Medium Commenters: Please Learn to Read First Before You Start Using Authors as Your Personal Punching Bag

Photo by Filipp Romanovski on Unsplash

This has been a week for trolls. Holy Cow.

This morning just before I headed for the gym I opened a comment from someone who had chosen to lightly scrape over a difficult, heartfelt and heavily- read article that has garnered more eyeballs than anything I have written on Medium so far. This is the article:

With That, a 45-Year Friendship Drifted Away.

First, this was a painful article to write. So far this piece has garnered 108 comments, all of which I have read and responded to. In most cases, this piece touched a deep chord with so many of us who have had to cut off friendships or family because of the deep rift of values, or any combination of conversations and events which have made further connections with people we once held close simply untenable.

I have had my fair share of trolls on this article. Not surprisingly, for as honey draws bees, it also draws grizzly bears, who like to claw, eviscerate and crap on people in their path. No difference here.