was questionable, or they completely missed the mark on the point I was trying to make.
I also usually made it a point to reply to every email, even the ones that were just a couple of lines. For one, I wasn’t getting inundated with email, so it was easy to do. I also wanted to kind of set myself apart from Maddox, who was known for not usually replying to emails (because he was usually inundated with them). I did reply to most of the fan mail I’m going to share here today, though I’m obviously not going to be sharing every reply.
I have quite a bit of fan mail saved, about 60 or so emails going back as far as 2007. I’m certain that this wasn’t all of them and that some were most certainly deleted for whatever reason over the years. Don’t worry, I won’t be re-posting all 60 emails, only the ones I found interesting or had stories behind them.
The first piece of fan mail that I have saved was my invitation from Hellcaster to join Rantlister (which I’ve written about before):
Hey A_J
All your content is great and your site design is pretty wicked ill be
sure to troll some forums for you to submit to your ongoing Banned!
page.
If you have the time you may like to check out www.rantlister.com that
features some great writers such as yourself and quite a active forum
base, but not too active.
Cheers
I checked them out, liked what they were doing, and the rest is history.
Not too long after Hellcaster’s invitation, I also received fan mail from one of the owners of Rantlister, Bob Smash:
In case you couldn’t tell from the email address, This is the insufferable Bob Smash. man, I love what I’ve seen of your site so far. The “banned” stuff is great, and the way you ended your “Women I Would Totally Fuck” piece about made me fall my fat ass out of my chair.
Kudos!
The article “Women I Would Totally Fuck” (which has been removed) was basically just a bunch of pictures of hot female celebrities, followed by a rather unflattering picture of an ex-girlfriend.
your rant about things that shouldn’t be done in porn. I fucking lol’d,
bro. Great job on that one. I found myself wishing I’d covered those
things too.
As you can probably tell from the first two emails, one of the early site’s biggest draws was BANNED! (later renamed TROLLED!), where I would visit web forums and shit post until I was banned or got bored, whichever came first.
One of the forums I visited was Ankaeo Studios. I’m not sure exactly what they were or even why I visited them (I think a reader might have linked me to them), but after my visit the owner sent me an email expressing his displeasure:
Nice one, Dickface.
Of course, I was compelled to reply:
Thanks man. I always aim to please.
You’ve got Down’s Syndrome so bad you have up, left, and right syndrome too.
His reply to my reply actually caught me off-guard:
As much of a dick as you are, though, nice layout. I like the links. XD!!
This was one of the best things about the older internet. Even after I came to his forum and insulted everyone, then insulted him again via email, the owner of Ankaeo still was cool enough to take things in stride and compliment my site. In a world where everyone is foaming at the mouth to get offended by any little perceived slight, this is something you really don’t see all that much anymore. Props to Ankaeo for being cool.
Quite often I’d receive fan mail from people who felt they could relate to what I wrote, and they would share their own personal experiences, such as the one in this email from “Perkele”, which is Finnish for “Devil” and is considered an obscenity:
Hey, Angry_Jerk. I’ve been reading some of your updates, and there are some things you’ve said that I think are very accurate and can connect with. In the one about why music today sucks, you mention rap music and how it promotes being a fucking idiot. I know all these dumbasses at my school who think they’re better than everyone else because they’re so ghetto, even though that’s nothing to be proud of. I’m not saying this is all the black people I know. I do know black people who are cool and white people who act like fucktards, but in general, obviously, more blacks act ghetto than whites. What’s true also is how you said they’re the type of people who’ll get all pissed if you look at them wrong. I experienced just that yesterday.
I was in my Earth science class, and we were taking a test in which we had to identify minerals. I was in line to look at one, and one of those guys who thinks he’s so much better than you because he’s a ghetto moron was behind me. I turned around just to see who was there, and he made that obnoxious clicking noise that’s so typical of people like him when they get pissed off, if you know what I’m talking about.
He said, “What you lookin’ at?”
I replied,”Leave me alone, you fucktard.”
“You dun say dat ta me!”
I knew I had to let him know how he’s not as superior as he thinks he is (in fact he’s not at all). I’m pretty sure he thinks this because most white people just accept it when black people act like assholes even though they don’t do that for people of their own race (which is racist), so he’s gotten the idea that this is ok. Also, since I’ve seen lots of girls (I am one) take shit from guys like this (and are even attracted to them, as you’ve mentioned), I was going to be the one giving him shit. I told him could say whatever I wanted to him because he was an idiot. He was so goddamn surprised and pissed off. When I was examining the mineral, he demonstrated that he has the attention span of a two-year-old, because after about one minute of me looking at it, he got all whiny and bitched at me to hurry up. I told him to shut up and that I would take as long as I wanted to.
Well, today in that class, that same guy threw a notebook across the room for no apparent reason. My teacher asked who did it, and since I hate the guy who threw it, I pointed at him and said he did it. He got sent out into the hall, and all of these other ghetto fuckers in my class started calling me a snitch. One of them, who is arguably even more idiotic than the one who I snitched on, said that I should get ready to get beaten down. This guy is always rapping and talking about how much he loves violence, how many bitches he has, etc. That reminded me about how you said that these people are reinforcing the stereotypes Martin Luther King Jr. worked to get rid of, while they ironically enough all see him as one of their heros.
I know that’s a long rant, but I wanted to tell you how I see what you’re talking about on your site all the time.
Here’s a video that’s saying something similar that I think is worth watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
I don’t remember what the YouTube video was.
Quite a few of my emails came from people still in high school. I’d like to think that my site provided catharsis for some of these teenagers, but realistically all it probably did was create more bitter assholes in the world.
Huh, that actually explains a lot, doesn’t it?
Every now and then I’d get some really interesting fan mail. Like this one from a woman named Jenn who sent me audio recordings of her kid endorsing the site:
i love your site and so does my son. listen to these clips i took on my cell an post them. please dont put my email adress up tho
The audio clips:
“When I grow up I wanna be just like Angry_Jerk!”
“AngryJerk.net rocks!”
This was kind of a “holy shit” moment for me. This lady liked my site enough to record two audio clips of her child (who by the sound of it couldn’t have been much older than 5 or 6) endorsing the site and saying that he wanted to be like me. I sincerely hope that this lady wasn’t actually letting her young child read my website, and I hope he chose a better path than mine.
Parents, it’s probably not a good idea to let your kids read this website. Even if we do have a child writer.
A common part of owning a website in the early 2000’s was trading links with other webmasters. It was an easy way to get your name out there and attract more readers while also helping someone else do the same.
Sometimes though, people would link to your site without expecting anything in return. Usually it was acceptable to just link to the site, but sometimes people would go the extra mile and ask permission first. This one’s from a Venezuelan guy named David asking permission to link to my site on his:
Hello there!
My name is David, i´m from a little country of south America called Venezuela. I´ve been cheking your site from a little while now, and I would like lo let you know that the content is pretty good and entertaining. Keep up the good work.
The main purpose of this e-mail is to let you know that i would like to add a link to your website on my own blog, and i wonder if there is any inconvenience for you if I do it. So, in order to prevent any issues as result to my action, I decided that it would be a good idea to ask you first.
I´m pretty sure that you probably will dump my e-mail before reading it, so in case of not receiving any aswer soon I will take that as a negative.
By the way, I apologize for any grammar mistakes on my writing. I´m still learning your language by my own.
Thanks.
www.5segundosenmicabeza.
His site is still up, but hasn’t been updated since 2010, and is entirely in Spanish.
I replied:
Ah, so you’re the Venezuela hit I’ve been getting on my log. I was curious.
Yeah, you can link to me. No problem at all.
Also, I very rarely get email from readers, so it’s unlikely your emails would get deleted. I’m not like Maddox.
I wasn’t joking, considering that I’ve kept his email around for almost 16 years.
I knew that I had finally made it when I received fan mail from Thilo of Ninja Pirate:
Where in the World is Morgan Spurlock’s dignity. With that kind of photoshopping skills, you might just become a threat one day.
Ciao
Thilo was referencing my article “Not liking fast food doesn’t make you any better than the rest of us“.
Thilo was one of my biggest inspirations for starting this website, so receiving fan mail from him was almost like communing with God himself. Since then we’ve sporadically talked over email, though I haven’t heard from him in a while. Hope you’re doing well, Thilo.
Sometimes I felt like I was the shepherd of the damned and the keeper of lost souls. People like Marlena would often send emails like this one telling me I was their hero:
AJ,
You are the biggest fucking ass I have ever seen. Damn…. I like you. Ha ha You speak your mind, fuck shit up… Why can’t there be more
ass holes out there? If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am severally MESSED up person, but I admire you. You are my HERO, man.
What is the title of your book? I will so go out and buy it NOW.
If I had wrote a book, it would have probably been called Diary of a Dumbass and been 300 pages of me being an edgelord.
I’ve talked about this before in my article “White supremacy is fucking stupid“, but I routinely received fan mail from genuine racists. I’ve deleted quite a bit of those emails, but here’s one I saved from a guy named Michael (who had previously sent me emails promoting white supremacy and people like David Duke):
Dear angryjerk,
I read your article on the anti-defamamtionleague and enjoyed it. I saw that verse matthew 10-44-48 which of course was changed to love thy enemies verse in todays bible. Could you provide a link where you got your version of that verse?
thanks
I didn’t really agree with his views and was actually appalled that he thought my made-up Bible verse was real, but because I couldn’t bring myself to be mean to a fan even if they were a racist piece of shit, I kept my reply polite:
Glad you liked the article. As far as the Bible quote goes, it was
fake. As far as I know, Matthew 10 ends at Verse 42. At least,
according to the New International Version on BibleGateway:
http://www.biblegateway.com/pa
I basically twisted around the “Kill’em all and let God sort them out”
quote to sound more Biblical.
More fan mail from someone who was very obviously a legitimate racist using my arguments to validate his views. This one came from a guy named Joe “The Cub”:
Here’s the first email I received from FYF, one of the most active users on the old AJnet Forums:
I like your site.
Is there any way I can help promote it?
This was actually a common question I received from readers, along with “Can I donate to you?”. This was the late 2000s’-early 2010’s, so it was still relatively easy to build an audience through word-of-mouth. As such, I always encouraged anyone interested in helping me to hold on to their money and simply share the site on social media or with their friends. I’m not sure if I actually ever received a boost from it, but it was the thought that counted.
My reply:
Thanks man.
If you want I guess you can tell all your friends “Hey check out this
cool site” or link it on whatever social networking site you use
(MySpace, Facebook, etc). If you’re really gung ho about it, you can
make stickers and slap them on walls and shit, but I personally don’t
think my site’s worth the money you’d spend doing it.
I’m also working on t-shirts for a CafePress store, but I have no idea
when that will be ready. I’m trying to keep the cost for the buyers as
low as possible without losing money myself. I think I toyed around
with a t-shirt on there once and it came to about $16 before shipping
with me making $1.50.
But for now, the best way you can promote is tell your friends and
link it on your MySpace or Facebook.
One article that got a surprising amount of fan mail was “Fix your fucking car and turn your shitty music down“. Readers like Jim routinely felt my pain:
Right on dude! I have to hear this shit every day. The music is super obnoxious but mostly it’s that fucking modified exhaust that they all have these days. I can here them from blocks away. I will never get how they think people like this. Anyway, thanks for your site.
I got a surprising amount of fan mail from young women. Here’s an email from a high school girl in India named Neeya:
Hey AJ,
I know you’d have heard this a whole lot from most of your fans but I’m going to say it anyway – I LOVE YOU!! You’re the awesomest writer I’ve ever EVER read… You’re cool and funny and well… perfect!
Sometimes I wish I was like you… Sometimes.
I’ve started these own blogs of mine which are kinda pathetic and filled with bullshit. I write stories, got three novels, crap and sad poems, rant writing is not exactly my forte. I just do it when I’m angry (90% of the time nowadays) But then I’m also really busy. I’ve started with a new school and their curriculum is vastly different from our old one, I’m having trouble coping up… Sorry, I’m typing non-sense again! So here are the links (which I hope you’ll check when you get the time) The Bad Neeya and The Crazy Neeya. I admit they aren’t really great but I don’t even think they’re that bad. (nothing, absolutely nothing can compare to your site!)
Okay, mail’s long enough now; Mainly because I fought with my Mother and locked myself up in the room… Sorry– I can get VERY tangential!
Thanks,
Tonnes of love,
Neeya.
PS- please reply, if you don’t I’ll… umm… uhh… err… Oh I’ll do something! But do reply!
PPS- My counselors said I have ADD, so you could disregard the earlier PS… On second thoughts- DON”T!!!
The sites still exist, but haven’t been touched since 2010.
Don’t worry, I replied to her:
Thank you for the very flattering fan mail. I’m glad you like my site.
I looked at your blogs, and they remind me of some of my first
writings. Writing is a great outlet for relieving yourself of stress
and emotional burdens (I know this from experience). Most of my early
writings were about people or things who pissed me off. While I can’t
say I agree with all of your opinions (I’m not fond of Gadafi,
Ahmadinejad, or Mugabe), it’s always good to see someone speaking
their mind despite what others may think. It doesn’t matter if I like
your writings or not, what matters is if you enjoy writing them. There
are always going to be critics, some constructive and most not.
Thanks again for the fan mail.
Her reply:
Gee, thanks! I never actually thought you’d respond…
Well, I don’t actually LIKE any of them but compared to that Obama, even Osama seems like an angel… Okay fine, not really but still. And I don’t agree with you much either. Especially not the UN bashing up. I feel that the UN is actually just a US puppet, that’s my opinion and it differs a lot from yours; I understand what you said.
Can I ask you something? Okay, I just did! Hehe, umm, what do you do? Apart from making your Flash series and site? I’m a student in the 11th grade. Am studying to get into IIT (Indian equivalent of MIT) Basically doing Sciences and Maths. You?
The rest of our “conversation” was basically me telling her that I worked in a supermarket deli, followed by her asking how old I was, and me telling her I was in my early 20’s. I wasn’t about to mess with a teenage girl. I hope Miss Neeya made it into IIT and is doing well.
Hey, I’ve seen your page, and I have to say, you’re just plain awesome.
Keep telling off the haters for us, that shit is hilarious, especially the Craigslist trollings.
I think you may just be the first person I ever look up to.
And if you need to troll at someone worth trolling, I can link you to a 500 pound adult that thinks that she’s still 14 that draws herself as a skinny cat-girl on those art social networks.
P.S.: Thanks for the meatspin link, now the white-Spanish-gangster population of my school have something to search for besides their constantly pregnant girlfriends.
Holy shit.
Thank you.
For the last God-knows-how-many months, I’ve been trying to convince myself that I’m not the only person who thinks Jersey Shore is a piece of shit.
Snooki looks like she has some kind of fucking tumor in her head that’s grown to the point where her entire hair rises up to accommodate it.
Again, thank you. You’ve made my day once again.
Sometimes people would try to trick me. This supposed “fan mail” came from “Diana Maze”, who was actually another rant site owner named “Mehungwaylo” trying to trick me into sending dick pictures:
Ha! Your website is so hilarious… i was wondering why don’t you have a picture of yourself like Maddox on his website? I bet your cute aern’t you! 😛
I kind of figured out something wasn’t right and simply ignored the email. After several not-so-subtle suggestions that I check my email, Mehungwaylo eventually confessed that it was him who sent this email with the hope that I’d send him a dick picture so he could blackmail me with it. Totally not gay.
One of the things I’d commonly write about was how institutions would often be biased against white people in favor of meeting diversity quotas. This is probably what made white supremacists think I was down with their cause.
Thankfully, there were intelligent people out there who realized that I wasn’t supporting white supremacy, but rather true equality. There were a few minorities out there, such as Sean, who agreed with my stance that Affirmative Action was discriminatory and even insulting to the groups it claimed to “protect”:
Hey man,
While I think you’re being a little too paranoid , you’ve definitely made some very good points in your latest article. Believe it or not, I’m actually a minority, and I just hate being treated differently. Here’s an example. Last month I applied for a job at the university library. The application form clearly states that the university has implemented a policy of affirmative action and will give preferential treatment to the following groups: Aboriginal Peoples, Visible Minorities, Persons with Disabilities, and Women (it sucks to be an able-bodied white man lol). And since I’m a minority, I will be given preferential treatment. They actually call this “Employment Equity”….I’m speechless. To me, this is a huge insult. Why? Because I don’t want people to think that I got a job because I checked a box that states I’m a minority. I want people to think that I competed for a job at the same level as everyone else. When hiring, the applicant’s qualification should be the only factor to consider. Race, gender, background….are completely irrelevant.
p.s. hurry up and add a forum.
Sometimes I’d get fan mail asking me to write about certain topics. This email from a guy named David asked me to cover the subject of the New World Order:
AJ, you’re a great man :)! You tell it like it is and it always gives me a laugh
I didnt see any videos about all this New World Order/Illuminati shenanigans
It would be pretty cool to see an article about it, even though the odds are they will find you/kill you as the article publishes
keep up the awesome work
I had already been kicking around the idea of writing an article about the New World Order for a while, and this email motivated me to write “A group of the world’s wealthiest people conspiring against the lower and middle classes? Impossible!” (later re-titled to “The New World Order isn’t ‘impossible’, you idiots”). I’d later go on to write another article about the New World Order, “The New World Order: Another Perspective“.
This fellow named Joe appreciated my taste in music, and recommended me a genre known as “Rape rock” and a band called “The Mentors”:
Hey i was just on your site and it was hilarious. I love Grace Slick, The Dead Kennedys, and Iron Maiden and agree with you over everything, especially Green Day. Since you love the dead Kennedys and Iron Maiden you shoud check out The Mentors, who’s genre is called “Rape Rock” and is a cross between metal and punk. listen to these awesome songs by them
My Erection Is Over
Heterosexuals Have The Right to Rock
Rock Em SOck Em
Golden Showers
Service Me or Be Smacked.
you’re way better than Maddox
I checked them out, and, uh, rape rock wasn’t really my thing.
Scott from North Carolina accidentally sent this fan mail for “Driving a pick-up truck doesn’t make you invincible” to the email address used for legal notices:
Here’s another letter about my pick-up truck rant, this one from a guy named Paul:
Dear Angry Jerk, I really loved your rant on pickup truck drivers and what assholes the majority of them are. You are absolutely 100% percent correct. I drive a Ford Taurus and have made a few observations on these asshole types myself. First the really grade A assholes drive black pickup trucks. Gotta have the whole macho color thing going on as well. Secondly, they usually have aftermarket glass packs or install a special muffler system that makes a loud, deep noise as they drive. They want you to hear them coming from at least a quarter mime away. Thirdly, the greatest assholes drive Dodge pickups. Dodge has that “big rig” look. Even though these morons aren’t real truckers they stay like to pretend. Lastly, the biggest douchebags drive 2500 series pickups. As with a 2500 series you sit up higher than a 1500 series. They usually don’t drive 3500 series as that seems to be a ” working truck” or contractor’s truck if you will. However I must add that tgose who drive black Ford F-250 pickups are a close second in the overall asshole title to those who drive black Dodge 2500 series pickups. Angry Jerk, again I really enjoyed your reading your blog and your really ‘hit the nail on the head’ when talking about pickup truck drivers.
Not all of my fans agreed with me on everything, and sometimes they’d let me know if they felt I took it too far, like in this email from a reader named Tim:
Hey man, I have fallen in love with your articles. Your witty criticism of the little things in life keeps me wanting more and more. I also greatly enjoy when you take stances on big topics, such as freedom of speech. Although I am a fan, I must admit sometimes I feel you go a tad bit over board on a few things, such as this:
“It turns out that the previous night, I had updated my site with an article about Columbine, complete with an animated GIF of the shooters fucking the Virgin Mary and Terry Schiavo in the ass.”
Aside from that, the rest is brilliant. Keep it up man!
The Columbine article has long since been removed and won’t be going back up, but I see no harm in sharing the GIF, which might just be the cringiest thing I ever made:
Tyler was a reader also from Philly who sympathized with my “Listening to music on the radio sucks” article:
hi angryjerk
wanted to say thank you for mentioning how bad the radio sucks. I work in food service too and the girls there just cant get enough q102 (fucking shoot me). I was starting to think i was the odd man out when nobody else showed an interest in turning the the thing off. big help to see your post and find someone on the same side as me
Angry Jerk,
You’re awesome! I’m glad you too also hate American women. I found myself a girl from India and we’re getting married soon. If I hadn’t met her, I would have stayed single. By the way, great blog! It takes a real man to speak his mind these days….
I wonder if Rahul here hooked up with Neeya. Oh god, could you imagine?
Receiving email from fans was honestly one of my favorite things about writing for the site during the early years. Though I’ve always written just because I like doing it, receiving validation in the form of fan mail always activated my monkey brain. It also made me happy knowing that people were finding comfort in the things I wrote, and I’m glad that it made an impact on so many people, even if that impact was small.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again and again. One of the things I truly miss the most is the sense of camaraderie that the early internet had. People were here to share ideas, make friends, and just generally have a good time. You just don’t find this today. On today’s internet everyone is seeking fame or conflict. Nobody wants to be civil, every discussion is serious business and any claim requires no less than ten sources from peer-reviewed studies. Everyone online is just so high-strung all the time, it sucks.
This is why most people are reluctant to send fan mail or leave comments on things they like, and as much as it sucks I really don’t blame them. It’s easier to simply consume content and move on, by commenting on most sites you risk pointless conflict with idiots.
Anyway, that’s enough waxing nostalgia for today. Anyone who ever feels compelled to leave a comment on an AJnet Magazine article should never be reluctant to do so, and any fan mail or hatemail is always welcome and can be sent to [email protected]. If anyone whose fan mail I’ve shared here today still actually reads the site feel free to drop me a line and say hi.
Next month’s AJnet Archives article will probably be an unfinished article about internet forums and the people you’d find on them in 2007.