My First Nasty Commenter
And how I almost got snared into engaging with him more
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I have been on Medium for a little over a year, and I love it for its culture of supportiveness and respect, so it says a lot that it’s only today that I got a comment that riled me enough to block the author.
OK, to be clear, the first comment from this person wasn’t nasty as such. It merely put my back up a bit, as it had nothing to do with my story but was trying to correct me on a historical point about the Irish Famine. Namely, telling me that the potato blight was a myth. I gave it seven claps and replied.
I wrote:
“While you are correct that the English stole cabbages, meat and other vegetables from the Irish, and that the Famine was orchestrated by the English, the potato blight was, and is, devastatingly real. I have seen its work with my own eyes. Fine fat potatoes in the ground go stinky and mushy overnight. A copper penny in water can prevent it, but it is so wet here, who waters potatoes?”
It was the second comment that got me. The author’s response was a private note, complaining that: I only gave one clap to his ‘article’, and who gives one clap? One clap is like saying with a sneer this person is terrible.
Pretty passive aggressive over all, as he went on to say I seem like a nice person, but why did I only give his article one clap?
As I have never heard of him before, he must be referring to his comment on my story as his ‘article’. And actually I gave it seven claps.
I was composing in my head some moderate and placatory replies, like one clap counts as much as 50, actually, when I caught myself on and thought:
What the Actual F***?
I have blocked authors before, because they were obvious AI, or they were spamming me for their business and not even writers nor readers; and I’ve also blocked editors of a publication that mistreated me and who seemed to have power over my account in a way they shouldn’t, but this was the first time I thought that a Medium member was unhinged, and unbelievably self-entitled.
“Do not engage!” I told myself, blocked him, and came here to share, instead.
Have you had way-out-there commenters, and private note-leavers? Care to share here?
I delightedly discovered this publication yesterday, All About M, when a load of writers I follow got frozen out of Medium, and I lost 39 followers overnight.
From what I can gather, they were frozen by the new spam filters as they have multiple accounts on Medium.
Isn’t it great there is a place to glean topical information and experience from other Mediumites? Long live Grandma Smillew!
