Land sakes! We’ve got ourselves a good old-fashioned angry letter! It’s been so long. Nowadays people usually just post their angry comments directly on the article that upset them. Very few people take the time to send an angry e-mail anymore. It’s a lost art.
This one came from someone calling himself Arlo Fisher, from an AOL address, which probably means that he is actually somebody’s elderly aunt. “Arlo Fisher” writes:
What credentials do you have to be a reviewer? Some wanna be filmmaker who can’t even get a legitimate or respected periodical to review movies on. You start your own website from you basement office and some how finagle your way on to rotten tomatoes…You’re never invited to any real screenings with respected credits so you have to pay your own money or download illegally on bit torrent sites to see the movies…you got a picture of Kubrick on your wall somewhere….You’re in the film business, is that what you tell you friends at your Dungeons and Dragons parties. Sucks to be you….
Sadly, Aunt Arlo didn’t indicate which specific review of mine he disagreed with. What’s fascinating about his diatribe is that every single detail is wrong. He knows very little about me, of course, and has to guess — and everything he guesses is incorrect. Wannabe filmmaker… don’t write for any legitimate publications… basement office… not invited to screenings… illegally download movies… picture of Kubrick… tell people I’m in the film business… Dungeons and Dragons… Wow. Not a single true thing!
From a statistical standpoint, this is amazing. If I were to make up a bunch of facts about someone that I only knew a couple things about, and if I tried to logically come up with things that might be accurate given what little I knew, I’d probably get at least ONE thing right. But not Arlo! Somehow he managed to be wrong even in matters where he had a 50/50 chance of being right, like whether my office is above ground or in a basement. That level of complete wrongness takes skill, my friends.
