Caspar, we hardly knew ye. Seriously, I know the feeling. This place can be a monkey house. Sorry I missed your posts. I hate to see anyone driven away.

Never give up.

If at first you don't succeed try, try again.

As you posted earlier, you’re probably tired.

Wait for another opportunity, and give your perspective, like everyone else.

Look at my dashboard,

The best thing to do is click on Josh Marshall and then go down the list.

Praise is always a good start, and it offers encouragement.

Just because you get no followers or recs or any observable response, doesn't mean, no one reads your stuff.

Besides it's Saturday night, party time not blogging time.

It sure would be nice if TPM had a live chat room.

I had to take a break from TPM after the primaries ended. I was absent about 6-weeks. I finally cam back refreshed. This election year has been, emotionally, very draining. I think we all can hardly wait for the next two weeks to pass.

To those who have been nice to me, for lack of a less weird way to put it, thank you. But people seem to be missing the reason I left: it wasn't because of any treatment that I believe was extremely out of the usual, but precisely because I don't believe this treatment was unusual. There were a couple of people who offered constructive criticism of my ideas and/or were supportive in general, but others just seemed like they enjoyed being rude online. And I'm not trying to be some sort of dramaqueen or something- I don't expect everyone to come weeping to my side and beg for forgiveness or anything like that; I was just offering an explanation for why I'm not going to be blogging here anymore, and hoped that my explanation might make some people more cautious online in the future. And don't get me wrong; I'm sure the vast majority of contributors at TPM are perfectly balanced, nice, intelligent people. It's just the ones who aren't seem to have a special gift for ruining it for me. And the strange thing was, the posts that were getting the most negative attention weren't political at all, which is what I found so offputting. I can take someone telling me that my candidates are stupid and my positions are ill-thought out, or even that Obama is a secret Muslim whose middle name is Mohammed and whose autobiography is actually written by Bill Ayers. What I can't take is people constantly telling me, for example, that my so-called (and humorously-intended) "shilling" for my relatives' books is "inappropriate" and that my posts are better suited to a social networking site (which, as I pointed out, this is one); I also find it difficult to, at one point, have someone vehemently disagree with my premise that TPM isn't a community in the sense that many people seem to think it is, and then turn around and, seemingly, disagree with the same post's assertion that people should actually be nice to each other online by telling me about how I need to "take a chill pill" and how I've "gotten off pretty easy." And to the people telling me not to give up, I appreciate the concern and everything, but frankly, I'm just looking forward to reading TPM again like I used to, without having to worry about writing blog posts or dealing with angry MyTPM users who comment on my posts. I'm losing my train of thought, so I'd better finish up quickly here; my point is, basically, that I feel like there might be something wrong with you (meaning a certain few, not everyone reading this) if you can't be nice to people. Regardless of that, the reason why I'm leaving is for selfish reasons, primarily my short-term mental health. I'm not looking for apologies, just wanting have my say.

Wow. "Hello world" to "Fuck you, good-bye" in less than 48 hours. That must be a new record.

I think that the record for "Fuck you, good-bye" to "I'm back" is about 24 hours, still held by Desidero (though Ripper made a nice run for it). Think of it as a challenge.

PS I also enjoy the irony of your having bookended a post on e-narcissism (great word, btw) with a dramatic everybody-hates-me-fuck-you-good-bye flourish.

Good God. You should be grateful people are even reading your posts, let alone commenting. I've made very few posts and I've received very few comments. I'd be happy if someone would just respond to one of my posts to tell me I'm full of shit.