Chill Out!
I’m hardly one to call for civility and decency. Snark is my primary means of communication. But even I have mellowed with age.
As the story of this author kept spreading across the web, as people apparently couldn’t let it go, I started to feel sorry for her. Yeah, me. Pity. The cold, dry fig of my heart, started beating.
Perhaps it’s the anonymity of the media, but the Internet can accelerate people from zero to outrage in a microsecond. I see it all time, everywhere. Blogs. Forums. Newsgroups. Someone says the sky is blue. Someone else takes umbrage to use of the word “blue,” screeching that blue is the color of Smurfs and Smurfs are filthy, blue, child molesters. And off we go…
I’ve seen people on newsgroups rant about someone who hasn’t responded to emails in a few days. “Unprofessional!” they cry. The possibility that the other person may have had a genuine emergency precluding Internet access, never occurs to them. Nope. It’s about them and their…outrage and hurt fee-fees.
I don’t know what moved that author to tell a commenter to “Fuck off.” Maybe she is a bitch or a moron. Or maybe…just maybe, the review, however innocuous, was the straw that broke the proverbial dromedary’s back. Maybe the biopsy came back positive. Maybe a loved one died. Maybe her house burned down.
Sure, it’s easy to talk about brushing off criticism. But not so easy when the world has just taken a giant, stinking dump on your life.
Either way, is it really your job to teach this person manners? Do you really need to go charging around the Internet, slaying imaginary dragons like some virtual Don Quixote? The ever-gentile Nathan Bransford describes the futility of that quest thusly:
This is a person who just wanted to have their book out there and has the same hopes and dreams as any other writer. Some rude Internet behavior negates all of that? People will ridicule her and scorch the Earth and trash what this author has built in the name of teaching a lesson?
I wonder if this is in part a function of a certain mindset–*cough* “rightwing”– whose tendency is to strive not for true justice, but instead punishment. It isn’t enough that someone get smacked for being a unprofessional twit. Nope. Now she must suffer.
Here’s an idea. Rather than tormenting some nobody who’s never really done anything to hurt you, why not vent your rage at the morons in Washington D.C.? The people whose actions really do affect your day-to-day life?
Save an author. Eat a politician.
