What Do You Think? (about comments and emails)

************* warning: RANT *************


In case you were wondering, I read all of your comments, even on older posts (unless the system fails and doesn’t notify me, which does happen occasionally).

When I see a new name, I usually follow the link. I am always interested to know who is reading my blog and how they got here.

Every once in a while I receive a comment that turns out to be a “front” for some business. I follow the link and find a business website, rather than a real person.

I always delete those comments. If people want to advertise on my blog, they can contact me and make me an offer. But writing a comment, as if they care, when they are just looking for free advertising… that’s just wrong.

Last week, I received an email, following my post about mobile phones.

The email began friendly enough:

When I visited my childhood best friend Debbie in Tel Aviv about 10 years ago she told me then Israel was the most cell phone connected country. I know from your blog you’re fighting metastatic breast cancer—to the brain. Any chance you’d give up using your cell phone for your health? The frequencies they give off are not good for children’s brains and mostly likely not yours either.

She includes several links and a bit more diatribe, and then she gets to the sales pitch:

I am sensitive to the computers and TV’s. So due to this sensitivity I wear a [commercial product]*, which helps my body deal with background radiation and frequencies that are not in harmony with nature and living things.

*no free advertising here

She then includes a link to the product and indicates which one she uses.

Then she adds, in closing:

Just thought I would bring it up. Our family business here in Washington State has been doing mastectomy fitting for over 30 years and there are just some practices that are too risky for people fighting for their lives.
[Name] (child of two Hungarian Holocaust survivors)

I wrote her the following, brief response:

Please don't send me business promotions.

To which she responded:

You have a lot of nerve to respond in this manner to my email. I never sent you any *business promotions* or made any mention of selling anything to you. I sent you information about protecting yourself from ionizing radiation to your brain since you have cancer there already. After 30 years of helping women who have had metastatic breast cancer and even losing my dear sister-in-law at age 36 [who presented with two different primary breast cancers within a year of each other] to the disease, I believe I know some things about the women who have changed their lives to survive. Sorry you misinterpret things so badly.

HELLO????

Was it my imagination??

I wrote back:

You sent me an advertisement for a product.
That is SPAM.
I am sorry for your loss, but that does not give you the right to be rude to me.
I am bombarded with emails from people who are promoting their product.
I am just not interested in your business.
I thought I was being polite, and to the point.

Guess what, she wrote back again!

So what if I told you about a product. It was to help you—not for me to make any money. I don’t even know if the [product] is sold in Israel. I have given many of them just to help people in front of their computer. You have a problem that you only see the bad in people. I feel really sorry for you.

Do I need this?

I knew I should not respond, but I could not ignore her.  I wrote one more brief note:

please stop insulting me.

you do not know me at all.

if you have nothing nice to say, please do not write me again.

Am I out of my mind or is she a crazy woman?

It sure seemed to me, from what she wrote in her initial emails, that the business was hers. Even if it is not (as she seems to indicate in her final email, though I am still suspicious, due to her aggressive and insulting tone), asking her to refrain from sending business promotions hardly seems offensive to me.

Why do people feel they have a right to be so horribly judgmental and rude?

A friend of mine just closed her blog because of people who sent her mean letters. I did not understand, until now.

How can someone be so nasty?

Most significantly, why is it so hurtful to me, when I don’t even know the person and she means nothing to me??


Please daven (or send happy, healing thoughts) for RivkA bat Teirtzel.

With love and optimism,
RivkA