Jennie Smash

There are few hard and fast rules for bloggers, but one of them seems to be “never address an anonymous post from someone who thinks you suck.” But we’re all about breaking the rules here at the Smash, so let’s tackle my latest piece of hate mail, shall we?

This morning I got up, rubbed the sleep from my pretty pretty eyes and stumbled over to the computer as I usually do. (Yes, I do this before I pee. Yes, I should probably see a cognitive therapist of some sort.) In my inbox I found, along with the usual come-ons from manufacturers of cut-rate Viagra, a notification of the following comment:

This site hasn’t been good in months. What the hell is wrong with you? Sporadic posting, impersonal ranting, list after list after list after list. What happened to the self depricating [sic] story telling? When did JS turn into Spice World the blog and why?

Girl Power!

Now, I have no idea what this means. My friend Ilisa has suggested that perhaps this poster thinks I dress up in stupid outfits and very tall shoes and sing bad pop songs poorly. Also that I am stuck in, what, 1996? But underlying the head-scratching metaphor is a pretty simple idea: your blog sucks!

I’d love to sit here and tell you that I’m a big girl and it didn’t hurt my feelings, but let’s be honest: if I were a big girl, I probably wouldn’t have a blog in the first damn place. One of the interesting, or at least universal, things about bloggers is that we seem to be fairly sensitive souls. The question of what, if anything to do about negative comments, is a tricky one, and we deal with it in a variety of ways:

1) Turn off comments. This won’t work for me, as I am part of the breed of blogger that is doing this at least in part for instant gratification. I hate the mean comments, but I love the compliments. Go on and scoff if you must.
2) Delete the mean comments; keep the compliments. This seems like cheating to me.
3) Ignore the whole thing, compliment and comment and just let it go. Too mature.
4) Obsess over negative comments, deciding that they are in fact a signal of the decline of your site as a whole, that in fact you’ve never had any talent at all, and that what little you had is now used up. Also, your friends who say otherwise? Just need that paycheck that your parents send them to be friends with you. I like this option. I think it’s the one for me.

Anyway, my real point is that I don’t actually think this anonymous commenter is full of shit. The quality has dipped a bit, but what can you do. Many of the things that are going on in my life right now aren’t ready for public consumption. So that leaves lists and stories about the weather and general rants about people’s bathroom behavior and so on. But if you stay tuned, I’m bound to get my heart broken or get fired or decide to move to Alaska. And then we’ll really have something to talk about.

In the meantime, here is a suggestion: Post your blog topic ideas in the comments below. I will either handcraft you a hilarious true-life anecdote about them, or I will mock you roundly for your stupid suggestion. Either way, I think we have comedy gold here, people.