First off, I change my tune: Spambots, leave me the hell alone. I’ve now received 71 fake comments on my three existing posts. Illegitimate online retailers, I hate you.
Wanted to point you toward our latest CNN column: Make a clean online break with pests. The title doesn’t quite get at what I had in mind when drafting this one (which is not a dig at our wonderful editor); it sprang instead from the observation that silence as a response can be so tempting and so cowardly and so cruel.When I’m dishing out the silent treatment, it’s almost always out of laziness, distraction, passivity — I’m not immediately sure what to say (or text or tweet) back, so I let the days slip by until the decision feels made for me. But from the receiving end, silence feels personal, pointed.
Sometimes I fail to respond to pitch emails, and I’ve ghosted on the occasional fine-but-fruitless suitor. I also hate using the telephone. Sometimes I write advice columns to convince myself to be more civil, I think.
Enough armchair philosophizing for now. Multiple Very Exciting Announcements are coming soon. Spambots, gird your loins.