When I was a boy, the adult women were much more sensible than the corresponding women of today. Back then, the moms and aunts were in their late-20’s to mid-30’s and they struck me as the most practical adults in my world. They did all the work for family events so that’s probably why it seemed that way to me.

One of things I recall hearing as a kid was how a family weirdo “always had to get involved in stuff. “ As a kid this made no sense to me, but looking back on that time from the perspective of this time I get it. The weirdo in question was into causes. It was always something to do with poor people somewhere very far away. I think she was into some weird church too, but it was a long time ago.

I thought about that when this turned up in front of me the other day. I use one of my many fake Yahoo e-mail accounts for travel sites so I saw it when printing off travel documents. I clicked on the story because I foolishly thought that maybe someone was going to finally call bullshit on the college rape nonsense. I was wrong, of course.

The article is complete nonsense. The vibe that comes through suggests the author is struggling with mental illness. I looked her up and my suspicions were confirmed. As soon as the word “jezebel” comes up you know you’re either dealing with Bible study, Hebrew school or crazy people. Her twitter feed makes clear she is not one of the first two choices.

It used to be that women like Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy, the authoress of the Yahoo article, had to work hard to be “involved in stuff.” If she wanted to be a pest, she had to do it retail. That meant going to a public place and handing out mimeographed rants or making a nuisance of herself in some way. Airports were popular places for Moonies and Hare Krishna’s. I recall our family weirdo making a scene at the local grocery store once over something unknown to me.

It used to be that the mall in Washington was the weirdo bug light. Every weirdo with a cause showed up in DC and went to the mall to “make their voice heard.” Well, it seemed like every weirdo with a cause. If you walked from one end to the other, you would see just about every brand of nutter this country could muster. I used to know a guy, who had a scale for the degree of crazy on the Mall that day.

That’s no longer the case. Today, Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy can be a pest from her bedroom. She can sit around all day texting other lunatics about lunacies they share in common. They can coordinate their efforts and “make a difference.” Because they don’t have to worry about getting punched in the nose, they can be as vicious as they like. The technological revolution created the social justice warrior by breaking down the fences society had used to keep the nuts penned up.

I don’t have answer for this. My sense is technology has turned 50,000 years of evolution against itself. For as long as man has been man, we had ways to deal with our defects. The best way was to arrange things so that it was hard for any one person to make too much trouble. Technology has obliterated those old limitations. I know people with the IQ of a goldfish with a smartphone and social media accounts.

The upshot, if there is any, is that I will be dead before lunatics like Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy have reduced the whole thing to rubble.