Much as you might intellectually understand that it is their problem and not yours, it's still hurts.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time online, especially on social media, has experienced blowback: the mildly snarky comment to outright character assassination. The internet seems to be built for this kind of exchange between human beings--the in-person confrontations avoided at all cost suddenly becomes the ammunition some feel justified in unloading on others in cyberspace. Some of it is truly vitriolic, unhinged, and obviously a hateful projection of the person unleashing it. Other comments can be unkind, hurtful, cruel. One can have various reactions: brush it off, or return the volley in kind. Or, one might consider some kernel of truth in the remark.

No one likes admitting their faults. I don't, it's painful. But if I want to get along with others and to grow as a person, it's necessary at times to take personal inventory. I'm always interested in knowing where my blind spots are, because worse than having negative traits is accusing others of the same thing. They don't say 'people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones' for no reason.

That said, sometimes people are jerks and say mean things just because they can. I was recently accused--by a random person who's not a friend--of being uneducated, unstable, and jealous. (I have my bouts of hysteria, I'll admit, and no one is immune to envy.) The attack went on to say that as such, and being in a very small percentage of extremists, I was a person of no significance who had zero effect on the masses. Well, I am anti-establishment and in the minority, so my detractor got that right. As far as the rest, only time will tell.