What the Hell is Wrong with People

Really. [Link]

Is that the entire story of that trip? Of course not. There is no way to capture the quicksilver leaps of the mind between moments, the dozens of sights I saw in New Orleans I wish I could capture, the conversation with my cab driver heading back to the airport. Writing will never suffice for real life.

But there is also the shadow story, the one I never tell on this site.

I guess it’s just part of being in the public eye. This is what people tell me. I think it has more to do with the fact that we seem to have fallen into a position of derision and judgment in this culture. Everything is to be doubted. Someone has to be wrong.

From those brief 25 hours, I received emails that said, “Don’t you know that processed food is killing Americans? How could you have posted a photo with Velveeta cheese?” or “What kind of a mother are you, leaving your child for another trip? Selfish bitch.” or “Sausage? Andouille sausage? You don’t think you’re fat enough already, you have to stuff more sausage in your mouth?” There were complaints about where I ate, how much I ate, how happy I was to be with the people I sat with, that I was bragging by listing the people with whom I had dinner. There were comments about my weight, comments about my parenting, comments about the way I spend money, comments about the farce of gluten-free, comments about my photographic skills, and comments about how often I posted on Twitter (for some, that answer was: too much). Nothing goes undiscussed as being disgusted in my online world.

It’s more than offhand comments on Twitter or raging emails. It’s the systematic way that cruel comments come into my website inbox with every single post. When I posted the recipe for soft pretzels, within moments I received the comment: “I hope you choke on your own pretzels and die, you bitch.” Every day, there is some nasty, vituperative comment on a post, something I skim quickly then delete. It could be comments about my husband (“He’s obviously retarded. Look in his eyes. There’s something wrong.”) about our life on Vashon (“Oh that’s right, everything is perfect on  your fucking ISLAND.”), about our food (“That looks like dog vomit. Why does anyone pay you to do this?”), and mostly about me (my weight? my writing? my hair? my mere presence in the world? take your pick). New posts and posts from five years ago — it doesn’t seem to matter.

This happens nearly every day. Just from tonight: “i thought your kid cried all night and thats why you ate so much god damn pie. liar.”

That’s easy enough to rectify. Just hit delete. However, this ridiculousness is not relegated to this space. There are Twitter feeds devoted to mocking my voice and what I care about. There are blogs dedicated to excoriating every post I write by writing a companion post — same amount of paragraphs and sentences — in ugly language. There is a forum created just for those who hate kids and the people who write about their kids online. Apparently, my section is one of the biggest. Every time I have a recipe published in a magazine or a piece written about me, there are a score of vicious comments about me. Every time. There are lots of personal attacks hidden as reviews on Amazon.

Some people just get off on pissing on anything that someone cares about. Anything built by someone is there to be knocked down.