Someone on the "is it not enough to see Tuvok" post commented "Unfortunately, seeing Tuvok frequently requires also seeing a Neelix, which is unacceptable." and Bea, I am being sooo brave about it, I've not even murdered them (yet)

I am pinning this to your lapel like a purple heart:

They are worsties, they're divorced despite never being married, they have pigtail crushes on each other, they are mutually annoying co-workers, they are middle aged men and also high school girls with the most insane beef ever, family men without families, orchid breeders (one for sustenance and the other for beauty), they're everything.

I saw a Post about like ~symbolism~ in literature and how a lot of folks kinda instinctively balk at the idea of it in a “cigar is just a cigar” kind of way and it got me thinking some thinkey thoughts that i’ve thought for a long time and like 

For the most part I think people who dismiss that kind of stuff so quickly are just, plain and simple, people who don’t care much about writing as an art form anyway. Sometimes literature just isn’t someone’s favorite way to experience art, and so they don’t feel invested in devoting any amount of brain power to interpreting things beyond what they see on the page. And that’s fine! That’s how I am with most visual art. I just say “ooh, pretty” and leave it at that. I don’t really know or care much about the meaning or intent or what certain colors represent or why the subject has a certain expression on their face. I’m sure an actual artist or someone who’s just passionate about art would be all over that shit! Analyzing and appreciating and theorizing. But for me, it really isn’t that deep. Either I like it or I don’t like it, and I carry on with my day. And if someone insisted that it’s imperative that I learn how to ~interpret~ art, I’d probably be hella frickin annoyed. I mean, would it be a good skill to have? Sure! Any skill, no matter how obscure, has the potential to come in handy in life. But like. We don’t all have the time, energy, or ability to become adept in Every Skill Ever. We pick and choose what matters to us most, and we don’t worry so much about the other stuff. So, that’s how I think a lot of folks feel about literature, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that that’s the case. Some people just! Aren’t interested! 

And for me, as a writer, I can honestly attest with 1000% certainty that I never once have intentionally included symbolism of any kind at all whatsoever.... and yet it’s still there. It happens ALL. THE. TIME. where I read over something I wrote years ago and discover large and small ways that I, without even realizing it, used various kinds of symbolism in lots of places. Some examples:

As a character’s mental/emotional state deteriorates over the course of the story, their living space gets more and more cluttered

As a character becomes more detached from their friends and family, their living space becomes more and more barren

A fire (candle, fireplace, campfire, etc) gradually burns itself out as a heated conflict is resolved between two or more characters 

A character’s profession as a photographer highlights his feeling of detachment from the world - the world “happens” around him, but he can’t engage with it. He’s the cameraman - not the subject. 

Golden Gate Bridge representing two opposite things - gates of heaven, and bridge/road to hell 

A character gets abducted by aliens - the character is named after a biblical figure who ~went to heaven while alive~ (I’m honestly BAFFLED at how I managed to coincidentally give the character the name that I did, because I legitimately know jack shit about the bible lmfao. It’s never been important to me to research names before I name a character, because actual parents don’t name their children with foreknowledge of what their future will entail. So I just name them Whatever.)

A character hates thunderstorms. Thunderstorms = unresolved fears and traumas. Thunder/lightning/wind/heavy rain are emphasized in moments where the character must confront their traumas.

A wise, calm character frequently drinks tea. Other characters, when experiencing moments of clarity, are drinking tea, too 

Threadbare bedsheets symbolizing how time wears things down 

Two characters on opposite sides of a doorway - one side, outdoors, is dark and cold and dreary. The other side, indoors, is light and warm and homey. Symbolizes each character’s current place in life. 

An untrustworthy character always approaches people from behind 

A character happens to be standing near a window every time they mention wanting to be free or every time they feel cornered and want to escape

A character who’s turning their back on their friends and family throws away their welcome mat 

A character whose friends and family are never there for them has a welcome mat that still looks brand new after years of no one coming to visit 

Character A allows character B to wear her deceased husband’s coat - character B can still smell the husband’s sweat in the coat. The husband’s presence still lingers in character A’s life.

The steps of the Lincoln Memorial represent neutral ground. I don’t even know why, but all my scenes that take place at the Lincoln Memorial deal with characters meeting there to bury a hatchet between them.

A character, Steven, symbolizes reality. Madison is an untrustworthy narrator bc he’s just fuckin insane, and Nixon is untrustworthy because he’s biased by his feelings for Madison, but Steven’s perspective is always fact-based, and he has very few personal opinions. Steven sets the record straight. 

Nixon = inner peace and unconditional love 

Franky = confidence and authenticity 

Andromeda galaxy = hope for a better future 

Noise = Madison’s current state of mind. Scenes in which he’s overwhelmed and stressed include vivid descriptions of all the sounds around him. Scenes where he’s calm and collected have little to no emphasis on sound.

Madison’s friend gives him a tattoo of a solar eclipse - Madison wonders if he’s meant to be the sun, or the moon in front of it.

Tactile sensation = scenes where Madison feels safe and comfortable emphasize physical sensations like softness and warmth and smoothness. 

Light = Moments of clarity tend to take place in sunlight, especially surrounded by shadow 

Dark = Moments of fear or uncertainty take place in darkened areas 

Characters that bring negative energy tend to stand in a location that blocks light and casts significant shadow 

Characters that bring positive energy bring light into a room, perhaps by opening a door, pulling back the curtains, or literally just turning the lights on

There’s just??? A lot. And none if it is something I do ~on purpose~ in the sense that I didn’t just sit there and go “Ah, yes, this character feels like an outsider who can’t interact with the world, so I’ll make him a photographer.” It just... happens that way. It’s not something I ever consciously practiced or studied or strove for. It’s just what comes out of my brain when I sit and let a scene play out in my head. I emphasize noise when Madison is overwhelmed because that’s just what I experience when I watch the scene in my head. The welcome mat is unused just because when I watch my character coming home and the “camera” pans downward, an unused welcome mat is what I see there. When character B put on character A’s dead husband’s coat and he smelled the sweat, that’s just... what happened! That’s just how it played out in my head! 

It’s not intentional, but it’s there, and it’s there just because it felt like it should be there. And I’m acutely aware that some people aren’t going to catch those things, or they’ll interpret it differently, or they’ll hone in on completely different details that I would have never noticed, but are in fact right there on the page. 

And I think that’s the fun thing about writing and about storytelling and about art in general. We can convey our vision as vividly as possible, we can go so far out of our way to take the reader/observer exactly where we want them to go, but we don’t really have any control over what they ultimately see or think or feel. It could be meaningless to them, or they can draw conclusions you never meant for them to draw. They can uncover your biases and weaknesses and insecurities, your prejudices, your fears. They can completely miss the point, or they can discover things you tried to keep hidden. It’s all fair game. And that’s! What I love about it! What I intend my work to be is obviously important to me, but someone else is only really going to care about what my work meant to them, and it’s almost definitely not going to be exactly what had in mind. I think that’s fuckin great. I think that’s the only way I know how to connect with other humans. 

in case anyone cares

people who followed me winter ‘17-’18 may or may not recall that i had a rly bad falling out w my best friend, to the point where i seriously thought it’d be the death knell for that entire relationship. since i’m incapable of dealing w any kind of stress, my drinking, binge eating, and drug use rly spiraled out of control in that time. it’s also the time i got a lot closer to ev. definitely not a coincidence.

usually in this time period, i would start drinking somewhere as early as i could, and then go back to ev’s and we would kill fifths and order food and i had the disposable income to swing it bc i was still living at home etc. timing permissive, i usually would start at the brewery that i still frequent a lot, and around the time this all happened, a new bartender started there. it was always pretty dead at that time in the afternoons and i would chat w him pretty often and i kinda started looking forward to that more than the drinking? i dnt think i was crushing on him rly. i definitely recall a few stray thoughts after more than a few beers like “if only he was single” bc he mentioned a girlfriend on a few occasions, but i kind of chalked it up to the isolation speaking. but it was nice, yknow. made me feel a lot less alone. by the time i’d buried the hatchet w my best friend 3 months later, and i’d gone there w them, he was gone.

and you know how it is w bartenders, they stop working at a place you’re at a lot, and for all intents and purposes they disappear into the void. and i honestly kind of missed him lol. fast forward 6 months, i’m at a restaurant w my mom and sitting at the bar, and the bartender looks familiar, and he asks me if we know each other from somewhere, and i think a little, and i’m like “justin?” and lo and behold, it’s him. we catch up, it’s nice, i’m happy. i run into him there a few more times w my mom, and eventually he adds me on fb and asks me on a date. i’m rly kind of hostile and conflicted abt the idea at first, but i rationalize, hey, i’ve always rly enjoyed talking to him, he’s sweet, he’s older than i thought he was but i dnt think that matters too much. so i agree, but we both work a lot and weird hours so scheduling has been sort of like pulling teeth. so he sends me periodic msges like “i havent forgotten abt this im jst overwhelmed w my job rn” and i honestly dnt rly mind bc i’ve never actually been on a date before so it’s all very intimidating to me, and im also stressed from work a lot so it’s kind of a relief that we are on the same page abt that.

so friday night, kinda late, ev calls me while he’s on a date at justin’s job ranting abt how one of the bartenders put a lime in his drink which he’s allergic to and he asks me “which one is the manager you talk to?” and i describe him while begging ev not to make a scene bc he is notoriously a customer service terrorist and he’s like “oh. i need to talk to you abt something when i get home” and i was prying him for more details but he was jst like “you aren’t going to like it” and hung up. so i start stress drinking and i’m like barely coherent on the couch when ev and josh (guy he was seeing) come back to the apt. and ev describes the hell he raised at the restaurant and i get pissed at him bc i specifically told him not to do that bc he knows we are roommates and it reflects very poorly on me. and he’s like “it dznt matter. you know he’s gay, right?” and i’m kind of like Oh God, Can We Not Do This bc he’s one of those ppl who think his ~gaydar~ is real and impeccable and i’m kind of barking at him abt this when josh interrupts me and tells me that they overheard him talking to his coworkers abt bringing a boyfriend over to thanksgiving and how said bf got rly drunk and made a huge ass out of himself. and at no point in this discussion did he say anything to indicate that this was an ex, which is rly the part that i’ve been hung up on.

like i obviously dnt care if he’s bisexual, and i’d frankly be more comfortable dating a bisexual man than i would a straight one bc i feel like they’d be less likely to weird and fetish-y abt the whole thing like my ex was. but like it’s troubling to think that he might be w someone else. like i guess it’s hypocritical for me to feel this way, but w brewery guy, like there weren’t any secrets there. i knew it was what it was from the getgo. this time, provided this wasn’t jst a misunderstanding, it’s being hidden. at least brewery guy is honest.

i’ve been running thru it over and over in my head, and honestly it would clarify a lot, esp where his unavailability is concerned. if you’re having to balance this w not only work, but having to sneak behind a partner’s back, you’re going to be pressed for time yknow? but on the opposite side of the coin, thanksgiving was a while ago at this point, and “getting too drunk and being a dick in front of your boyfriend’s family” seems like the kind of fight that has the power to severely fuck up if not end a relationship. and like it’s been 9 odd months since we ran back into one another, so him seeing someone then and being single now could attest for the timing of this whole thing? i dnt know. like i’m very confused and hurt and i rly dnt know what to make of it all. haha. life.

you make me feel ?

How do I tell someone who I have a built a relationship with for almost a year that at this given moment in time I sincerely feel trapped and unhappy?

There are more good things that outweigh the bad. Yes, that is true. But right now, it's hard to see past the bad things. For one, I feel suffocated and trapped. And this has been a recurring theme going on for so long and no matter how much I try to address the issue, nothing gets solved. Nothing changes. Things like this whole "joking" nonsense really, really irritates me when this should have been buried eons ago. The thing with my significant other is that he clearly has insecurities of his own, just like any normal person, but some of them get in the way of our relationship and override his emotions and weigh us down. I have my own insecurities as well but I don't let them get in the way of my thinking and my trust. And as much as he's tried to reassure me countless times that he does, it really doesn't seem to be that way from how many times he has to "joke" about me talking to other guys. I can't even laugh without him asking "what's so funny" or I can't even type to my friends without it being "who are you writing that essay to". To him it seems like a joke, but no one's laughing. And deep down, I feel like these moments are really just him letting the insecurities get the best of him, him needing that reassurance from me that I'm not doing anything weird, and then his defense mechanism is to cover it up as a joke. At the end of the day, dealing with things like that make me feel suffocated and trapped, stresses me out, and just leads me to believe that I'm not trusted. It's like he's insinuating that I'm just another girl that would go around doing suspicious things behind his back and it hurts. It's an indirect insult to my character and he fails to see that every time I try to lay it out for him. Not only that, but dealing with that toxic behaviour really takes a toll on me because now I'm too scared to be able to do whatever I want to do because I don't want him to go on another fit of "jokes". I hesitate to send replies or messages, tell him about certain aspects of my day, people I've met and befriended, all because something might set him off and I would have to deal with another cycle of fights all over again. And as I type reflecting on this, there are tears streaming down my face because it honestly just hit me—how emotionally and mentally stressful and draining it is to deal with that kind of weight from a relationship that isn't supposed to have that type of toll on you. Relationships are supposed to have you feel safe and relaxed rather not on a tight, wound-up leash. And it really makes no sense to me why he would be insecure about these types of things when I haven't given him a reason to be. Still, I know how insecurities work and I'm not saying he's not allowed to have them but I just don't think he's looking for reassurance in a way that doesn't come off as toxic. It's also just not fair to be to be constantly and constantly repeating myself so that he can get the reassurance that he needs. Reassurance is not supposed to be an indefinite, ongoing thing. It's supposed to help you get over your fears so that you no longer have those insecurities anymore. But in his case, they're ever so evidently there and it just seems to be that my reassurance is only being heard with his ears, but it's not going through to his heart where he needs it the most. Reassurance is supposed to help you say, "I don't need to worry about anything because I trust her and even if I don't trust the community that we interact in, I trust that she's smart and knows how to handle herself and the other people around her," and mean it.

It worries me that he might a) get worse in the future, b) get worse when we're living together face-to-face, or c) both. And I really just want this hatchet to be buried so far in the ground that it shouldn't be an issue as frequent as it is right now. These little things add up over time and right now, they're deterring me from trying to put my best foot forward in our relationship. Truly.

Another smaller thing that I've had issues with is that we've reached that point in relationships where we're not really trying to do things anymore besides play League. We're burning out. We're running out of things to do or watch together. Our interests don't excite each other anymore. It's always the constant: "What do you want to do?" "I don't know. What do you want to do?" Every time I ask that, he always gives me the same go-to answer and it drives me insane. If I knew what I wanted to do, I would just go and say it, which is why I'm asking if there was something he wants to do.

All these small things, again, pile up. And they become big noticeable things, so big that there's just no way you can grit it out and ignore them anymore. I hope he realizes that things have to change because we're too comfortable with what we are right now and what we are right now is not the optimal version of what we can be. People look up to us because we've lasted so long given that we're in fact long distance but what they fail to see is how miserable it is sometimes. And honestly, I think we're failing to see it too.

Something needs to change.

The Hard-Earned Lesson I Learned from Lydia, Molly, Ian and Hedy Weiss

by Don Hall

I swear to Gawd and All That is Holy that this will be my last word on two specific issues: the public shaming I endured this time one year ago AND Hedly Weiss.

Recently, I decided that avoiding The Moth was cutting off my own nose to spite my face.  Sure, I was the host for five years and was embarrassingly ejected from that spot because of an online kerfuffle that has left a bitter taste in my mouth.  Ultimately, I was my own worst enemy (more on that below…)

When I was the host, a regular storyteller decided to stop coming.  He told me it was because he never seemed to win and it was discouraging.  I told him at the time (and am now hearing my own advice) that he was signing up to tell stories at The Moth for the wrong reasons.  If winning was the point, he was missing the larger picture.

Most storytelling nights have an audience comprised mostly of other tellers.  The Moth routinely has a sold out house of civilians who are only there to hear stories.  If you want to be a storyteller, performing for an actual audience is essential.

So I’ll be writing stories and coming to The Moth and telling them.  Not to win, not to ‘save face,’ but to tell stories to an actual audience.

[SIDE NOTE: I was told Friday that I was to be denied 'membership' to the Facebook page "The Moth in Chicago" not to exclude me but to "prevent further controversy."  Ah, well...]

Last week, I wrote a story for the theme OUTNUMBERED and, you guessed it, it was about the online pillorying I took a year ago.  Seemed to fit the theme and it was cathartic to write the damn thing.  Except I wrote it, and re-wrote it, and went through 10 drafts before time ran out.  I hold to the "Don't be the hero OR the victim of your story" school of thought and this proved difficult in this case.

I forgot to buy a ticket online, it sold out, and I was told I would not be sold a walk up ticket (not to exclude me but to prevent further controversy...?) so I didn’t get in to tell the story.  The lesson there is to buy the tickets online.  So I will.

Here’s the story:

The hope was that the internet, with it’s capacity for instant communication, would allow us to tap into the inherent greatness that is the human potential.  True in some cases but mostly it has become the proliferation of Hatfields and McCoys, two factions hellbent on mutual destruction over nothing more than notches on the ears of a hog. 

The text was from a number I did not recognize. 

“I hope you fucking die, you racist piece of shit.” it said. 

What? 

I deleted it.  It was completely out of context with a text I normally might receive on a Tuesday morning sitting in my cubicle at public radio. 

My iPhone buzzed again.  Another number I didn’t know.  “We know where you live, motherfucker.” 

And another.  And another.  My personal Gmail box had five or six emails with similar messages, again from people I didn’t know. 

What the fuck? 

By 10AM that morning I had received 32 emails and 25 texts.  By 10:15AM, my colleague came in and looked anxious.  “Did you see it?  It’s awful.” 

Two days before I ended a five-year friendship.   

She was an up and coming performer who was looking for regular advice as she burst on the scene.  She was volatile - frequently she had gotten into a fight with another performer or a family member - but I liked her.  We laughed a lot.  Over those five years, I became what she called a “second father” to her son, the most "woke" white motherfucker around, one of her biggest fans and supporters, and while we would get into hot online debates about politics, we’d always come back and laugh about the reactions people would have about our arguments. 

At one point, she got into a fight with another performer who happened to also be good friend.  She blasted him on Facebook, calling him a racist, sexist psycho.  Things got very heated.  It was surprising as the two had been close friends for a long while.  They both asked me to mediate so I bought whiskey, beer and some Dimo’s pizza and invited them both over to bury the hatchet.  He showed, she didn’t.  My advice to him was to lay low and let it pass but do not fight back. 

Our friendship began to become strained after that.  She would accuse me of siding with people (including him) who she had issue with.  Our online fights became less playful.  Her politics became more polarizing.  Given that for her, Facebook was the ultimate soapbox, I unfollowed her so I could avoid getting into the fruitless online debates.  Finally, a year ago, she posted that the show I was the host of was a tool of white supremacy.  I couldn’t ignore it.  I argued with her and when it became obvious that we could not see eye to eye on it, I sent her an email letting her know that we could no longer be friends.  I unfriended and blocked her on Facebook. 

“Did you see it?  It’s awful.” 

“It” was a twenty-minute Facebook video she made and posted the following Monday morning that, from what I gather, had her crying and ranting about what a racist, sexist psycho I was, how I had never been her real friend and only had her around as a token, how heartbroken and angry she was that I had lied to her for so long.  She included screenshots of emails she had artfully edited as well as my phone number.  In twenty-four hours, her call to arms had created an online mob of 48-60 people, only about ten who even knew me.   

I was a predator.  A stalker.  A sociopath.  She and a few others (including the host of another “Live Lit” show and a very popular local actor) started a campaign to get me fired from both the show I hosted and my public radio gig.  In both the art and NPR worlds, the only thing worse than being accused of being a racist and a sexist is being accused of being a pedophile or voting for Trump. 

It was overwhelming.  It was like Fatal Attraction without the sex.  And, because I am stupid and not dissimilar from a Hatfield or a McCoy, I did not take my own advice and lay low.  I fought back.  I argued with every post that called for me to be fired from the show, I mocked her, I mocked others in her gang of public shamers. 

It was isolating.  It was infuriating.  I was fired from the show and reprimanded at work because who wants that kind of press?  I can’t blame them - I couldn’t get myself to back down and every interaction became a new slight to attack or defend. Instead of taking my own advice and ignoring the taunts and persecution, I fed into it by fighting back using their forum to do it.

Today, I’m pretty much a well-read expert on the subject of public shaming and the call out culture of the internet.  I've spoken with Jon Ronsen, the bestselling author of "So You've Been Publicly Shamed."  I know that the first case of the internet being used in this way was in 2005 when a Korean woman failed to clean up her dog's shit on a train.  She was so brutalized online, she killed herself so I figure I got off extremely lucky.   

Perhaps because I experienced it, I now see this sort of mob justice every day, where groups of people gang up on individuals whom they may not even know with the intent of personal destruction.  I’ve become for some who suddenly find themselves the victim of it a voice of support.   

In school, I recall being taught that when a bully comes after you, defend yourself, stand up and refuse to be bullied.  But there are no consequences for trolling someone online, no accountability, no burden to prove accusation.  Fighting back only fuels the vitriol, extending the damage.  Fighting back spins out of control over nothing more than notches on a hog’s ear.  In the high school of social media, I tell them that the best approach is to turn the goddamn machine off and leave the noise behind you. 

Not my best work but passable, I think.  Accurate, at least.  The most important thing I learned from Lydia, Molly and Ian was that the consequences of that tiny slice of controversy all came because I fought back.  I lost the hosting gig because I couldn’t be trusted to shut the fuck up about it.  I was reprimanded because I refused to back down.  In the writing of the story, I had to ask myself why I fought back.

I had to admit the hard truth - I cared what these people and the people they group themselves with thought of me.  I really hate admitting that.  Even in the melee, I kept insisting that I didn't care but the truth is I did.  Admitting that is more embarrassing than the time I crapped my pants in a Wichita, KS mall.

In the accountability-free zone that is the internet caring about what others think of you online is the ultimate weakness.  It is the source of angst that entices kids, bullied online relentlessly, to kill themselves or get guns and shoot up a school.  It is the Kryptonite for anyone online that saps the strength and pulls you into the fray.

It is the one thing those who decide to mob up and bully individuals are counting upon.

Which brings me to Hedly.

Unlike the shiny brand new activists who *say* they have endured her crap reviews for decades, I actually have.  I’ve been ignoring her critiques for 25 years - twenty of them as a theatrical producer.  Without any headlines, I stopped inviting her and CST to review shows in 1994.  Has she written racially insensitive, borderline bigoted shit in her reviews?  Yup - in perhaps 2% of her 30 years of writing them.  Hedly’s greatest sin is that she’s a bad critic.

But Hedly got it right on one thing, though.

She’s been called a racist, sexist hack by thousands of people online.  She’s been called into question in national publications.  Chicago is making this a spectacle all over the country and she has refused to comment even once.

In that regard, she has won.  Which is both discouraging that she genuinely doesn’t care what the artists she critiques think of her personally and encouraging as a lesson for those who will be publicly shamed in the future.  If you think you aren’t one of those future victims of the internet mob vigilantes, you’re like my wife who has almost zero social media presence.

If you have a social media presence, you are vulnerable to these sorts of Villagers with Torches moments.  Remember that they only win if you care what they think of you.

The NBA Twitter beef so toxic that Shaq's mom had to intervene

Mother knows best? Shaquille and Lucille O'Neal in 2004.

Image: Picture Perfect/REX/Shutterstock

We recently covered how a Twitter beef between NBA legend-turned-TV-analyst Shaquille O’Neal and Golden State Warriors center JaVale McGee got really intense really quick. Just how intense, though?

Now their moms are involved. Shaq’s mother reportedly intervened to calm things down between the two grown men but McGee’s mom isn’t ready to bury the hatchet just yet.

SEE ALSO: Finally, there’s a Mike Tyson iPhone emoji for every situation

“He cyberbullied my son,” Pamela McGee, a former U.S. Olympian and WNBA player, told The Undefeatedthis weekend. “Totally inappropriate. Shaquille needs to lose his job or be suspended. The NBA needs to make a stand.”

While O’Neal is a household name, McGee might not be known to casual NBA fans. The center is enjoying a career renaissance with Golden State. This comes after several years during which McGee was a league laughingstock for his habit of making air-headed mistakes on the court a reputation fueled in no small part by O’Neal frequently highlighting those mistakes with derisive glee on national TV.

McGee has eliminated the Jeff Spicoli moments from his game this season while excelling for the Warriors but O’Neal hasn’t stopped his relentless needling. He recently starred in a Doctor Strange parody for example, that looked back at some of McGee’s career lowlights over the years.

That’s how we got to this point, all fueled by Twitter posts between the two jumbo-sized hoopers.

McGee accused O’Neal of “cooning” that is, entertaining white audiences by playing to black stereotypes not once but twice. O’Neal threatened McGee that he’d “smack the s**t out yo bum ass.” McGee told O’Neal to “EAD”, which stands for eating a part of the male anatomy that’s commonly referred by a nickname for Richard. There was more back-and-forth, too, but you have a sense for the level of discourse here by this point..

Now O’Neal says he “has orders from the top” to stop the bickering. “The top,” in this case, is his mom.

@SHAQ get my ‘s out of your mouth! And EAD! #thatisall

Javale McGee (@JaValeMcGee34) February 24, 2017

@JaValeMcGee34 don’t be acting like u a g I’ll smack the s**t out yo bum ass u da one that be looking stupid with your dumb ass #bumass

SHAQ (@SHAQ) February 24, 2017

“Its not funny anymore, seeing the things theyre saying to each other. They need to squash this and move on,” Lucille O’Neal told The Undefeated.

Oh we threatening people now? Kick rocks you old bastard… you ain’t gone do sh** !!! And that’s on my mama… stick to cooning! https://t.co/ZFuGREc1WJ

Javale McGee (@JaValeMcGee34) February 24, 2017

“Now, I understand how after a while JaVale could get tired of it. Look at how many times hes been laughed at,” she added. “Bottom line, the mouth gets us in a lot of trouble. This is now reminding me of young kids on the playground, where one boy gotta have the last word. Sometimes you need to just walk away.”

A couple days before O’Neal and McGee’s respective mothers weighed in, the Warriors reportedly approached TNT, O’Neal’s employer, in an attempt to broker a back-channel peace deal between the two. But Pamela McGee, it seems, won’t go so quietly.

Pamela McGee in 1999, when she was a WNBA player.

Image: Eric Charbonneau/BEI/BEI/Shutterstock

She told The Undefeated that, “as African-Americans, we have always had individuals who will sell out their communities for two barrels of rum. This is straight-up black-on-black oppression.”

She also doubled down on her cyber-bullying claim.

JaVale McGee is currently enjoying the best season of his career.

Image: Herbert/CSM/REX/Shutterstock

“If you really want to get technical with it, its bullying,” Pamela McGee said. “We all have little jokes and stuff. But when you continue to pick on just one person as his career is resurrecting theres nothing to it but bullying. And its unacceptable. You cant allow someone to continue to do this who represents TNT and the NBA. He is a representative of TNT and the NBA. Broadcasters are held to a higher authority. He should lose his job.”

Firing O’Neal for all this seems highly unlikely at best. A Turner Sports source said the situations has been addressed internally.

Meanwhile, if you’re wondering: McGee, turned 29 years old last month. O’Neal turns 45 next week.

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Read more: http://mashable.com/2017/02/27/shaq-javale-mcgee-twitter/

http://nbafunnymeme.com/nba-news-and-higlights/the-nba-twitter-beef-so-toxic-that-shaqs-mom-had-to-intervene