The Virus of Online Abuse
As a writer it’s important to be able to take criticism. Constructive criticism can help you improve. But what about when criticism turns into personal attacks and cruel abuse? In May I posted on my Facebook parenting blog about the online, multiplayer game Fortnite. I have a few hundred followers on that blog, mostly friends, and it took me twenty minutes to write the post. The following month it was picked up by Kidspot, Australia’s largest parenting website, and from there it went viral.
That was not what I planned. In fact, I hadn’t planned anything, that was part of the problem. I was trying to work late into the evening on my post-grad dissertation and was forced to stop, yet again, to deal with the older of my two sons losing his temper over the game. His younger brother and sister were in bed. He was on his allocated daily hour of Fortnite when he started shouting at the screen and I made him turn it off. Again. He stormed up to bed, appalled at the unfairness of his life. I sat and ranted at my keyboard, without any thought as to what I was about to unleash on myself. That was my first mistake: assuming that only my friends would be interested in reading what I had to say. My second was assuming that my words would remain mine.
When Kidspot contacted me a month later to ask if they could republish my blog I agreed without proper consideration again. All I thought…
