On Sunday, I was personally offended that Chris Brown performed at the Grammys. Violence against anyone is never okay, but the quiet acceptance of violence against women we see all over the world is especially reprehensible to me. Allowing someone who beat his girlfriend so severely she was hospitalized to perform on a national stage -- and then framing it as some sort of comeback -- didn't sit well with me. Celebrities -- especially pop music celebrities -- are role models, even when it's inconvenient for them, and what they do and how they treat people matters. So I posted a link on Twitter to the police report, just to remind people who they were celebrating.
I'd say about 98% of the repsponses I got were from people who thanked me for speaking up, but the remaining 2% were pretty awful: vulgar, barely-literate, blaming the victim, blinded by celebrity, convinced that it's something I should just get over and forget about, and -- incomprehensibly -- self-identified as devout Christians.
While I didn't take their anger and heartfelt wishes that someone "beat my ass" personally (it genuinely made me sad for them and their families), it has brought into sharp focus something I didn't even realize I've been taking for granted: I'm really lucky that the overwhelming majority of people I interact with -- many of whom I will never meet in person -- are kind and awesome to me.
So I wanted to take a moment and say thank you to you, person-on-the-other-end-of-the-Internet, for reading my various Internetty things, and for not only supporting my work, but for being kind to me. I sincerely hope that your kindness, your enthusiasm for making cool things, and your general awesomeness doesn't just exist online when you comment on something I did; I really hope that it extends into your daily life. I hope you're out there, every day, making the world a more awesome place.
The world needs more awesome people, and one of my dreams is to build and maintain Crazy Awesome Army... I didn't really focus on it until this week, but we're off to a pretty good start.
