What kind of sad person reads a story—say, on CNN.com—and is so outraged by its tone that he (and, sorry normal guys, it's inevitably a he) researches the writer, finds her blog, reads every page of it and then fires her off a nasty email? Two days in a row? Does this person have nothing better to do with his time? Doesn't he have a job? A wife? A life? As the New York Times illustrated last week, generally not.
I'm no stranger to hate mail. I get it fairly often and mostly it amuses me—except for the death threat. That wasn't so funny. Mostly I just ignore it, but this week I received two letters in two days—both from the same freak. Here's the second one:
Must suck to be you. Handing out date advice when you are the girl that guys "settle" for; or ending up with after a night of drunken debauchery. Maybe you should try doing dining articles instead. From your pictures it seems you have quite an appetite.
Ah, the fat card. As any woman who's ever put herself out there knows, the f-bomb is the preferred insult d'jour. Furthermore, it doesn't matter if the woman i's a size two or 20—this is always the first bomb lobbed her way. Normally I just ignore these jerks—because honestly, I don't care if some shut-in thinks I'm fat or ugly or a slut (#2 and #3 on the most-used insult hit parade). But this week I had a little time on my hands, so I did a little research.
Google revealed that—shock of shocks—my troll is a fattie. He's also, wait for it—an IT guy. No offense to normal, cute, dorky IT dudes. If anything, you guys should be really pissed that this guy is reinforcing negative stereotypes. So I wrote back to this fella—whose name I will kindly conceal—and asked him a few questions that he was generous enough (flattered by the attention enough?) to answer. Here's what I wrote:
