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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnNephew" data-source="post: 158839" data-attributes="member: 2171">I am amazed to find how many people who are so harsh on the outside are so bitter and vulnerable on the inside.Years ago, when the internet was young (and so was my company), I got some very negative e-mail from a customer.  It was not merely complaining, but rude and abusive.  I don't even remember what product it was about, or what the complaint was.  Well, anyhow, I wrote a reply that was -- well, I don't remember exactly what my reply was.  But the interesting thing was that I got a letter back from the guy, this complete stranger in Sweden, apologizing.  He said he'd just broken up with his girlfriend and was having a terrible week and realized that he just unloaded a lot of negativity onto me -- a complete stranger -- just in an effort to try to vent.  And then he realized that I was a human being out there on a different continent, working and trying to make a living, and he felt awful.I remember that sometimes when I read really harsh remarks on discussion boards and product reviews, when someone tears into a creator as though they were responsible for genocide or something for publishing a work not to this reader's liking.  While I have sympathy for the person being harshed on, I have sympathy too for the person venting bile...I wonder what awful things have happened to them lately, or what scars are on their soul, that they are compelled to be hurtful.I honestly don't think most people are bad.  We do tend to be a bit shortsighted, and ignorant.  I suppose those are traits that are selected for evolutionarily (people who stop and think about all the consequences don't breed as early or as often, I imagine), but it is possible for us to overcome them, and to help each other do the same now and then.</blockquote>

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