You replied to me just the other night apologizing for a crass, rude reply. I hope you're ready to do this again tonight.

I'm really surprised you're a mental health provider. I would have thought you'd be aware of the value of pre-emptively dealing with potentially stressful situations by experiencing them from a safe distance first. This is really valuable stuff.

Yes. This happened years ago on a Guardian piece in the mid 90s, by Zoe Williams. She had noticed that while a few women on the pro-choice side were writing about their abortion experiences, she only seemed to be seeing articles about lasting guilt. She accepted that many women would feel guilt, but knew that this…

I think people respond to your expectations and they'll exploit whatever leeway you give them, for good or ill, and in my opinion the greatest "ill" is encouraging teenagers to avoid risk or responsibility. I often see people on this site excusing the behaviour of adults now, saying "You have to remember, she's only 22

Actually, my mistake - you can join even earlier, with your parent's permission http://www.army.mod.uk/join/20193.asp… but to join on your own volition you must be 16.

This sophomore year of school is 15/16, I'm told. In my country, you can get married and/or join the army at 16.

Well that's an immense straw man you've built there. When did I mention fear for the future of the world or anything like it?

Yes, I do expect a teenager old enough to get married and join the military to be able to think. I did. My friends did. When I was 15, I had a weekend job and went out to pubs and nightclubs with my workmates. Some were my age, some a few years older, some older than that. We all blended in because, while technically…

It's not Steam's biggest problem necessarily, but its most egregious issue I've seen is the way it presents (or rather doesn't present) Mac games.

These were grown adults. If we were looking at the relationship of two people of different racial heritages in South Africa who had a similar problem with legal recognition under apartheid, but their story was otherwise the same — committed, stuck to it for more than a quarter of a century, added legal recognition…

Don't be like that. If they considered themselves married in 1988 and made a ceremonial commitment to each other and honoured it for 25+ years, and the only barrier was unjust laws, I think it's right to call it a marriage.

Yeah, perhaps, if indeed they were bullies. Lots of people have expressed surprise about the bullies willingly accepting food from their victim, but maybe they had no reason to worry because they hadn't mistreated her. We only have the baker's word for it that the cakes never contained contaminants, and we also only…

I was wondering where they had been married, to have had a ceremony 25 years ago. It seems they had a ceremony and considered themselves married, but didn't get legal recognition until much later. Wiki:

I'm also amazed at the trust people have for a person who's minimum offence here is pretty serious. I would suggest to those people that if this girl was their own daughter, and had baked these cakes in the family kitchen... even after saying "of course I believe you, dear", every one of them would give those cake…

I'm not sure I even buy her story on any level. How on earth would you control the distribution of cakes once you start passing them out so that only your bullies get them? She did a horrible and stupid thing, and if I'm right in thinking that she's 15/16 (not being familiar with what "high school sophomore year"…

I guess I'm defensive because even on Gawker itself, every many of the subsite's communities feature constant sniping about Jezebel as a whole that I think is totally unfair. Sometimes they make their way over here. Usually, if they have examples then it's about a tiny minority of opinions and they're tarring everyone…

For those of us who aren't in the US, what age of kid is that? Google seems to indicate 15-16?

I think, for once, everyone read it, but we also read that part about no surviving evidence. Not all of us believe the obviously crooked girl since she sets the Bar Of Fuckery pretty damn high even on the "hoax" part, and there are good reasons not to trust that admission given that the "j/k" only comes after the…

Do you bake? If you wanted revenge, icing would be the way to do it, and you would only need a small amount to fuck up the batch. Plus you'd know that since it was never cooked, your victims were definitely getting dosed. Anyone who does that deserves a fucking shoeing.

I agree with you — sorry for making you feel like I needed that big explanation. The more comments that get added, the more shameful it gets. I've been watching my reply become less and less defensible with each passing minute.