Other than spam and comments of little value ("+1"), even the comments that do seem human-like generally suck. Typically, they did not read the article at all or not with any care. They're not there to try and understand your point, they just want to drop their opinion. It makes you feel like everything you wrote was in vain.
And there's the hypersensitivity these days. I'm a boring blogger that writes about dry highly niche technical subjects. None that stir the pot. The least divisive topics one can imagine. And still I got burned. One of my pieces got a fair amount of reads and from referrals I could see quite a few came from Twitter, which I normally avoid like the plague.
Checking the sources there, I was in disbelief. I'm not going to be repeating the exact fragment, but imagine writing on your blog something like this:
"So to operate this control, you use your keyboard to..."
And on Twitter somebody behind your back goes:
"Keyboard!??! What fucking ableist douchebag is this idiot guy"?
And their (luckily) small bubble clapped in agreement of what a dark character I am. We all know it's typical of Twitter, but I always figured it happens to other people, not to boring me. I guess the bar really is that low now, and writing anything at all has become a liability. Even more so if you consider that future bad faith interpretations are likely to be even more extreme, so they'll be digging up your stuff with a passion.
I guess I got lucky. Had my sin be slightly larger, they'd likely be calling my employer for my termination.
Which begs the question, with this type of hostility, why write at all?
And there's the hypersensitivity these days. I'm a boring blogger that writes about dry highly niche technical subjects. None that stir the pot. The least divisive topics one can imagine. And still I got burned. One of my pieces got a fair amount of reads and from referrals I could see quite a few came from Twitter, which I normally avoid like the plague.
Checking the sources there, I was in disbelief. I'm not going to be repeating the exact fragment, but imagine writing on your blog something like this:
"So to operate this control, you use your keyboard to..."
And on Twitter somebody behind your back goes:
"Keyboard!??! What fucking ableist douchebag is this idiot guy"?
And their (luckily) small bubble clapped in agreement of what a dark character I am. We all know it's typical of Twitter, but I always figured it happens to other people, not to boring me. I guess the bar really is that low now, and writing anything at all has become a liability. Even more so if you consider that future bad faith interpretations are likely to be even more extreme, so they'll be digging up your stuff with a passion.
I guess I got lucky. Had my sin be slightly larger, they'd likely be calling my employer for my termination.
Which begs the question, with this type of hostility, why write at all?