I never get hate mail, so when I do, it's always quite shocking. Do you get hate mail? How do you deal with it?

-- Kymm Zuckert (hedgehog@hedgehog.net), April 17, 2001

Answers

That's "loathsome". I always get that wrong.

-- Kymm Zuckert (hedgehog@hedgehog.net), April 17, 2001.

I don't have much to say about hate mail, but can I tell you how stupidly happy I was to get linked? Thanks! I can't remember what I said, either. It may quite possibly have been "fluffy bunny." That was the gist anyway.

-- sara a. (sara@fauve.cc), April 17, 2001.

Oh, yeah. Plenty. A couple of times a month during slow periods.

I got some just yesterday, in fact, complete with the standard ALL CAPS, bad spelling, hysteria bordering on psychosis, and lots of exclamation points.

But perhaps that didn't count, since it was from my sister.

-- Beth (beth@xeney.com), April 17, 2001.

That's not fair. I've never gotten hate mail, and it's been over a year now. I don't really want it--I just think it'd be somewhat of a novelty. But then, I don't really write about anything all that controversial in my journal.

-- Andrea (andrea@andrealand.com), April 18, 2001.

Do late notices from my mortgage company count?

-- Jon Arthur (rclover4@aol.com), April 19, 2001.

Well, close, anyway...someone bought a fountain (I sell them) and rated the purchase afterward as "awful...this is just a bunch of rocks in a bowl." Of course, I never said it was anything else (except you put the rocks on a pump, add water and plug it in, but maybe he or she couldn't read). So what's wrong with a bunch of rocks in a bowl?

-- Molly Keeler (mkeeler@rcn.com), April 19, 2001.

This is my favorite. I keep it in my in-box for whenever I need a kick in the pants:

"What makes you think that people would want to read about YOU YOU YOU? I guess that would only be the people that want to read what you have written about THEM on your website...

Very sad. I hope that a search engine never gets me quite that lost again. What a nightmare."

-- Lisa Houlihan (lisa@penguindust.com), April 20, 2001.

Even though my site's been dead for two-and-a-half years people still write me about it. I got a letter just yesterday from some guy who was apparently under the impression that the email link on my page went to my boss or my ISP or something, rather than me. It was this paragraph about how awful my site was, but it was written entirely in the third person. I didn't respond. I used to reply to hate mail with a little form letter that read "Thank you for your feedback. I regret that the volume of mail I receive prevents me from sending a personal response, but please know that I read and appreciated your compliments." My god, that pissed people off.

I was showing one of my co-workers my old website a couple of weeks ago and saw it for the first time in MSIE for Windows. I'm suprised I don't get more hate mail regarding the layout, which is blindingly awful.

-- Kim Rollins (kimrollins@yahoo.com), April 21, 2001.

hate mail.....HATE hate mail....

-- Wolf (Mix@aco.com), April 27, 2001.

hey i just thought... it's not hate mail, but what about the e-mail that all of us who answered the nailpolish question got, about pretty feet? that was pretty weird.

-- nicolemrw (nicolemrw@yahoo.com), April 30, 2001.