Marco.org

jessicagoldharalson on the female body discussion from earlier:

[…] My body type (short, curvy, rounded) has been slammed by multiple anonymous Internet males. On the website AutoAdmit, the (mostly male) posters there called me a “huge sow” and linked to some pictures to show what a fatty I was.

On another thread on another forum, my “huge cankles” have been criticized. (Note: I do not have cankles. It was just the angle of that freaking picture!)

On another comment thread, I was told I could “lose ten pounds and then be hot.”

You could respond with, “Well, those men are just jerks!” But even if those guys are jerkwads, there sure seem to be a lot of them out there.

[…]

I’m pretty OK with the way I look most of the time, but if I listened to men on the Internet I sure wouldn’t be.

Internet commenters consistently tell me that I’m an idiot, I’m a moron, I suck, I can’t write, I suck at my job, I should be fired, and I’m a loser.

They’re internet commenters. That’s what they do.

Commenters aren’t a representative sample of readers. They’re a tiny minority (most people don’t comment), and by the nature of the medium, they’re far more likely to be negative, angry, and idiotic.

There are lots of angry, aggressive, stupid, bigoted, shallow, prejudiced, and ignorant people out there. Internet comments give them a voice, and they’re desperate to spew their ignorance all over this new medium that gives the illusion of an audience.

Who cares what those people say? That’s not who you’re going for. You wouldn’t want to associate with them even if they wanted you to.

They’re like those crazy people who talk to you on the street until you walk away because they’re desperate for someone to listen, and they have no idea how crazy they sound.

There are many good reasons why I don’t have comments on my tumblelog and I never read comments on sites I visit. (Instapaper’s new text view quietly strips comments out, and nobody has complained or even noticed enough to mention it.)

There are plenty of great people out there, but you won’t find them by wading through the swamp of internet commenters.