Stupid or Lazy?
April 6, 2014
Why is it that people refuse to fully read? If someone reads past the first few sentences of anything the writer should consider themselves lucky. Most often it is only the headline or title that filters in and then the reader passes judgement based on next to no information, but for their own prejudices. Honestly if that was as far as it went I may be sad about it, but I could accept it.
I began adding “Blog Journal Posts” to this website on the advice of several public relations consultants and the unasked for suggestions from many fellow authors. I simply write what strikes my fancy on that day (hence why the post is dated) for the joy of writing.
The previous entry Do Vaccines Cause Autism? was an answer to how often I am asked about the unscientific, celebrity-based idea that vaccines cause autism. I have received a ludicrous amount of angry emails and posts on social media defaming, slandering, and ridiculing me for that blog entry. Any author has to have a thick skin for criticism. That’s par for the course.
If you’ve made it this far you are in the extreme minority of comprehensive readers. So, thorough reader, do you want to know the crazy part? Every single fucking one of those emails and criticisms was saying that I supported the claim of vaccines causing autism. One in particular was multiple paragraphs long, supposedly written by someone on the spectrum. Now, as I write this my severely autistic daughter (the one who the bestselling novel, soon to be motion picture The Fog Within was based on) is screaming because I will not let her squeeze onto the bottom shelf of the linen closest where she plans to hide with a tub of Ricotta cheese and do God knows what. She cannot speak. She cannot write. She cannot be left alone because she is self-injurious. It must be nice to be on the mild end of the spectrum where typed out diatribes are possible.
The message of this entry? Please, please fully read something before you make a judgement. And, never, ever venture an opinion in a slanderous manner when your point is exactly that of the author, but you were unable to suss that out due to illiteracy, lassitude, stupidity, or all three. It makes you look churlish and incompetent.
~Nick Shamhart
