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How to piss people off without really trying

Recently, I read a post at Ma Titwonky’s blog that kind of (kind of? understatement!) made my blood boil. It was about Shelfari.com, which I love immensely, but its at times like these that I just want to go and quit my subscription to it. Anyways, the post was about a review she wrote of The Kite Runner (a book I’ve never read but of course have heard good things about), that wasn’t very positive. Someone else responded to her comment that she… “obviously dont understand great literature. who cares if you saw the "unspeakable event" a mile away. it was very emotion and great. you ma'am is an unedcumacated bitch fucker."

Of course, my first thought was, “holy sh!t!” What leads people to think they can go and say things like this? We’re entitled to our own opinions, and we’re all allowed to disagree with someone, but making a comment like that was waaay out of line. Ma T’s reaction was a little more pragmatic than mine was. And here I was, thinking that Shelfari was such a civilized place…

Comments

Lezlie said…
Wow. That's the kind of thing that made me very wary of placing my opinions out in public via a blog. People can be so mean.

Lezlie
Terri B. said…
I echo Lezlie, "wow." I posted my thoughts (not terribly flattering ones for a book that many people do like) of a Kundera book on Goodreads.com and have half expected something like this to appear. So far I haven't been "flamed" for it.

I added a link to your review of Austenland :o)
Alea said…
I'm not really familiar with shelfari but it sounds similar to librarything.com which i love. I've never seen anything crazy like that on librarything, maybe you should switch!
My jaw is sitting on my desk right now! I received a semi-offensive comment on my post for The Tenth Circle (if you're interested, you can find the link under my 2007 reads), but I could tell the person was an idiot so I had to laugh at his/her ignorance. I don't understand how people can be so disrespectful! By the way, both The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns are really good books--I'd recommend them!

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