Blogger gives up, citing personal attacks

This happens every day, showing that words DO hurt, and that we are all affected by them.

We hear this a lot, actually, and from places you'd where hardly expect this sort of thing. The blogger in question, for example, is a millionaire, and not exactly a muckraker. Heather Armstrong, aka, Dooce, makes a good living at her top-rated 'mommy' blog. As does the lovely and gracious Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing. None of these folks are what you might call polarizing figures. Yet all these popular bloggers have at one time or another complained vehemently about personal, usually anonymous, attacks.

Most of this stuff is just empty threats made by spineless individuals. This threat to sue us, for example, sputtered by cowardly local windbag Tony Soares, will NEVER be carried out, since that would mean dealing with us face-to-face. (Which is exactly what this type will not do.) Still, they'll spend their lives smearing you (under assumed names) online, and that's the cross any blogger who attracts an audience has to bear. Soares has done that for years - does it to this very day - and he'll never sue us because that would all come out in a public trial.

We're hardly alone in dealing with this. Like Jakob Lodwick - and even his mother - most bloggers have someone, or a few someones, making it their life's work to sully their names. These trolls don't need much of a reason. They often do what they do simply because they feel so powerless that dragging someone down feels like an accomplishment. 

Smears are forever. They are meant to cause the maximum amount of damage with the least amount of effort. They are always done anonymously, and they edify no one. They are the tools of cowards, and as such they will always be with us.