Negative reviews are a great feature on StumbleUpon – some people use them to criticize stuff think don’t think is up to snuff, while others (like me) try to reserve the ‘thumbs down’ for spam-filled sites or pages littered with lots of in-the-way ads. So OK, I wrote a post about how people using female avatars seem to get a lot of ‘friends,’ even if they aren’t Stumbling many pages:

So fine. Some people don’t like this, and that’s cool. Some think it’s apt and funny, and that’s great. Some people think it sucks, and review it negatively. All fine. So here’s what I don’t get: someone who doesn’t blog anything of their own, just reviews people’s work and rates it on SU, goes out of their way to personally trash the author on their blog:

Anyway, I’m thick-skinned – I can take it. But there are people of all ages and backgrounds using SU, and some might really take things like this to heart. Feel free to negatively review this, trash me, etc…, but just remember to ask yourself: why am I on StumbleUpon? Is it to rampantly trash people or to find cool stuff? If you don’t like something, why not just Stumble on? In this case I’ll make one tiny exception.

UPDATE: So DLAF has responded with something I never expected:

OK, now, I think you could make an (albeit difficult) argument that implying someone is “furiously masturbating” to something they wrote which is “fucking obvious” is not personal. I think, however, you’ll have a pretty tough time claiming that calling someone a “dickcunt” and particularly an “utter utter (etc…) cunt” isn’t personally insulting. As I said: fine, I can take it. But for crying out loud: own up to the fact that you’re trashing people and not just their pages, and think about the fact that others might have teeth and bite back (like me) or might be genuinely hurt or insulted.

SECOND UPDATE: I responded to DLAF and not the number of friends she sent to thumb this down and leave harassing messages – I am not interested in wasting time on some flame war. As a result of the fact that I only responded to her, she has decided that I am a racist woman-hater – which are rather humorous things to accuse a raging liberal of. Meanwhile, she appears unwilling to either write back to me directly or stop this – so I’m putting a stop to it right now. Thanks for the laughs, DLAF, your hypocrisy has been entertaining – I just hope you don’t step on the wrong person’s toes. Oh, and feel free to thumb this down if you want StumbleUpon to become Myspace.