Reading My Writing is a Privilege, Not a Right

Some thoughts on ridiculous drama from a rude reader

Do you know what there’s not enough of in this world?

Courtesy.

Just be nice. Hold the door for people. Say please and thank you. It goes a long way. The thing is, you don’t know what somebody is dealing with. Maybe the person who you failed to hold the door for is just returning from burying his mother. Maybe you not holding the door was the final straw that snapped the last thread that was maintaining his will to live.

You don’t know, and I don’t mean that as an excuse for rude behavior. I mean it as an appeal to be nice.

You don’t know when a small act of courtesy can be the difference between life and death for somebody. So, be kind! It doesn’t cost you anything. In fact, you get more out of it than you put in.

I’m so tired of indifferent people who go stomping through life completely blind to the struggles their fellow human beings are forced to endure. Perhaps if we did more to rip off the blinders of entitlement, all our social problems would disappear.

Perhaps...

Anyway, what got me thinking about this was some absurd drama that I had to endure last week. I get a lot of bizarre and harassing comments, and I don’t have patience for anything that feels like it will have a detrimental effect on my mental health.

This is just a survival mechanism. I don’t mind if people disagree with me, but if you can’t express your disagreement in a way that’s courteous, then you’re out. It’s simply not worth it to me to spend the mental energy wading through discourteous comments to determine if they might contain a valuable insight.

The level of entitlement that compels people to think I have that obligation is stunning.

I’m usually pretty quick on the block button whenever a comment gives me a creepy vibe. A couple weeks ago, a woman highlighted a section of text in one of my articles and wrote “this statement needs to have a source.” The thing is, there was a source hyperlinked in the VERY SENTENCE SHE HIGHLIGHTED.

I didn’t feel that this transgression was quite enough to warrant a block, but it did count as a “first strike.” I took note.

I informed her that the source was linked and left the interaction feeling rather angry. Honestly, I think the appropriate response on her part should have been to offer me an apology, “Oh, my bad, it’s my first day on the internet and I didn’t realize that when a line of text is underlined it means I can click on it with that mouse thing...”

But no, there was nothing, and I gradually forgot about it.

This week, I did some research on military casualties versus the number of children that die from gun violence in the United States. I was stunned to find about 2.5 times as many children die each year as members of the military.

I recognize that I’m the only person in the United States that thinks we should do something about the senseless slaughter of our innocent children, but I would like to have my position treated at least with a basic amount of respect. Just because absolutely nobody else cares about kids dying doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me.

So, I wrote an article in which I proposed that since our children are really the ones doing most of the dying because of our right to bear arms, then they should be the ones who we thank for their service (even if it’s involuntary... perhaps especially so).

Well, I received a response that accused me of using “flawed logic.”

I wrote back, “The only flawed logic I see is that our society is content to sacrifice 2,500 innocent children annually.”

But then I looked at the profile of the person I was responding to and recognized it was the same woman who had berated me for not providing a source when I had, in fact, provided one. I was feeling pretty angry about how she was trying to divert the conversation on my article away from my objective of saving children by turning it into an attack on me.

So, I thought to myself, “Well, this isn’t worth the aggravation, and that’s TWO strikes!” and I blocked her.

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Most of the time I block people and it allows me the time to cool off. Really folks, if you’re a writer with any level of following, you CANNOT get into mud slinging arguments in the comments.

You can’t.

Don’t do it.

All that does is make you look bad. You’ll lose followers at best, and at worst you’ll get drawn into saying something that will get you banned from the platform. I’ve seen it happen. Comments are for saying, “Thank you for reading my article.” If you’re typing out, “Listen Bub...” hit block instead and go pet your dog.

Well, a day after I blocked this person, I get a private note from somebody claiming to be her friend. “So and so is a really nice person, she just wrote this apology, can you give her another chance?” The private note also included the link.

I thought, “Hmmm, maybe I was too harsh.” I clicked on the link, but I couldn’t read it because I’d blocked the woman. It took me less than a second to realize I could get around that by opening up an incognito tab, and a second later, presto, I was reading the article.

Well, surprise, surprise, it wasn’t an apology at all! In fact, the woman was doubling down. “Walter Rhein had the nerve to block me because I called him out on his flawed logic.”

Ha! There it was again. I couldn’t help but laugh at the dishonesty of using the words “flawed logic.” What a deceitful way of talking about something.

“I disagreed with this person because of his flawed logic.”

“That’s awful!”

“Tell me about it.”

“Just out of curiosity, what were the details of his logic?”

“Well, he tried to claim that we should do something about the 2,500 kids who are senselessly killed or murdered in the United States every year. What a joker right? Talk about some flawed logic!”

“Um...”

It’s a common rhetorical tactic to dishonestly misrepresent a person or an argument in a way that makes them seem unfair or illogical. The example in this case is discussing me in terms of “flawed logic” instead of walking any third party through the truth of my argument.

My logic isn’t flawed. You can disagree with my logic, but I object to anyone who calls it “flawed.” The problem is that “generally accepted belief” in the United States is often completely ludicrous and utterly disconnected from reality. I run into a lot of people who pompously lecture me on beliefs that are verifiably inaccurate, and they feel entitled to do so because our whole cultural identity is to believe complete nonsense.

At this point, I started laughing to myself. Well OF COURSE the person wasn’t offering an apology. When you recognize you’ve done something wrong, you don’t write an article about it. Nope! Instead you track down the person you wronged and you send them a private message.

I give people two strikes, if you want to purchase a third strike, make a donation on my Ko-Fi page. Pledge whatever you think is enough. Don’t give up just because I don’t let you back in (it just means you haven’t given enough yet). People who are willing to support my writing help me distinguish between those that are hostile and those that simply have an abrasive way of communicating.

“I realize that my comments were discourteous and I am deeply sorry. I will make an effort to be more respectful in the future.”

A sincere apology goes a long way. But writing a “pity me” article where you want to put the focus on how unfairly you’re treated at the expense of an argument I wrote to try and compel our society to DO SOMETHING about the senseless and preventable deaths of 2,500 kids every year is not the answer. That’s not an apology, it’s another act of aggression.

I didn’t really feel like enduring the drama of being the focal point of some hit piece article, but that’s the reality of the world. I’m not going to link to that article because I’m not going to be coerced into sending traffic her way.

It’s really frustrating how often people who think they’re adults in the United States will treat you with discourtesy and then throw temper tantrums about it. People who think that kind of behavior is limited to the traitor president need to open their eyes. You encounter it every day.

If you want to throw a temper tantrum about something, throw one about the fact that 2,500 children are killed due to gun violence every year in the Untied States. It’s the leading cause of death for kids. If people want to attack me rather than try and save some innocent lives, then they lose the privilege of reading anything I write.

So, be nice when you comment! Speaking of that: