Critical

Thursday:
I read quite a few blogs, some right through their archives, so there are some people out there I kind of feel I know well. I have to remind myself that they don't know me at all! Even if I have commented a couple of times, the more popular bloggers have thousands of followers. Sometimes I want to say something that could be taken as a bit negative, a bit critical. Like: those clothes you think are cute really don't suit you and make you look fatter than you really are. It would be coming from a spirit of helpful kindness; but would it come across that way? Probably not.

I am not their best friend. Not even their any-kind-of-friend, really. It is not my place to tell them stuff like that. That is for close friends, if even then.

I've never said anything like that, but I have occasionally made a negative comment. Like someone posted their favourite quote and commentors were agreeing with it and I said it didn't make sense. It was the equivalent of saying you'll give 110% effort, which is a pet peeve of mine. But you know what? I bet I didn't convert anyone to my point of view and I just came across sounding grumpy and annoying. I shall be extra careful in future; not to stifle my own opinion, but to make sure I comment appropriately and not sound like a douche-bag. Whatever that is.

This has been in my mind because of a recent incident on a blog I read. It's a weight loss blog and the author is nearly at her goal weight. She posted some photos, but said in her following post that she was a bit upset because someone said she looked huge in her photos. I thought someone had just been a bit tactless but probably hadn't mean it to sound that way; like maybe they wanted to say she looked better in real life or in other photos or something like that. I went back and read the original comment. It read, in entirety, something like "You look huge in those photos." That was it. And apparently it was a fake name from a fake email address, so they didn't even have the courage to put their real name on it.

Who does that? Who reads weight loss blogs and leaves horrible insults to make the author feel bad?

It bothered me enough that I made up a little story in my head about the commentor; a 14 year old boy who downloads "chubby porn" because he is actually attracted to overweight people but that is so uncool and embarressing that he tries to prove he doesn't really like them by insulting anyone who isn't model-skinny from the anonymous safety of his bedroom. Who knows, I could be right.