Article: My Personal Obesity Story

[alycewilson]

I should have known that accepting a Yahoo! News assignment about my personal struggles with obesity was opening myself up to hateful comments (which I've experienced on Yahoo! whenever one of my articles was featured on a main Yahoo! page, regardless of the subject matter), but this time it was particularly virulent

Comments

[shutterbug]

I just ran into this post on Friends of Friends. Great article! I'm glad you wrote it. As for the assholes in the comments...well, that's why I don't read comments on any articles I read.

[alycewilson]

Thank you so much! I'm glad you read it and enjoyed it.

You're right: I really ought to know better than to read the comments by now. I mean, I got nasty remarks for an article on Philadelphia-area parks that left me completely gobsmacked.

[vikkilynn]

Friend of a friend...

I thought your article was well written and clear. I did not get the sense at all that you blamed your child for your weight. The comments I read were ridiculous. I did not read them all, maybe 20 out of the 30 that were there at the time I read the article. What I don't understand is why so many make the leap from disease to disability. It enrages people to think of fat people not having to work anymore, just staying home collecting Social Security Disability and, God forbid, getting fatter on food stamps.

[alycewilson]

I know! They either hadn't read the AMA article referenced or just didn't understand it. I'm glad that you found it well-written and clear. That's why I call LJ my home: the quality of discussion here tends to be much higher! Thanks so much for checking it out and commenting.

[alycewilson]

They certainly do. I think that your practice not to read comments is wise and something I should begin doing, as well, particularly with my own articles!

[kajel]

My mother's very best friend, the woman she grew up with in AZ has twin daughters. I believe they are around the age of 27? Both girls had a stroke within 6 months of each other. I have known this for awhile, but I saw an article on yahoo's main page about it recently. I made the mistake of reading the comments. I did not point the article out to my mother. I was afraid she would read the comments. People are awful sometimes. I just don't understand the malice and judgement, especially when they don't know any of the facts.

[alycewilson]

As we used to say in Central Pennsylvania in the 1980s, maybe they "get their jollies" from it.

That's a really sad story about your mother's best friend. It's smart not to point the article out to your mother. While it's only a fraction of the people who read an article that comment on it, for some reason that's usually the people with something atrocious to say, at least on major news sites. I don't understand it, either. People with small lives and a desire to make others feel as miserable as them, I imagine.

[whipchick]

Your article was funny and sweet. Internet commenters are generally...the kind of people with a lot of free time and no-one to spend it with :)

[alycewilson]

Thank you. Funny and sweet was what I was going for, because I was hoping that a lot of other women could identify.

Next time, I really ought to just not even scroll down that far so I don't see if there's any comments or not. Fortunately, Yahoo! doesn't send me notifications when comments are posted on my articles.