Why can't we be friends?

Is it that we're taking things the wrong way, that we're over-sensitive or we're just dealing with combative people?

I'm sad to see Cranky Healer blog leave us, from what I read it was stressful getting negative comments that caused him (?) to go on hiatus. It was hit and miss sometimes whether i was able to associate with some blogs (mostly WoW related) but they were always well written and thoughtful, whether I agreed with it or not. We all have our own opinion, and we're free to argue or discuss our own point of view. Maybe we just need a thicker skin, or maybe those comments were truly hurtful and unnecessary (i never actively went and looked for them). I personally use comment moderation, not for this fact, but mostly for spammers of gold selling or cell phone unlocks. I view him lucky that he has traffic going through his site via comments.. whereas I can't tell whether people read mine (not an invitation to post negative comments!!).

And by coincidence, after reading his entry I checked on a response I made on Syncaine's blog. Someone had made what seemed to be an attack on my opinion..I had to read it a couple times, went to the blogger's own site, made my own opinion of the person (negative), was about to reply in a nasty way, then in a more constructive way... read his response again.. and decided it was not worth my time or maybe he didn't mean to come off sounding combative. Or maybe he did mean offence. I'm not too sure. Maybe the other fiery responses that I saw on previous entries should have given me a clue. Or even the name of his site. I personally don't need an arch-enemy which seemed to be the fad a few weeks ago. If it was me, we'd all be friends and *ahem* be on each other's blog rolls and have tons of encouraging and engaging comments.

Though I can't stop anyone from being who they are or want to be, I would ask for people to be more aware of this fact, not for malicious reasons, but to remember sometimes we are sensitive to our works of art (our entries are that, you know). That possibly better phrasing is needed when commenting is impersonal via online web comments so that it is not misunderstood or seen as a personal attack. And sometimes we just gotta take these things people say as a grain of salt and brush it off.

Thanks!