It’s been awhile since I blogged about anything and I feel my “return” is long over due. Sure, I logged on and off a few times for the sake of checking messages, but now it’s time to chime in with a good ol’ cyber rant.
Tonight I read an article by Jessica Coen who claims to be a former “notorious” blogger who freely voiced (or wrote) her opinions in a clever and sarcastic manner across the empty void of cyber space. Sound familiar?
Many of us can attest to this behavior (voicing our often unwanted opinions), but Coen was victim to harassment to the max. Besides the typical (and often expected) heckling from peers and random retards, she received pornographic images, inexplicit death threats and harassing phone messages. One bold individual took it as far as to hack into her personal life and steal her identity. Is this the price for genius?
Based on Coen’s description of her own writing style, she seemed like a pretty entertaining blogger in her hay-day. But it was all cut short because of (you guessed it) jealousy.
The one thing I took from this article was that Coen’s readers (most likely bloggers themselves) were simply jealous of her clever writing skills (and the attention it received). And what would most faceless, nameless people do over the internet in such a situation? They would probably lay down their manners and rip her a new asshole. One of Coen’s peers fell victim to a similar situation. One blogger messaged her friend with “I hope someone slits your throat.”
Today Coen is a senior news editor at New York Magazine online – so eat it, people. In the end, her writing got recognized (and your taunts and threats fueled her article for Glamour’s “Hear Me Out” section). That’s ironic in itself!
And as some of you may know, I was also a victim to the backlash of jealousy – from my own good friend. Sure, he didn’t threaten to physically hurt me (because he knew he couldn’t), but he went as far as to post excerpts from an instant message conversation on my MySpace page in hopes that I would receive negative reactions from my readers.
Jealousy is a powerful thing. It can entice people to do off-the-wall things – things like disowning a good friend because you disagree with their move to California for love’s sake. (Haha!)
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