Everyone knows one. They fill the interwebz with their vile
hate. They are trolls. People who feel so brave under the veil of anonymity the
internet provides that they are willing to pee in everyone’s cheerios.
Recently, this happened to a good friend of mine. Some
random woman who read my short story, Jar of Pickles, apparently looked through
the rest of my reviews on that short story and was so appalled that my friend
had added her own book to her Amazon signature that she reported it to Amazon
as abuse.
My friend had given an honest review of my short story. At
no time did she switch topics and start raving her own book, it just happened
to be on her signature. This in no way violated Amazon’s review policy, so I
wrote an e-mail to Amazon expressing I had absolutely no issues with the review
in question.
It is my guess that nothing will come of this reported abuse
and hopefully the awful “review” that same lady left on my friend’s book will
be deleted by Amazon since it has nothing to do with her book and is basically
just a gripe fest on what this one lady feels is acceptable.
But as I lay in bed last night, trying to figure out what
this lady’s problem was, I realized that being in the profession I’m in, that
there will always be trolls. Someone who is so unhappy in their own life that
they want to spread that unhappiness with the world. They are the worst kind of
bully, because they never have to look you in the eye and say to your face what
they are so willing to write all over the internet.
That made me angry. How dare she hurt my friend! What
business of it was hers? If anyone should’ve been upset by the “promoting”
signature, it should’ve been me. And as I wrote my response to her comment on
my friend’s book in my head, it dawned on me that it wouldn’t do any good,
cause haters gonna hate no matter how rational you are.
Then I became sad for her, because all she has is hate and
my friends and I, well, we have each other and no troll can compete with that.
