Rudeness = More Rudness... What?

Can someone explain this cycle to me?

Someone's rude to you. You're rude back. They're rude back. You're rude back. And on and on and on...

That cycle will never end, so why are you going along with it?

You can find this cycle anywhere were equestrians are - YouTube, FaceBook, and equine SIM and RPG games such as Ponybox and HorseLand. YouTube is one of the easiest examples simply because if you find a video where someone falls off, you're almost guaranteed to see comments such as "You suck! I hope your horse tramples you!" But, come to think of it, you could find that on nearly ANY horse video on YouTube.

Personally, when people comment rudely on my videos, I just have fun with it. Just yesterday, I received a comment on a video where I was taking my first Saddleseat lesson since 2005. The mare I was on was an old school Saddlebred. She was used for the young ones to learn on, and, as she was an older school horse, she was not as well kept as the show horses were. Her mane was not pulled or roached or anything, her coat was a little scruffy, etc. Someone commented on the video "Ew, you and the horse look ugly." I, of course, go to check this person out - nowhere does she say anything about ever having ridden Saddlebreds, and there are no videos of her riding Saddlebreds.

That's the thing that gets me - where do you make the call that you're "qualified" to say some of these things? I recently discovered one of the Rolex 2009 entrants has a YouTube. Do you think I'm going to go and critique her? Heck. No. So why should it be any different for normal people? You're not their trainer, and you probably never will be.

And, many of the people "qualified" to make these critiques are young girls who just got home from their weekly riding lesson, and think they're high and mighty gods. I will never go and critique a person because I don't know anything about what's going on with them.

Plenty of those young girls follow the endless cycle of Rude=Rude=Rude=Rude=Rude and so on. I have a "friend" on FaceBook who was notorious for lying at her old barn, and then mine when she switched. She still keeps this up at her new barn, even though it's basically what got her kicked out of my barn. She put up pictures of the State 4-H show, and one of the captions of one photo was that she was crying after her jumping class and it wasn't because she was happy. One girl from her old barn questioned why she was crying, and the girl went on to lie about her horses actions, blamed the jump (of all things) for ruining her ride, and then went on to lie about how many people she placed out of at the District show. I called her out on it, and she proceeds to scream at me about how I needed to shut up, and that she at least got her horse over the jumps at District (only 3 of the 25 or so actually completed their ride). I'm cracking up laughing because she had no clue of my goals - I went in that class KNOWING we were going to get disqualified, so I set a realistic goal to get over at least ONE jump, and we did. Mission accomplished, and I was freaking ecstatic. I tell her this, along with that the worth of a class should NEVER be put on the placing (I could get a first place in a class that no one else enters, and that ribbon wouldn't mean anything).

Her response: "okay.....well you still were rude so i will be rude back"

*facepalm**headdesk*headdesk*

Where is the logic in THAT!? Really!?

Here's something I've found out. You're rude, it bites you in the butt, HARD. You're nice, and people will be nice back. Why and how people can't figure this out is beyond me, but... *sighs* What can you do?