For all the mean people

It often surprises me how people can be so mean and angry and critical and personal on other people’s blogs. I used to wonder if maybe the anonymity the Internet provides is their only avenue and opportunity to spew forth all their pent-up venom from some past misfortune. I mean, if they really don’t like the person’s writing – or even the person himself/herself – so much, then why do they make the effort of reading posts and commenting when they could be, I don’t know, getting a coffee or eating an ice cream cone?

Then, having given it a teeny bit of thought, I’ve decided that yes, while the Internet can provide a blissful cloak of anonymity (spiteful cowards!), it also allows me access to a billion more people than I would normally come across and the sad truth is, there are a lot of mean and/or angry people out there. The Internet merely opens my eyes to them.

Writing about this has reminded me of a jerk who used to post anonymous, spiteful and occasionally obscene comments about my husband in the chatbox of my previous blog. He (we suspect the culprit to be male) knew enough that we think it’s someone we know, or at the very least is an acquaintance of some sort. We never found out who it was and he eventually stopped but there was a coward if I ever knew one.

Anyway, the real point of my entry is this. I’m a reader of dooce.com and I salute Heather Armstrong for coming up with this. I can’t pretend I know her just by reading her blog but she seems decent enough, doesn’t strike me as a terrorist or serial killer, and certainly doesn’t come across as a person who deserves some of the things that’s been said about her on her own blog. In fact, very few people deserve those remarks.

This is her post explaining the origins of ‘Monetizing The Hate.’ It’s been up a while and I’ve been meaning to mention it sooner but, yeah, life and all. It took me sometime but I’ve also come to terms with the fact that when you live on a planet of over 6 billion, you’re guaranteed to piss at least some people off.