“Opinions are like assholes; everybody has one.” My dad, who always has a way with words, often uttered this in my direction from the time I was old enough to understand what he meant. Let’s take a few minutes and actually dissect this sentence, since there are plenty of lessons to be learned here. First, let me back up a minute, and say I’ve been on both sides of this issue, as an author and a reviewer, and it’s never fun to be threatened within an inch of your life, told you have hamster-sized genitala, and that your opinion is invalid simply because it’s not in 100% agreement with the opinion of someone else. For those of you marching to the beat of the opinion police, I have three words in response: Fuck. That. Shit. If you can’t have a nice calm discussion with a reviewer, then don’t have a discussion at all. Nobody’s forcing you to provide your two cents, and nobody’s forcing you sons-of-hamsters to start an Internet Holy War complete with battering rams and pitchforks. No good can come from it, except death and destruction.
This brings me to another point: You can’t argue with stupid. When you do, that just makes two of you. If you want to piss and moan and dismember a person’s life just because of a review, then frankly, my friend, you have more time on your hands than I do. Which leads me to another point: If your life is so insignificant that you simply troll the Internet to accost unsuspecting souls for what you believe to be the greater good of society and to somehow prove that you’re one righteous, motherfucking bastard, then you probably need to find something better to do with your time. Like right now. As in immediately.
And if you do happen to be a stupid asshole, and you believe you were given some divine authority by God, the devil, your mother, or Jesus Christ himself to police the Internet, you may want to stop, pause, lather, and get over yourself. Because here’s a little secret: You weren’t given the power and authority to bitch slap whoever the hell you want just for your own entertainment. Just close your mouth and crabwalk away as fast as you can, because once you castrate yourself or someone else, those words stay out on the Internet. Like forever.