See the subject.

It's typical for people to send in hate mail after reading something that made fun of one of their friends. I'll often get an e-mail titled something like "Funniest. Thing. EVAR!" and then a month or two after the same e-mail address will follow up with an "OMG that wasn't funny kill urself". I think my ratio of fan mail to hate mail is roughly 3 to 2, which I imagine is about the same ratio as lame people to their friends. It would be an interesting study to see how that ratio changed over time as more and more people's lame descriptions show up on this website.

What's special about this particular e-mail is the person sending it was so retarded they couldn't even figure out how to send it to the right person. My name appears right on the front page, and the words themselves are actually a link to my personal e-mail address. Was this person actually thinking “Grr! I hate that Jacob Matthew! I'll send him a flame by clicking on this address that's cleverly hidden under some other person's name! That'll show him!”?

I love how he goes on to equate the work of a critic with "pissing on other people's cheerios" as well. It amuses me to think that this letter could have been sent by a sobbing Mike Myers to Roger Ebert after the scathing review of "The Love Guru".

From: "M. Myers" <obviouspenisjoke@loldongs.net>
Subject: Roger Ebert, get a life.
To: Gene Siskel , <screening_room@afterlife.com>

How dare you say that my film wasn't funny! Why don't you go cure cancer or something instead of making fun of people like me who don't realize your review got more laughs than my movie? It's not like you can win a Pulitzer for pissing on other people's Cheerios.

Perhaps, in some corner of his mind, Mr. Ebert has the same wish I do. If he helps show the world why all these movies are so terrible then maybe, just maybe, people will stop making bad movies. I suppose in some ways it's a symbiotic relationship. People who make bad movies provide the reason for the existence of critics. After all, if all movies were good, we wouldn't need movie critics to tell us which ones to avoid. I can't speak for any of those people, but my personal philosophy is more Batman-esque. I envision a world that no longer needs me, and fight to make it so.

I also resent the notion that my sworn superhero duty is "easy", especially from someone who hasn't done anything of the kind. Ask any entertainer. It's hard to be funny, to constantly be coming up with new material. It's one of the reasons the posting frequency kept dropping off. I have this persistent fear that I'll reuse some joke from a previous Rotten Apple, so each time I write something new I feel compelled to go back through the old ones and make sure it's not something I've already written.

Plus it's not as though that particular brand of loser is very creative. Pretty much every Apple-worthy description I come across is either an obvious slut, a godmoder, or... actually that's about it. So I don't exactly have much to work with. Every so often the most pathetic of the bunch pinch out one or two that are exceptionally offensive and those are the ones you see here.

At least when I get hate mail it gives me new material to work with, whole new sets of logical inconsistencies, bad grammar, and self-righteous bullshit. I like that I get a little bit of variety in my work every once in a while. Plus it's good for the site. Every hate mail I get means that someone got pissed off, and since being pissed off is no good when you keep it to yourself, they probably told all their friends just why they think they have cause to be upset.

You know what? I love it when that happens, because it makes people curious. Curious people visit the site. People visiting the site makes the hit counter go up. And the hit counter going up gives me warm fuzzy feelings in my tummy.

So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you Mr. Stillman for sending poorly written hate mail to the wrong address. A readership bump is the best gift you can give a website like this one, and we both really appreciate it.