Edited to add: New Banner! See? Designed by Chris from Notes from the Trenches and installed by my wonderful husband! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Today has been declared Stop Cyberbullying Day. And in thinking about what I want to say about that, I have come to realize that I am, in fact, incredibly naive. My initial reaction to the fact that there even needs to be Stop Cyberbullying Day is to say how simple it is to stop cyberbullying-just ignore them and they will go away.

But it’s not that simple. The problem with bullies is, they enjoy the attention they get from it, whether it is positive or negative. The more they think they have gotten to you, the better they feel about themselves. I will never, and I mean NEVER if I live to be a hundred years old understand what compels someone to leave a nasty comment or send a hate-filled email. Do those people not have anything better to do? Are their lives so empty that they get some kind of secret thrill from knowing that their comment or email might have caused some kind of upset?

Again, I know this is naive, but here’s an idea-if you read something that you don’t agree with, or if you come across a blog that you think is badly written, or you don’t like the way someone is parenting their kids, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. There are, according to Technorati, 55 MILLION BLOGS. No one is forcing anyone to read anything! GOD!

And please, try to remember, blogs are, at the very core, a place to write down your PERSONAL thoughts. You know what makes bloggers like Heather and Kristen so popular? They don’t hold back. They don’t censor their writing because “someone” might get offended. And I don’t know about Kristen, but I know Heather gets blasted in her comments and with emails all the time for it. For writing their personal thoughts about their personal business on their personal blogs.

I’ve been lucky that so far I have not been cyberbullied, although I did have one nasty comment one time right after my Mother-in-law died, when a kind and considerate person suggested that I must not have loved her very much if all I could think about was how stressed out I felt. Gee, thanks. That didn’t add to my stress AT ALL, you blogtard.

I have, however, been the victim of personal bullying, which I am sorry to say is still continuing to this very day, and will probably never end. And yes, I let it get to me, because it’s hard not to when the person lives right across the street from you and has a daughter in your son’s class at school, and every time we occupy the same space, she glares at me as if I were covered in open sores. You can read all about it here, in one of the first posts I ever wrote.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Have you ever been cyber-bullied? Do you think bullies should be ignored so they will go away, or should they be confronted? Be honest, have you ever written something deliberately unkind to someone in a comment? But be nice to me, or you will hurt my little baby feelings.