Am I Allowed to Say Fuck Off?

Writer/reader relationships can be wonderful, or not.

I started writing letters to the editor in the early 60s. Own photo.

In the days of print, it was the privilege of readers to write letters to the editor if they had anything to say about the stories that appeared in their magazines and newspapers. I often responded, and many a time I won the ‘top letter prize.’ I also often won enough to pay my monthly expenses. Of course, the writer of the article did not have to respond back to me — it wasn’t the web.

These days, with the ease of the web, anyone can respond to articles, and more to the point, some readers appear to expect articles to be the starting point of a debate. In other words, the time the writer spends writing the article is exceeded by the writer having to debate various readers who take issue with the content of the article.

That is tiresome.

Expectations of readers in the age of social media

There are all sorts of beliefs about the ability of readers to respond to a writer on the web. This is particularly so on content writing sites which often overlap with social media.

The final decision to close my Substack account came about when one lady was triggered by my comment that I had no time for feminism. When I blocked her from her abusive rants, she…