The digital age has destroyed our privacy, eroded our sense of personal space, and stunted our manners, but some things don’t change. It seems that cutting in line is still taboo, and perhaps the last vestige of what used to be quaintly termed ‘civilization.’ (Seriously, last week the world went a little crazy over a photo of a woman’s naked large rear-end.) After being cut in line while waiting to board a Greyhound bus, an enraged woman took to Craiglist (which increasingly is looking like Reddit’s neurotic, anguished little sister) to post a lengthy open letter “To the entitled blonde c*nt boarding the bolt bus to DC.” The letter-writer reprimands the stranger not just because she jumped the queue, but because she is “a coddled, spoiled woman, living a charmed but I’m sure very stressed out life, filled with the banal problems of unexamined privilege.” The writer is at pains to point out “I’m a Feminist, and the last thing I ever want to do is tear another woman down,” before stating “seeing your selfish bratty bullshit in that moment, all I wanted to do was give you a swift kick in the ovaries.”
“Dear Nightmare Human Being,” the letter begins, “You and your pleather leggings, your silver sneakers and your expensive slouchy coat. Your shiny black samsonite bag and your long tube, most likely protecting some pretentious and derivative art you yourself made.” Some savage Tom Wolfe-worthy socio-shaming prose about privilege follows, before we learn that cutting in line is just rude, and could earn you this sort-of-Gypsy curse: “May you be trapped by a huge rock in a loveless marriage, disliked by your colleagues, resented by your children, and may your life be as shallow and unsatisfying as you are.”
