A recent contributor voiced his strong voice against bullies, troll, critics and all around A**holes on this site. He got some harsh criticisms. I had some differing opinions of my own. Let me say upfront, that in this article, I do not intend to condone, embrace, or encourage being cruel or disrespectful to a fellow comicbookmovie member. However, I simply want to voice a level-headed, rational, and honest opinion of the topic.
If you post on an article on this site, or anywhere on the internet you must be ready for anything from a kind criticism to all-out attack. It's simply the culture we have created for ourselves with this thing called the "INTERNET." Here on this site, there are definite antagonists who simply seem to revel in being a contrarian, or even an all out villain. In my views though, even the worst of us (and I say "us" because I like to think everyone on this site see's it as a community) are no where near as bad as the general online public. You wanna see some real trolls check out nearly ANY IMDb chat board.
As I said, I don't condone being a bully, but criticism, even a harsh criticism makes the conversation more interesting. It opens the Comment Board to be a battle ground between the good and the bad. If there's one thing we know from reading comics its that all the best villains believe themselves to be the hero. Lex Luthor only wants to destroy Superman because he see's him as the bane of humanity. To destroy this symbol of false-hope Lex could restore the balance and glory to the common man.
I believe, perhaps naively so, that even the biggest bully, the harshest critic, in some way, deep down, sub-consciously perhaps, they are trying to help even the worse article writer.
Also, I understand that many on this site are younger, children, teenagers, troubled early twenty-somethings; Hey my early twenties sucked, I feel for ya. This next bit is for you...
Here's the thing though, as a kid I wrote all the time! I wrote more scripts for Jurassic Park 2,3, and 4 on everything from construction paper, that printer paper that had the punched holes that you tore off the edges, to wide-ruled and eventually college ruled. In college I wrote a series of 120+ page Buddy Cop movies. I still write. But you know what? All I've ever gotten were positive comments from childhood to today. That tells me I don't take risks, I don't think outside the box, I have to be my own worst critic. I eventually started writing intentionally bad stories just to get someone to call me out. My point is, from experience, critics, even total jerks CAN BE a good thing.
This hasn't been a short article, so I apologize. I could go on forever, but lets open the floor to comments...
And yes, I know I misspelled a couple words, used caps more than once, have an affinity for run-on sentences, and I am a total idealist. So, if you're gonna troll, be original, I'll get a kick out of it...