In this week's Savage Love, a young woman wrote Dan asking for advice on a very unfortunate situation—she was date raped by an ex-boyfriend.

There are over 100 comments on the thread, many of them supporting the young woman, but there's one comment that... isn't so much.

"She was kind of asking for it though wasn't she?"

When I first read that comment, I rolled my eyes and thought it was mean, but flippant—I figured everyone would just ignore it. That's the best way to deal with a troll, after all. Just ignore them.

I was so wrong. This specific comment has been reported as "abuse" dozens and dozens and dozens of times since being posted less than 24 hours ago. I've never seen a comment get reported as abuse as much as this comment has been. The e-mails just keep coming, and coming.

People are asking that it be taken down because:

"The poster is stating that a young woman who was raped deserved it. I find this comment false, offensive, and misogynistic."

"is it ever okay to say a woman is asking to be raped?"

"The letter writer does not need this crap and could suffer damage from it."

"The comment is advocating rape and victim-blaming."

"offensive comment that implies woman should be raped"

"saying a woman who was raped as 'asking for it' is one of the crown jewels of misogyny and I am horrified that made it past your filters."

"Obvious trolling in a thread about rape."

But, well, here's the thing: there's obvious trolling all over the internet—it's part of the commenting community, for better or worse. No topic is safe, not even rape. And the letter writer, as nice as she may be, anonymously wrote a letter to a public forum looking for advice, therefore opening her situation up for discussion among everyone. Even the heartless trolls.

And while I will whole-heartedly agree that the comment is mean-spirited, it is not saying that all rape victims deserve it or that this particular woman "got what she deserved." It's not advocating rape either. It's just someone being a jerk. And no more a jerk than so many other people have been so many times before, actually.

So for now the comment stays. But I can't help but wonder, as the abuse reports continue to flow, are readers being a little too sensitive? Or am I being too dismissive?

"Hackers hijack Obama's, Britney's Twitter accounts" (via computerworld.com).

Here is a list of the top 500 worst passwords of all time. Here are a few of them:

It's pretty fascinating—and depressing—stuff. I don't use any of the passwords on this list, but I do have to say I know a couple of my passwords are really bad. I figure the badness, at this point, almost works as protection.

Galleycat has a good post up about Twitter storytelling, which has taken off this year.

This guy writes what he calls "twisters," which are 140-character stories. Here's one:

He drinks vodka tonics and drives a Zamboni. His friends envy his lifestyle. He's popular with the ladies, especially those with poor teeth

And Thaumatrope Magazine has a sci-fi and horror story Twitterfeed. Here's one:

Bad men chipped my brane. Voices sed shoot the prez. But I founded ice pick and gave mysef la bottle me. See clearer now with just one I.

The best use of Twitter, though, is Felix Feneon's Novels in 3 Lines. Feneon worked at a newspaper in Paris at the turn of last century, and he condensed news stories down into little tiny, headline-length stories. They were wildly popular. Novels in 3 Lines is a book by New York Review of Books, but it actually works better as a Twitter feed:

Frachet, of Lyons, who was bitten by a pug but had apparently recovered, tried to bite his wife and died rabid.

Near Brioude, a bear was smothering a child. Some peasants shot the beast and nearly lynched its exhibitor.

Maurice Barrès, who was handing out the school prizes, tenderly harangued the little girls of the orphanage in Vésinet, Alsace.

At 20, M. Julien blew his brains out in the toilet of a hotel in Fontainebleau. Love pains.

(And, yes, I do. It's a good way to change my Facebook "What are you doing?" line. Don't judge.)

Yeah, motherfuckers!

Context via Nerve.

Are you bored on this Christmas day? Here is an internet group for you to join: Pictures of Towels:

This group is for pictures of towels and writing about towels. All types of towels are welcome: bath towels, hand towels, dish towels and tea towels....

I also would like to see more pictures of towels. Please post them here.

ALL NON-TOWEL RELATED CONTENT WILL BE REMOVED, eventually.

Merry Christmas, o bored non-believers!

(Via Weird Universe.)

The video is over there, at rathergood.com, because I can't figure out how to turn off the auto-play function even when I made the autoplay=false! All nerds are hanging their heads in shame.

"A hammer for you and a sickle for me!"

(ht to Jesse and Sarah for twittering this magic.)

Added to Savage's post on problematic pastor Rick Warren, by one Yucca Flower:

"Rick Warren says he's inclined to have sex with every beautiful woman he sees."

Never have I been more relieved to be homelier than a mud fence.

Thank you, Yucca Flower.

King County Executive Ron Sims already put a bullet right between the eyes of Twitter's street cred, and now the Washington State Department of Transportation has swooped in to pick at its corpse.

WSDOT has set up a Twitter account to keep you updated on accidents and road closures (spoiler warning: don't bother leaving the house), although it's not updating very frequently.

This is what happens when useful technology falls into the wrong hands.

[Confidential to the Department of Fish and Wildlife: please stop trying to friend me on Facebook!]

Bad news for our readers in Egypt:

CAIRO, Egypt - Egypt's communications ministry says Internet cables in the Mediterranean Sea have been cut, causing massive Internet outages.

The ministry says three Internet cables running through the Mediterranean were cut Friday morning. Throughout the country the Internet is almost completely down or working sporadically.

A reminder that we're all but a few snips of a cable away from returning to the pre-Internet darkness.

So after you make a video like this, which points out continuity errors in the Star Trek universe:

What is the exact feeling you experience?

Is it:

A) A deep sense of satisfaction at proving the depth and breadth of your Star Trek knowledge?
B) A kind of hollow, empty lack of sensation?
C) Suicidal depression?
D) Jealousy that at least three other people have done the exact same thing?

Because I can say that, as someone who is reposting the video, I think probably B).

...we need The BennyHillifier, which magically places Boots Randolph's instant-comedy-bestowing "Yakety Sax" under the YouTube video of your choosing.

For example, people falling, babies eating lemons, presidents dodging shoes, and a rapidly decomposing rabbit.

Try it for yourself!

Torontoist, a Canadian branch in the Gothamist empire, is closing down.

At the end of this month, I will be stepping down as Torontoist’s Editor-in-Chief. I’ve loved everything about this job since I started it, and my decision to leave was not an easy one to make, but it is, ultimately, the right one at the right time for the right reasons. Gothamist has decided, as a result of both my resignation and the recession, to close Torontoist on January 1, 2009 and concentrate on their more lucrative American sites. That decision is the right one, too: as it exists now, Torontoist can barely be sustained, let alone developed, and it has survived and thrived as long as it has, in spite of modest means, largely because of the ceaseless hard work of that aforementioned collective.

Torontoist was actually pretty funny a lot of the time. And they also provided a paid blog outlet for Christopher Bird*, who is always a delight. It sounds like Seattlest is okay, but I'm willing to bet this won't be the last paid blogger collapse of 2008.

*And if you follow that last link to Bird's Mightygodking website, you will find a link to a blog named Way to Suck That Dick!, which is a critique of amateur porn that has been posted on the Internet. It's pretty funny and also creepy, which is what I like to call a "difecta."

It's not quite as cute as the unbearably adorable live stream of the puppies (look at how big they've gotten!), but now, for the cat fans, someone offers a live stream of kittens.

Meow.

(Thanks for the tip, donnarose!)

...are rare things, but this (ever-so-mildly) NSFW video has one. (Viewer shortcut: Watch the first 30 seconds, then skip ahead to 2:45 and watch till the end.)

Thank you, Slog tipper Colonel Bacon.

Supposedly, a senior in high school, lost her virginity on the beach while on a school trip and then accidentally text messaged her dad and told him it was "gr8."

He immediately cancelled the rest of her trip, obvs.

Of course, with some other blogs posting a very posed looking photo of the girl taken (apparently) just after the fateful text message was sent, this looks more like some kind of senior class hoax than it does a story about a poor girl so raged with hormones that she didn't see she was sending a text to "Dad" instead of "Darci."

(Thanks, Matt Hickey, for the tip.)

I'd've probably done something like this:

The music for this video is awful, but I could watch the little toy cars smash into each other over and over again.

Metal Heart from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

(Via Laughing Squid.)