Looking for Flowers Amongst the Manure

Forgive me, but I'm going to go on a little rant today.  I know this completely contradicts what I said yesterday about finding faith in people,etc., but there is some behavior I keep finding out on the internet that just makes me sad and I need to talk about it.

I've met some lovely souls out in Bloglandia, and I am grateful to you all.  For the most part, my experience on the web is positive.  There are those few negative beings out there that sometimes make me want to turn off the computer forever.  I recognize that there are more good people than mean people out there, but I need to rant anyway.

Most of the folks out there, whether they are on Facebook or Twitter, Etsy or have their own blog, they are just trying to do the best they can.  They are putting themselves out there in faith; they are genuine and coming from a place of compassion for others.  But so often they are met with hate and negativity.  Etsy has their forums where you can go to join in discussions, ask for help, look for others having the same issue you are.  Although I usually try to stay away from there, sometimes out of desperation I will go, and I'm always reminded of why I stay away.  You find someone asking a simple question, and while mostly the responses are positive and helpful, there are always one or two people who have to leave nasty, snarky, hateful attacks.  It's like they just troll the forums looking for an opportunity to be mean.  Don't they realize that the effort they are putting into being nasty is so much more draining than just answering the question?  Whatever happened to "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything"?

This has been bothering me for quite awhile; I hesitate to talk about this because I don't want to get caught up in that trap of being negative.  Believe me, I am not out there looking for the negativity.  It is just there, in my face, everyday.  You find this behavior everywhere, and it's not always direct attacks; sometimes it's entire blogs aimed at attacking other bloggers.  Sometimes it's very passive-aggressive, people criticizing and judging other users' mistakes and lack of knowledge, typos, or just different ways of doing things.  They could offer gentle guidance directly to the "offender", but instead they tweet about the offense, and how horrible it is that someone would dare do such a thing. 

 It's not like the "offenders" have done something terrible; they've just had trouble uploading a picture, or god forbid, posted the same thing on their facebook update as they did on twitter.  I'm afraid to ask for help on etsy because I'll probably be attacked for lacking the knowledge that a long time user has.  I'm afraid to tweet because I might break a protocol that I don't know exists, or I might spell something wrong.  What shallow, pitiful lives these people must lead, to have nothing better to do with their time than be mean.  Why don't they get a hobby?  Take up painting or crocheting.  It just might calm them down.

Luckily, I haven't had to deal with this personally yet, that I can remember.  Maybe I've blocked it out.  I just see it when I'm out there trying to do my connecting and networking.  And I know that here I'm preaching to the choir.  Thanks for letting me carry on a bit, and again, forgive my outburst.  I'm trying really hard to stay positive in a world that sometimes seems filled with hate.