Online articles and the curse of internet users

I think writing content for the Internet can be trickier than writing for magazines and suchlike sometimes. I'm not talking about blogs, here, although certainly writing a blog that people actually read is an extremely difficult pursuit (not that I'd know). No, I'm talking articles. Now I write articles (and reviews and what have you) for a smallish site with little reputation and most of my stuff gets very little attention, which is fine except that's how I earn money from them but there you go. The real trouble comes when one because vaguely popular. Popularity brings stupid comments that need deleting, plagiarism and snarky links from other people's sites with snappy captions like "massive fail!" because they happen to disagree with the article or not like a picture or something.

Taking the piss out of someone for saying something stupid is one thing, ranting at them for having a different opinion is quite another. I mean, I really don't see any merit in the Harry Potter franchise and though I can pick it apart all I like, I don't feel the need to shout at people who do see some worth in it.

Anyway, part of the problem with writing online articles is since the internet is so very wide its hard to know what your readership will be. If I write a beginner's guide to something, will the people reading it know nothing about the subject, a little bit, or a lot and just be reading to see if I get it right? If I write a "top ten" list, will readers be looking for ideas for something to watch or to see if their personal favourites are included? Whatever you write, if it gets more than a hundred views, chances are someone interested in the subject will have a slightly different view on it than the audience that the writer had imagined might be interested. And of course there will always be some ninny who misses the humour in something.

Thankfully most people are too lazy to comment, else I'd either remove everything or have to spend all day deleting them.

Sometimes when I'm surfing, I wonder why I don't push out into the further realms of the 'net, then I discover some site/blog/whatever where yet another bigot decides picks people apart for dressing in a certain way or having green eyes or wanting to use a semicolon or liking cheese or something equally inane. *sigh*

I like my schadenfreude as much as the next person, but there's a difference between laughing at someone who has done something foolish and laughing at someone who has done something different. If we were all the same, life would be boring. If we were all clever, life would be easier.