Online Can Be… Mean

Karen pointed me to this blog post: http://glutenfreegirl.com/warm-brown-rice-and-grilled-vegetable-salad/

It’s an awesome blog, BTW. Brilliant and awesome. But like most other popular bloggers, it’s got haters. Vituperative, vicious, petty haters. Anonymous haters.

Anonymous. That’s the key.

Bullying isn’t new, but it’s a lot easier to be cruel when you don’t have to see the person’s face that you’re hurting and when you know that they’ll never see yours.

Even good people can get caught up in the thrill of being mean anonymously to someone who seems unreal. Pamie (another brilliant blogger, who probably gets her share of haters) posted about a time when she was recapping an awful show. It was fun to mock it. Who wouldn’t, right? Who doesn’t? Except the situation became very not anonymous. (Go read the story, it’s too good to spoil.)

Ree Drummond writes the Pioneer Woman blog, but she doesn’t write about how her husband’s family is wealthy and she has a housekeeper and a nanny. Does that mean she deserves hate blogs dedicated to how bad she sucks?

I write about health, but most every day I fail to be as healthy as I want to be. I write about faith, but I disagree with my church. I write about organization, but I won’t show you how big my rail of unironed clothes has gotten.

You can work to keep yourself human to your readers. Sherry and John Petersik do this by responding to their commenters on Young House Love, and elsewhere online too.

But shouldn’t we all know that we’re all breakable people without having to be reminded?