So here’s a little something to think about.

     Several years ago, I was part of an online community on usenet.  RASTB5 was/is a fan discussion forum for Babylon Five fans.  It was also, like many usenet newsgroups at the time, prone to “flame wars”.  In particular, there was a guy that called J. Michael Straczynski (A.K.A, JMS) a bunch of names and said a lot of mean things about him personally.  I forget the exact words, but I seem to recall something about him being a “homo”.

     A bunch of people leapt to JMS’s defense and this person responded that if JMS couldn’t take criticism, he shouldn’t be a writer.

     Anyway, I was a mother of small children at the time.  I had a four-year-old and an infant.  I was working about 35 (at home, with the kids) hours a week, testing software.  I had a (then) undiagnosed case of hypothyroidism which caused my already massively sleep-deprived state to be amplified to nearly intolerable levels.

     But even in that state, I could tell the difference between criticism and personal attacks.  So in between work and housework and juggling two kids, through half-lidded, sleep-deprived eyes, I dashed off a response outlining the difference between the two.

     The next day, I found my mailbox full of angry, snide, obnoxious e-mails letting me know that I was a pretentious idiot who couldn’t spell and I should at least run a spell-check if I was going to tell people I had an English major.  (Just so you know, it was a HUGE affront to the denizens of that ‘verse to reference credentials.  They were quite hostile to anything that smacked of elitism.)

     Years later, a friend of mine did a Dogpile search on my name, and informed me that there was a website out there that was still mocking me for this post.

     I followed the URL, and sure enough…there was my post…with many of the logical and context-establishing bits edited out (as well as the repugnant crap that it was a response to), the misspelled words typed out below, and the quip “hope you kept the receipt on that degree.”

      It’s still out there.

     From this I learned:

1. People are really vindictive.
2. You should always run a spell-checker twice…even if you think you ran it…run it again.
3. No matter how brilliant and flawless something seems, never send it off if you feel like you’ve been dragged fifty miles behind a truck by your eyelids.
4. People who cannot argue with your reasoning resort to spelling/grammar nits.
5. Putting anything on the internet should be like getting a tattoo…make sure that you are going to be able to tolerate looking at it 50 years from now…or at least resign yourself to the fact that you might hate it and still have to look at it.
6. While you’re at it, accept that anything that you put out there can be taken, chopped, sliced, diced, twisted and made even uglier by petty, malicious people.
7. People who loudly, vocally and publicly brag about not being members of “the intellectual elite” are probably not worth arguing with.

Useful information.  Thought I’d pass it along…absorb it, use it, profit from it.

Oh yeah, and one more only slightly related thing…don’t put anything up that could come back to haunt you in a court of law.