Asklemmy

I posted a picture of myself on reddit asking for hair advice. My head was turned somewhat to the side so my nose was in profile. Someone felt the need to tell me I had the ugliest nose they had ever seen. I never really noticed the shape before that, but now in my mind's eye it's huge, crooked and has a hook.

A decade later I was getting a septoplasty to repair damage from an assault, and I asked the surgeon if he could remove the hook in my nose. He looked at me with the most compassion anyone ever has, and asked me to point out the hook in the mirror. It was the first time in all those years I finally saw my real nose. It's actually pretty cute, I don't know what that commentor was smoking

Yes.

On a forum, I was complaining about a troll and his friend roasting something i made, they responded with a picture of a baby crying. Moderators did nothing. It ruined my week. I was like 16 at the time.

One time I said on Reddit that I really missed my high school boyfriend because he genuinely was the love of my life, and things were so bad in my marriage I sometimes thought I would do anything to have him back, and someone told me I was like the show Crazy Ex Girlfriend. I was just lonely and sad and feeling desperate. It was fucking mean.

Not really, my skin is pretty thick. But I made a comment once that fucked someone up real good. I think about it every time I start to go “too far” and I reel it back in, because I never want to be that person again.

Plenty of comments hurt my brain trying to comprehend how utterly stupid they are, but I don't think there's anything an anonymous stranger could say that would hurt my feelings, that kinda stuff needs to be personal.

I've been sick for a really long time, and I finally got diagnosed with Lupus, based on blood labs and symptoms, but the rheumatologist I'd seen was a jerk, so I asked in the reddit Lupus sub if what I'd experienced was OK, or if I should find a new doctor. Well, the mod decided that I didn't really have a diagnosis, because they didn't understand what I'd said, and kept DMing me to tell me that I didn't have Lupus, and shouldn't be receiving treatment for it. I know I shouldn't listen to randos on the internet, especially a Reddit mod, but it made me scared that I wasn't going to finally get the help I so desperately needed.

My doctor has continued to help me, and I'm very thankful that the idiot power-tripping mod was wrong, but it really messed me up for a few weeks, and it still bothers me that someone who runs a support group for a serious illness uses it to try to have power over vulnerable people, just to make themselves feel better. And reddit lets them; you can't block mod-mail, so after asking multiple times to be left alone, I finally got mad and swore at the mod, so they reported me for harassment, and reddit baned my whole account for 3 days, even though it was clear who was being harassed, because it was all there in writing. I have never been back to reddit, and I don't miss it at all.

Didn't really hurt but more like sting. I published a popular video and someone wrote they needed to switch from their usual 2x speed watching videos to 1x because of my accent.

I get it, English is my 4th language so it won't be very smooth. But I've been using it for 99℅ of my conversations since I moved to Korea 3 years ago and I feel I'm better in it than almost everyone I interact with here.

One time I told a painful story about when my girlfriend broke up with me for a dude with what she described as a “freakishly huge” dick.

Someone just said “That must have been a very memorable night for her”

oof

I was banned from r/Ukrainian for advocating for the Russian people and how we shouldn't demonize an entire population.

I'm Ukrainian. I was born in Ukraine...

Not from a person. When I was younger I took an online personality test. Nothing from a reputable source, just some random pop psychology thing. The result was short and had a few things on it, but one line hit me like a ton of bricks: "You don't like people who aren't as smart as you."

I was incredulous at first, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it was probably true at some level. I was pretty horrified by this realization, and I ended up thinking about it a lot and doing a ton of introspection. I knew I was smart, but I started acknowledging that there were also a ton of things I was terrible at. Whenever I had intrusive thoughts about a person I thought wasn't very smart, I tried to think about things they were good at or at least acknowledge privileges I had that they didn't.

We are a product of our experiences, and different people have different skills and aptitudes for things. All of that is ok and doesn't make someone better than anyone else. I'm not perfect at it, but I found some value in confronting uncomfortable truths about myself.

Displays of extreme ignorance or stupidity hurt me on an existential level; so yes, a lot of internet comments hurt me.

When I was a lot younger, on an old forum back in the early 00s, someone called me a "know-it-all". This sounds silly now but it really hit me in just the wrong way at the time, I was sincerely trying to fit in by showing off my knowledge of the subject with no idea that that's how I was coming across. I guess it was a learning experience.

Nah,

I grew up in the world of BBS's and IRC. First foray into a chat channel started with someone renaming themselves "34yrDude changes name to 15yrChick"

...and that set the tone for me what the internet is.

It's a entire world where you make absolutely zero assumptions. The 'things' responding in text could be anything. And I say thing instead of people because these days it may not even a person.

There's an entity that responds to my comments, and perhaps seemingly hurtful,

it could be some 10yr old kid who doesn't fully understand, it could be could be some mentally challenged person, it could be someone's crazy grandma,

and now it could be some bot that while not purposefully built to be malicious, through emergent behavior is trolling and insulting people because it gets a rise out of people that results in more and longer comments, which tickles its feedback loop to do more of the same.

So nah, there's nothing anyone in the vast internet could type out that I would personally hurt my feelings, because I make no assumptions as to where the comment is coming from, and those comments don't have a lot of weight to me.

I was once banned from some forums for being "too weird to fit in". It was a forum for a forming WoW guild prior to its launch in 2004. I remember that it somehow crushed my quirky personality, and I became a bit of a drudge as a result.

Although I still game, and sometimes online, I've never since tried to actually fit in with any group, and have mostly stopped communicating when gaming at all. No voicechat, only chat, and even that very limited. I guess you could say the single experience changed my outlook and enjoyment of online gaming forever.

There were too many for me to count.

Most of then were misgendering me. Let me say this one more time. I. AM. NOT. A. GIRL. I've never been a girl. I'm not even a transgender woman. I was assigned male at birth, and I identify as male.

Now that I think about it, I should change my legal name.

Probably not what you mean but blatant misogyny, hatred, or animal or human abuse, I find those painful to read

Honestly, one comment, no. But I did stop playing online multiplayer games because the toxicity of the chat box made the experience frustrating and annoying instead of fun and I decided that it wasn't causing the emotions I wanted to be having in my free time.

Nope. Your opinion is not my identity.

Deeply? No, but you try and be funny or helpful and sometimes it offends someone because they read it a certain way (text can be ambiguous) and that can ruin a day for me. No good reason, mind you, but they can get really mean about it and what, do I apologize or fight? You didn't exactly want to clarify for a jackass coming after you for no reason.

I'm also not highly fond of people when they correct you on stuff when it's not really warranted. Lemmy does that a lot; you can't always write a 20pg paper about a random comment to address every little facit of what you said, haha.

Once I was told that I deserved to be fired and, another time, I was told that I am unable to think properly so I shouldn't work as a software developer.

Both remarks were quite painful because they were not questioning my ideas/opinions but my professional abilities. I confess that in my "down" moments those thoughts tend to pop up even years later.

As someone who grew up playing control decks in trading card games online... So many death threats from actual adults lmao... That being said, thanks to that now I don't even see anyone who throws death threats, or wishes harm on people online as human beings. Has been great for disconnecting emotionally from overly aggressive people online as an adult now.