Before I fire up the rant proper, I want to establish a few things. MegaTokyo is a really fun project on which to work. The community it's built has, for the most part, been a fun, energetic bunch. And the people behind MT (myself excepted, of course) are a truly nice bunch.

Now for the rant. See, as we've acknowledged before, MT has brought with it a measure of fame that's at once surprising and flattering. It's been like that for a few months now. Well, the honeymoon is over, apparently.Before any of you jump to conclusions, read on, this is important.

Let's start with Tsubasa, a very kind man who takes an ungodly chunk of time out of his life to help MT. Several times, he has requested that people not e-mail him and request translations. Yet time after time, he receives e-mails from people asking the equivalent of "Tsubasa-san, because I'm too cheap to buy a dictionary, too lazy even to try to look for an online dictionary, and a useless idiot in general, could you please translate this sentence for me?"

Or Piro, whose contributions and hard work everyone knows about. It seems like he's a very, very popular man, because it's almost to the point where he has to look over his shoulder to make sure he's not being stalked. I can't stress this enough. Let him live his life in peace, fanboys. Just because you don't have one doesn't mean you need to intrude on his

Oh, and as for myself, I used to have an online diary, a site where friends of mine could visit and check up on me. It was a private site not in its security, but in its implications. I won't go into all of my complaints about its distribution--check this thread and this thread on the forums and I think everything will become clear. See, there's something called tact. And it includes not opening someone's diary unless you have permission. Because see, there's this concept that people call "privacy". Look it up in the dictionary, it's a pretty important word to me, because I don't have much of it, but what I have, I'd like to keep.

All of this adds up to one pissed-off Dom. So let me say what the others may be too polite to say. Lay off of us. MT is a labor of love, and when the love is gone, well... to paraphrase Piro, do you know how easy it is to make a website disappear?

Now, I know that this may produce a flood of apologetic and conciliatory e-mails, but please, can it. Most of those e-mails would come from people who are not the problem, and would just be more noise. Instead, please, just stop harassing us, and let us pretend that we're ordinary people in some respects. I, for one, would like to attend Anime Central without needing to worry about a security detail for Piro. I would like it if tsubasa didn't have to deal with so many lazy fanboys who haven't yet found an online dictionary. I would like to be given some measure of personal space, however unlikely that may be.

Got that? Good.

END DOM