Since around May of this year this blog has received countless comments basically telling me I’m stupid and that I should just shut up.
Some friends have said publishing these comments exposes the commenter as the jerk they are. Some fellow beer bloggers have even implied that not posting comments is censorship. But this assumes these comments are part of a discussion, which they are not. Trolls never want to discuss anything.
I’ve considered shutting this blog down a few times because I’m tired of dealing with it. But then I realized this is the state of the blogsphere: comments give space to small people with typing skills, cowards who are threatened by the voice blogs give to people they normally don’t have to deal with, and though the “controversy” may make the hit count soar, I’m not interested in that.
Apparently this is not an isolated case:
Feminist Bloggers Face Online Harassment
Misogyny Bares its Teeth on the Internet
How the Web Became a Sexists’ Paradise
This is my blog, and it is public, but it is also private: it’s about me, an actual person– a woman who likes beer and who’s going to keep writing about it.
Impy Malting 