To Hatemailers

Dear hatemailers:

If you really feel the need to exert your inner smugness, go ahead and send me an email telling me how much you hate me or STW, and lob the insults my way that you will.

BUT PLEASE . . . don’t be pathetic about it.  Have the balls to sign your own name to it.  An email isn’t some anonymous comment thread where juvenile insults are already pathetic to some degree from the start.  There, everyone just rolls their eyes at you.  When you send an email, you’re basically screaming how pathetic you are that you’re that desperate for attention.  Signing your name at least cuts down a little bit on that.

REALIZE an insult isn’t constructive criticism.  If you don’t like my artistic choices, say that.  That’s fine if we disagree – I probably don’t like all the same exact movies and music that you do either.  Lobbing insults along, that’s you standing out in the parking lot, shaking your fist at someone inside a building you’ve been locked out of.  No one cares.

DON’T BE COWARDLY, sign your name.  This needs to be said twice.

BRING SOME DEGREE OF ORIGINALITY, because you telling someone that they suck is not exactly a demonstration of your creative superiority.  If you can’t put more than two seconds thought into it, you are not some great hero of the internet, righting wrongs and rattling cages wherever you go.  You’re just pathetic.

AND WHEN I RESPOND, it’s because your pathetic effort deserves to be made fun of.  You may think you’re teaching me a lesson?  I’ll just use your pathetic cowardliness as a way to get my creative juices going, and use your weak nonsense to provide my readers with more material to enjoy.  So your attempt to tell someone off will only strengthen that which you already hate.  So thank you in advance for being so desperately pathetic. 

AND FINALLY, you are not getting under my skin if I respond.  I enjoy it.  However much fun and self-gratitude you had in crafting your response, I get at least twice as much pleasure in return.  And if there’s any level of humor in my response?  Please don’t mistake it as laughing with you.

-Dante Shepherd