BootsnAll Travel Community

Anyone ever had someone leave derogatory comments on their blog? I just had this left by Anonymous from the US on one of my entries, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

"1. you dont belong in vietnam, i marvel that you have such scorn for a country you chose to visit. mabye i am reading this out of context, but whatever. suck an egg."

Sure, the first week I spent in Vietnam was probably the worst time I had during 6 straight months of travel, but I simply wrote what happened (I hope, anyway). And the second half of the entry that Anonymous has commented on is full of nothing but praise for good old 'Nam. (you can read the entry here Can Tho: You Eeediot)

Well, I guess I at least had someone marvelling at my stuff.

When lotsa people are reading our stuff, then we get a snippy reply now and then.
I just got one the other day. We all get them.

Sometimes, I think that skobb sends me them to me.

How do you deal with it? Ignore it? Try and engage in an intelligent discussion? (Although this seems unlikely, given they told me to suck an egg.) Dismiss it with a humourous quip. (Although this seems unlikey given my lack of comedic ability.)

If we had the time to deal with every poohbutt in life, we would never get anything else done.

Think of it this way..... it's easy for somebody to sit at home, read a blog and make a comment based on what they think it means. You're the one doing the traveling and experiencing everything first hand.

We all have our tough days when we say, "what the hell is going on, why did I come here?".

Stay true to yourself. This is YOUR trip and YOUR experiences. As long as you're happy with yourself, that's all that matters!

Ignore it, delete it, if it really bothers you. Move on to your next post. Take it all in bloggers stride.

I think if readers who have left positive comments first or have taken interest in your travels leave a honest comment then don;t delete it. But if its a random person who does not take the time to articulate their thoughts then by all means delete it. Its your blog and you should do what you want.

I actually don't really take offence from the comment.

I'm a redhead, so being yelled at, teased, ridiculed etc. is part of everyday life. Just a couple of days ago I was walking down the street in Edinburgh when two young guys hung out of a 2nd storey window above me and screamed "GINGER NUT!!!!!" What else do you do but suck it up, give a smile and a wave, and continue to stroll proudly down the street. I was just curious to see how many others got comments like this one, and how they responded.

It was actually good, because it forced me to go back and reread the entry, something I haven't done at all with my blog - they were written off the top of my head at internet cafes, and apart from the odd entry haven't been revisited. It brought back memories which I'd already forgotten. So cheers Anonymous, now, where's that egg....?

"Major disappointment"

"Grottier than thou travel"

"Ugly American"

"A book about ME ME ME (and some of my travels)"

"No Touch Monkey? No Touch Book!"

"The Ugly American 2003 style"

"No Touch Book"


With headlines like that, it's a miracle anyone ever chooses to "Add to Shopping Cart".

Canuck Girl hits the nail square on the head when she says that it's easy for somebody to sit at home and make comments. It's much more rigorous to travel or write a book or put yourself out there in a way that invites criticism, rather than spews it like some sort of pressurized ca-ca hose!

One day on Amazon's Canadian site, due to technological error, all customer reviews were displayed under the reviewers real name, whether they had chosen to do so or not. I did not have the pleasure / horror of seeing this miracle with my own eyes, but I suspect that those responsible for the most scathing messages were revealed to be overwhelmingly:

1. dyspeptic mewlers who couldn't write a book if the book fairy dumped one on their heads,corporate peons seething at their unrecognized greatness, 43-year-old virgins with combovers whose yell at their mamas for folding their laundry wrong, and the pathologically humorless.

2. jealous fellow authors whose time would have been better spent working on a manuscript.

3. someone the author went to college with (but cannot remember) who apparently harbors the belief that the author's college sweetheart would have been hers if only he'd been able to tear himself away from the "pretentious, irritating, untalented" author. (I ain't being hypothetical here. She once asserted on her blog - part of a Unitarian Universalist Blogging Ministers webring - that I gave my children "stupid hippie names". With thoughtful analysis like that, who needs Fox News?


There's always some a-hole out there, wanting to shoot down your work for reasons that have very little to do with your work. My husband and I were talking about this just last night - he's got a new play in previews and every night, dozens of elderly subscribers stream toward the exit mid show (after unwrapping their candies and negelecting to turn off their cell phones for however long they styaed) or if they stay for intermission, announce to the lobby-at-large that they hope the 'second act gets better because there are some things that shouldn't be said on a public stage." What? Aren't bad manners supposed to be the province of youthful rabble, not mature culture seekers? Save it for the privacy of the cab, or at least wait until you've cleared the marquee, either at intermission, or after the actors have taken their bow.

I know professional critics who quit when they found themselves getting jaded, bitchy and resentful. Apparently, those who post nasty comments, scathing customer reviews, and hateful blog entries arent' wired for self-reflection in that way, or perhaps the lack of financial renumeration for the airing of their views is such a bitter pill for them to swallow, they become extra vicious.

Finally, nasty comments are a good reminder that what really counts are positive comments. Nothing makes me happier than discovering out of the blue that a stranger read something I wrote and voluntarily took some time out of their day to say so in a public forum. How courteous. How thoughtful. What a nice person he or she must be! I hope something really great happens to him or her today! Let us all go out of our way to publicly acknowledge, in some sort of public, work that we've enjoyed! Let us counter-effect all this unsolicited dungheap bile! Kick those villains to the curb!

Hey Beaker, funny you should post this now... I just had a lovely comment left on one of my entries, check it out:

quote:

Someone pointed me to your blog recently, so I followed it from beginning to end. You might want to think ahead to when you want to publish, who your audience is, what your market will be. It seems to me you want to be a travel writer, yet so far it reads more like Traveling Pants than Dark Star Safari. I have learned more about your sleeping habits, your health, your finicky eating, the relationship with your boyfriend, your neuroses and your insecurities than I have about Latin America, the environment, the sociopolitical issues, the culture, the history or the people. Don't rely on your boyfriend to show us with photography, that's his job. Your job is to describe with words, stop using his images as crutches. If you received an advance on a book, your publisher will be mortified to learn that you prefer to sleep in than explore, that you chose to continue on the beaten path rather than investigate a more interesting location that is harder to access (Iquitos comes to mind) and that by your own admission you’re a procrastinator who allows her work to lag behind for weeks at a time. Consider that your reluctance to experience newness or to push the envelope tends to invalidate your trips to Eastern and Western Europe, India, Thailand, and the U.S. If they’re anything like this one-year bus trip from New York City to the tip of South America then I can expect -as a reader- to learn all about your hotel rooms, whether or not they had cable, your skills at the Sims game, how much fried chicken you ate, whether or not you felt stared at or ignored, and what a sweetheart your boyfriend is, but not much about your surroundings or any examples of embracing the culture and the people. You seem to gravitate only to fellow backpackers, but when locals approach, you clam up and let your boyfriend do the chatting. Get out of your comfort zone. Smile more, practice your Spanish, wake up (in every sense). And don’t judge. Your job is to observe and relay that information, not to pass judgment on others and be “gapemouthed” at the notion that a Peruvian in the middle of nowhere has some basic clichéd knowledge of an American sub-culture, when in your New York life you couldn’t have possibly even attempted a stereotypical description of a Peruvian sub-culture. Otherwise, expect to find your book in the chick-lit aisle, published by a vanity press.

The person signed him/herself "A Publisher." Nice, huh? I slept on it to see if I was being sensitive and perhaps it had merit, but in the end decided that there was just too much vitriol to take it seriously. I responded, however I did not and will not delete it. He (let´s just go with he) missed the purpose of my blog and doesn´t seem to realize it´s not an article I´m trying to sell, but he is entitled to his opinions and I´m not going to let him think I´m hiding from them... if he ever comes back.

Ayun, you and I are in Thong together (mine´s the one about the pig)... in fact, when I found out my story was taken, my boyfriend and I had a shot of whiskey while I jumped around and whispered (because it was midnight) "I´m going to be in a book with Ayun Halliday!" I loved No Touch Monkey. So it was good to read your thoughts on the subject, thanks.

Smiling more,
Megan

He (or she) is nuts and if he (or she) is a publisher I'll eat Sonny Mehta's hat. Show me a pubisher who toddles around posting lengthy anonymous comments on blogs - even if they've been solicited to have a look - and I will show someone whose delusions are probably the result of going off their meds. And what publisher wouldn't wet themselves over the opportunity to hit it out of the park with chick lit? (A Publisher actually sounds like A Writer who hopes the phrase "chick lit" will be taken as a withering dis, rather than a marketing buzz phrase.) As B. Bunny would say, "what a maroon".

Now I will jump around that I am in anthology with you!, Megan. Reciprocity makes the world go round!

Megan, you wrote the Pig story?! I loved it! I shared it with my grandmother and we just about wet ourselves with laughter.

Writing requires thick skin. I used to have an editor who would park his butt on the corner of my desk, red pen in hand. He would then rip my work to shreds, claim I couldn't write a decent lead and turn my writing into a cliched mess.

I also may still be a little bitter.

Ayun, I love the rant.

Beaker, don't sweat it. Ayun's three points are about as honest as . . . as . . . and I call myself a writer.

Jet

Wow Megan, that's some strange criticism coming unsolicited from a stranger. They've even been as arrogant as to tell you where you should be travelling. You sure it's not just one of your mates trying to trip you up.

And Ayun, that's not a bad little collection of comments you've got there. 'No touch book', gee, from where in the fiery depths of hell do they get these flashes of brilliance?

I also doubt my commenter is actually a publisher... but I don't think he's a mate either... blech, I hope not, cause the joke went way over my head...

Thanks, JetGirl!

Missed the point is right. I guess it never occured to "him" that your experiences can easily be written in many other ways, or that you may have an entirely separate set of notes for just that purpose.