Confessing Evangelical

One of my favourite sites at the moment is Gina Trapani's personal productivity blog, Lifehacker (though something very odd seems to have happened to the home page at the moment, full of stories about zombies - oh, hang on, just spotted the date. My bad.)

Anyway, in this week's non-April 1st edition of her regular "Geek to Live" column on the site, Ms Trapani gives some tips on How to deal with Internet Meanies:

There’s something about the feeling of anonymity on the Internet that can turn otherwise reasonable, pleasant people into complete blockheads. Given an open, free, global network to communicate, people use it to rant, rave, flame and complain. We’ve all done it.

But when YOU are the target of an insulting post or sharply-worded email, quite frankly, it can really suck. Today I’ve got some strategies for dealing with Internet Meanies: those faceless virtual bullies who take pleasure in shooting other people down from the safety of their keyboards.

Her suggestions include: step away from the computer; separate the hate from the message (or in other words, perhaps that was a pretty lame post, now you think about it); grow a thick skin.

Mercifully this isn't a problem I've ever really had to face on this site, but it was still an interesting read, and hopefully will be useful to some people who encounter this issue more frequently. Yes, that means you, Michael. ;-)