Why I won’t Reply to Your Negative Comment
Probably not your positive ones either.
I recently wrote a post, How Do You Tell Your Wife She’s Too Fat?
As you can imagine from the title, it got many comments, and I am sure some people saw the title alone and went into my story with an idea of who the hell does this writer think he is rather than general curiosity.
When I wrote that article, I knew I was dicing with a touchy topic. Weight, or more to the point, being overweight gets too many people, and it isn’t really about that weight that upsets people; it’s other people’s views on another person’s weight that causes the issue. Knowing this, I even stated the article with a disclaimer to say I was asking a question, and the article wasn’t meant to be a fat-shaming post.
Of course, plenty of people saw red and left negative comments, one even going so far as to tell me I’m an asshole.
Me, years ago, would have replied to that reader justifying why I am not an asshole because frankly, no one likes to be called names, and I’m no different. Names bother me; being seen negatively bothers me just the same way it bothers anyone. We like to be liked. It’s human nature. And, being a writer, we’re told to have thick skins because we’ll get nasty comments, rants and bad reviews. But that doesn’t always work.
