A Brief Comment On Hate Mail
Hate mail comes in various forms. And whether it’s a barely-literate rant, or highly-philosophical screed, hate mail invariably ends with a variation of this clause:
Don’t even bother responding.
Everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion. And by having a public email address I am inviting readers to share them with me. However, I find it interesting that Hate Mailers who are so eager to go off on all the many ways I suck are less thrilled by the possibility that I might want to address or simply acknowledge those accusations.
Hate mailers discourage a response because they don’t want to be reminded that there’s an actual person being subjected to their vitriol. It’s so much easier to call someone “nasty” “judgmental” and “ignorant” when that person only exists as a .net. (Of course, blog comments can be even more anonymous, knee-jerk reactionary and vicious, which is why I don’t allow them on my site.)
I write back Hate Mailers not to change their opinions of me, but to perhaps make them reconsider the manner in which such opinions are expressed.
