For a couple of days now, I've had a new friend writing to me. He started off by telling me I needed to get a job, after I posted about a) how I needed to get a job, and then b)how I'd already gotten one. I made the mistake of dignifying him with a well-thought out response, and have since had a couple of exhanges that amounted to little more than this:

Me: Well, what exactly do you mean? And what do you have to support this idea with?
Troll: You are a doodyhead.

My frustration is not that I was duped into talking to this idiot, or that for every reasoned statement I made, he threw out some completely inane remark and totally ignored what I'd said.

What bothers me is the fact that in the three years I have been doing this, I never once had a problem. I never had someone show up and say that my blog wasn't good enough for them. That I wasn't using the right words. I never had someone come into what is essentially my place, and insult me. This is a trend that I've seen recently at other people's blogs. Some dipshit shows up and thinks that they have the right to start dictating content.

And here is why it worries me. I do not have even a fraction of the exposure and readership these other sites do. But the longer I stick around, the more people have found me. I can only assume that this will happen again at some other point in the future. And what will I do then? Let someone be a bully to me? Or get into a pointless argument with a guy who is living proof that we came from fucking monkeys? I get very Cuban when people pick on me. I know that passively allowing the remark to roll off my back will be difficult. But engaging them is worse. It just feels unnecessary.

I suppose it's my own fault if people come here and say mean-spirited things; I've given them all the ammunition they need. They can see all my insecurities, my weaknesses, my scars. I put those things here. Why should I be surprised when someone takes advantage of that to be vindictive?

Because I thought that people were better than that.