“Don’t Be a D*ck”

The best advice for people online.

Photo by Dee @ Copper and Wild on Unsplash

I actually have a very difficult time telling sarcasm online, but tend to err on the side of caution for the most part. I try to assume that people mean well, because… that’s better than assuming the opposite (which comes more naturally to me, sadly).

I saw on Twitter recently that a writer I follow had lost their manuscript file: 30k words just gone. And not just from their HD, but from their cloud service as well.

Most ransomware that I’m aware of (as a mere novice internet user) just encrypts data, rather than deleting it, but who knows. And, regardless, so many people don’t know about things like cloud hosting’s “versioning”, or that commercial data recovery tools might not be as effective as a pro service.

So, I posted a quick thing about that: just saying “sorry, it really sucks that happened! :(“ and then pointing out that some options did exist for recovery. I know that “I” feel better when people show care. *shrug*. Didn’t figure I’d get a response from them, just wanted to shoot something nice off into the atmosphere.

Hours later, I get a very odd response from someone who presumably follows that author online. They sent me a comment which I couldn’t help but read as really ill-spirited and snarky.