Me during the broadcast of "Much On Demand" outside in front of the Muchmusic building in Toronto, ON on September 25, 2003.

Thursday, May 3, 2018

Winnipeg's Media Personalities: Shiny Happy People.....Well, Except For Jen Zoratti

Why, Jen, Why?

I try to be a happy person and to do positive, fun, and positive-snarky tweets on Twitter. The only negative tweets I do are to some organization or policy that I feel has wronged my way of life in some form.

But a certain media person has made it extremely difficult to keep a smile on my face lately.

Since Twitter began, the biggest thing I have learned about posting on Twitter is it amplifies people's personalities to such a degree that the differences between people become more stark and palpable.

I enjoy following media people and sending them snappy/funny/snarky comments about the things they've written or said on TV or radio. Sometimes I give them a perspective they have forgotten about. Sometimes I add a joke to what they've said.

What do my comments get me? They get me likes and even follows from the happy, positive, upbeat personalities at places like CTV Morning Live and Energy 106. It's such a joy to watch and listen to those people.

And at the other end of the spectrum.......there is Winnipeg Free Press reporter Jen Zoratti.

The same types of comments I send everybody else have apparently caused Jen to block me on Twitter. I discovered this one day by accident. So I emailed her to ask why she was blocking me. Was it a specific tweet I wrote, and, if so, how did she see it? She wasn't following me, so my tweets wouldn't have been in her timeline. Did someone she was following like or retweet one of my tweets, or was she searching for a hashtag? You would think someone would show the proper common courtesy to answer the question of "why" when that person comes a'calling. But instead, Jen's reply to me asking her why she was blocking me on Twitter was, "Yes, I am blocking you on Twitter. No, it is not a mistake. Please stop contacting me."

What a stark contrast between this apparently sour, unpleasant person as compared to the wonderful, happy media personalities I mention above. But I follow media personalities who interest me, and Jen's Free Press stories interest me. I could speculate here on things I think she might take exception to on my Twitter feed as opposed to Winnipeg's other media personalities, but that would be useless because I would be assuming things about her that may not be true.

And that's it, re: her response. No indication of why. I DID contact her again to remind her she didn't tell me why, and she did not respond. I then contacted Winnipeg Free Press editor Paul Samyn, and he told me he would talk to Jen, but that he wouldn't force her to unblock anybody. I told him I wasn't necessarily looking to be unblocked, but to find out why Jen was blocking me. After a few weeks, I emailed him back to say, "How's this coming along?" No response. I emailed him again. No response. I sent the thread to Free Press co-owner Bob Cox. No response. I sent it again a few weeks later. No response.

Then I said to all three of them that I would do a Facebook post whenever I got around to it, with a meme of Jen that said something she would not like. Why would I do something like that? To make the crime fit the punishment. In other words, I would now be giving Jen a reason to block me on Twitter. We could have now said that she is blocking me on Twitter because I did that meme of her.

Alas, Facebook removed the post because it violated their terms of service. That post is essentially what you are reading now, with a few changes. But keep reading.

Then I received a letter from the Winnipeg Free Press' legal counsel informing me they had reported my post to Facebook. So that's how Facebook found it. Even if they didn't remove it, the lawyers demanded that I do it.

The issue isn't what you are reading now. It's what I had said in the meme.

After I replied to the lawyer who sent me the letter and she responded, I believe I have taken out any parts of what you are reading now that would constitute harassment or defamation. Oh, but I am leaving in the facts, and I am posting this here on The Beau Zone, as my original idea had been to repost the original Facebook post here before I discovered the lawyer's letter to me via email. So what's left, after deleting any illegal harassment or defamation sections from my post, are simply freedom of speech issues, which are not illegal.

I want everyone to know what kind of person Jen Zoratti apparently is!

And these are the facts. So YOU decide what kind of person she is based on these facts.

Jen is under no obligation to tell me why she blocked me on Twitter, of course, but, now, regarding that, let's get back to my email exchange with these people from seven paragraphs ago. So then Paul Samyn finally breaks his silence and says, "My previous note to you on this matter made clear that Jen is under no obligation to respond to your demands." No, Paul, you NEVER said that to me. I do apologize for not thinking of the phrase "common courtesy" that I used earlier in this Beau Zone post when describing to you my problem, though. No, she is not under any obligation, but c'mon - if you asked me what 2 plus 2 equals, I am not obligated to answer that question, either, but it's a simple question and answer, so most people would just answer the question if asked it. People don't randomly block other people on Twitter for no reason. She HAD to have a reason to block me. And Jen and Paul don't seem to understand that the way to make me GO AWAY is to simply answer the question! WHY did Jen block me on Twitter? Just tell me, and I will delete this post and go away.

To everyone reading this: do a search of both @JenZoratti and @beauhajavitch on Twitter. Do you see anything there that would cause Jen to block me? She is even answering my tweets in some cases in the past. Once, I used a funny phrase jokingly warning her that someone "would go all North Korea on her" and she responded saying she didn't know what that meant, and I responded back saying I had been planning on doing a tweet about something to her, and before my internet session I heard someone say "go all North Korea on you" on TV and thought it was funny and would work in that tweet. I say that here because that exchange did not cause her to block me. The last time her name came up automatically, re: autofill (signifying someone is not blocking you) when tweeting was when I did a tweet about her story about Earl's letting people park their cars there overnight and what the snowplow operators would think of that. After that, I didn't have a reason to tweet her for a while, and sometimes I look at my Twitter list and say, "I haven't seen that person in my timeline in a while," and check them out. That was the case with Jen, and that's how I found out she was blocking me.

And that's that. When Jen tells me WHY she is blocking me on Twitter, this post will be deleted. But it sure looks like this post will stay here forever.

P.S. Since there might be people on Twitter who don't go on The Beau Zone, and aren't reading this, those people - and you - might notice I continue to tweet "to" Jen (regarding stories she's written), which Twitter still allows, it's just that I have to completely type her handle - no autofill - because the general public doesn't know she is blocking me. Only you, reading this, know. (And I do plan to do a Facebook post that is only a link to this post, and hopefully that is okay with the faceless Facebook's bots, if that's what any future trouble I could have with Facebook is all about.) It's usually at the same time I am tweeting others, increasing the chances of those others replying or retweeting, meaning everyone out there is seeing those tweets EXCEPT Jen. I figure if she's going to block me, she should pay the price. Everyone will see my tweets "to her" EXCEPT her. Serves her right. And everyone reading this will see those tweets if you do a Twitter search on both our handles, or any relevant hashtags, as well. (My original email to Jen asking her why was written Sept. 4, 2017.)

I sure hate wasting time on negative issues like this. I want everyone including me to be positive, think positive, and go through the day with smiles on our faces and love in our hearts. But some things or people won't let us do that. That's a fact we just have to learn to live with, I guess.



10 comments:

  1. You are mixing up two totally different situations. Read this blog again. You obviously didn't do it right the first time. I discovered one day Jen was blocking me years ago and tried to find out why. That's it. I do not find Jen attractive in the least. I was following her because of her writing, just like Tom Brodbeck or Dan Lett. I have been reading the Free Press since I was a little kid and have been a subscriber myself since 1984.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You missed my point completely, you tweeted something twice that women didn't care for and they blocked you. You then felt the need to contact both of them to find out why. Regarding Jen, you decided to make matters worse make a meme on FB, "To make the crime fit the punishment." Then legal sent you cease and desist message that you are claiming infringes in your 1st amendment rights. Based how you behave on social media and you own statement you crossed a line and FB agreed and removed it. You have no respect for women at all and it shows by how you treat them. You still think that you are right and everyone woman and a bunch of men that have viewed your tweets pertaining to these situations all agree with me. Your images depict women as sexual objects and that's how you treat them. That is why you keep getting blocked and mocked. Women are afraid of you because you repulse them.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Have to correct you again. I never asked Colleen "why." Read the beginning of my last response again. And we'll just have to agree to disagree on what I maintain is "common courtesy." The more time that passes, the more proud I am to have come from the 1970s. There are one or two of my haters who have been kind of persistent, and they may have slowed down now, but I might show that "common courtesy" to them and tell them to stop with the replies or I will block them. I won't just block them without warning. If I did that, I'd be a hypocrite. While I'm here, based on what I said last time, I'm kind of sorry I did that direct a tweet to her but I told her in my one email to her I would not send her any more emails and I want to remain true to that. I'm single because of my work schedule, both past and present, which would inhibit that sort of thing. I do get time for bars, but I have to leave early to get some sleep to do laundry early the next morning because I work the next day and really don't want to find other tenants in the laundry room. I was busy with my show and a full-time job at that time. And as far as me retaliating against women who block me, I also wrote emails to executives at two different broadcasting entities that blocked me, and successfully got myself unblocked. So it's not just women.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Please watch this video so you can see a fraction of what women have to put up and how they feel when be sexualized by men that they don't know. Women don't owe you an explanation all at. The fact that you don't understand this boggles my mind. I don't believe that you are single because of your work schedule, I am sure it's because you give off creepy vibes like mention Gossip Girl. You watch dramas aimed at teens as an adult? https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=917359509622331

    ReplyDelete
  5. That's a great video. I agree with every part of it. Lots of examples there of things I would never say to women online or in person. To answer that woman's question, anything you post is asking for comments, unless you turn them off. But she shouldn't get comments like that. Compliments to her photos, sure, but that's as far as it should go. When I made a private matter public, I thought I'd get 6 or 10 comments that disliked what I was doing. So I was wrong. But now people are moving on. The TV I like is the same regardless of how old I am. Looks like you're a bit prudish. I know the people on that show look more normal to me than the old fogies at Pony Corral who are probably my age. And I failed to say before that you're correct, women don't actually owe me an explanation for blocking me, but a little common courtesy is nice. If a guy on the street asked me what 2 plus 2 equals, you'd think I should ignore him because I don't owe him an explanation. But I'd probably say, "Four. Why do you ask?" Unless he looked like a violent criminal or something.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You really are a pervert aren't you. You want high school kids to wear high heal stilettos to fulfill your sexual fantasy??? And you wonder why accounts and people block you. SMH.

    ReplyDelete
  7. This is how your comments make women feel and they are over it: https://medium.com/behind-local-news-uk/revealed-the-onslaught-of-online-abuse-and-the-toll-its-taking-on-uk-journalists-fd53cd8a3864

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've seen that writeup before! I don't know what motivates people to do such nasty, mean-spirited comments to media people. Do they want to get blocked? I don't do comments like that. It seems when they briefly mention "commenting on their appearance," that they are talking about people criticizing womens' appearances. I don't do that. My reply was about dresses I "wouldn't mind seeing her in," but I don't think I've ever criticized a specific person over what they're wearing now. If you're comparing those people to what I did after she blocked me and ignored my apology, I was responding to a situation, and didn't say anything truly nasty. If your point is that she might get all this kind of stuff from all these people, causing a lack of patience that meant, boom, she blocked me, well, I admit I didn't think of that. I would think of that if it was someone on, say, The View, who gets hundreds of tweets a day. I said before I'm kind of sorry I sent my original reply, although it's hard to regret positive-spirited comments.



      Delete
  8. You're entitled to your opinion. But when you say "disgusting meme," you are again confusing two situations that have nothing to do with each other. The fact that Jen is a woman is irrelevant. My blog and what happened regarding her would have been exactly the same had the writer been Tom Brodbeck or Dan Lett. The person is a Free Press writer, not a woman. At the time, I followed her because of her writing. I enjoy her writing style; when I want it to be, my writing style is like a cross between hers and Alison Gilmour's. I also like reading Tom Brodbeck and Dan Lett's columns. All of this probably goes over your head because you probably don't read newspapers, and I have been reading the Free Press cover-to-cover since I was a kid, with my own subscription since 1984. You've probably never read any of Jen's, or Tom's, or Dan's stories. And I come from a time period, the 1970s, where asking why about anything was not the horrific, inappropriate, thing it appears to be today. I used to call companies all the time in the '70s to ask why about something, and I usually got an answer. If things changed, nobody told me. No, if a woman got back to me and took the time to tell me she thought what I wrote made her feel sick, uncomfortable, or disrespectful, I would humbly accept that and delete the tweet. This has taught me to be more careful, however I still maintain that every person is different and will react in different ways, and that Colleen is local and that that exact same comment about the dresses probably would have gone unnoticed had it been to a woman on a national TV show who is 3000 miles away from me in Hollywood, New York, or Toronto. Plus, my God, could you imagine how many tweets someone on a national American TV show must get daily? She probably wouldn't even see mine.

    ReplyDelete
  9. WTF bro!!! Women don't want any comments about their looks. How is this so hard for you to understand. Stop suggesting that wear black stiletto heels and ripped jeans. There is zero difference between making a rude comment or suggesting that you would like them to be in a skimpy dress. Women are tired of being sexualized. Social media is not a dating website or your pinup wall to make rude comments to women. That the fact that you can't comprehend this is insane. It doesn't matter if they get 1, 100s, 1000's or millions of these comments on a daily basis, the fact that men like you do it all is all that matters. You crossed the line. I am sure that you wouldn't like it if happened to your mom or a family member. You want women to respect you and show you common courtesy, yet you don't show them any respect. Respect is earned not demanded.

    For the last time, women don't want your comments on what you want them to wear. it's perverted, disgusting, disrespectful, rude, and upsets them.

    ReplyDelete