'Bully' bah kalau kau...

Just when I thought I'd left high school behind, here come the haters. It's been a while since I've been a target of malicious intent (the most significant one was a hate letter posted to my office six years ago, vowing that Allah would chop off my hands for plagiarising someone else's work as it was akin to stealing. Whatev.) but this week started with a concerned text from a colleague telling to log onto Facebook pronto. It was 7:15am and I was still gulping down breakfast, asking, "How bad can it be?"

Grandmother-story in a nutshell, some loser was having fun pointing out all the mistakes in the recent issue of the magazine I edit -- spelling errors, typos, the use of a badly photoshopped image (Note: This, i admit, was a huge error on my part but I didn't realise it till 10,000 copies went into print). So this guy - let's call him Bubba for fun - goes online and instigates a name-calling session. He gets plenty of responses from fellow Bubbas and Bubbettes and it just goes on into a full-blown insult session which includes them questioning the credibility of my editing skills, how I'm an embarrassment to my state and I should be replaced and, my favourite, that I am truly cow-brained (I shall have Otak Lembu tattooed on my left nipple from now on as a reminder). And the best part is, here you have a bunch of true-blue Sabahans who cry foul at the tainting of their beloved State for being misrepresented through a photoshopped photo, saying I am a DISGRACE to Sabah and my editing skills are horrible. Pardon moi, but this coming from a bunch of people who can't construct a proper English sentence and are hurling insults in their native slang. The disgrace is having Sabahans who claim they care about their state's well-being by ganging up on a fellow Sabahan for one mistake in my 10 years of working with the publication. Constructive criticism anyone? oh wait, those are very big words, sorry. "Kalau mau kasi bagus kita punya negeri, jangan la pi tulis macam macam di Fesbook. Tulis la ba emel baik baik dan bagi komen. Konpom kita buli maju sama sama kio?"

Several things baffle me about the keyboard warriors. No one mentioned me by name throughout the session. And when I was finally tagged by a friend asking me to check out the comments, Bubba blocked me! Cruel AND cowardly. Only when he was confronted by my colleague who happens to be an-colleague of his did he write an e-mail to me, apologizing and saying he would remove the post. What a dick.So quick to instigate a hate rant, so easy to ask for an apology?

Part of me wants to let it slide. But a huge part of me feels these people should not be let off the hook so easily.

You may have deleted the post and said your sorries. But the damage is done and I do believe you might have picked the wrong 'Cow Brain' to mess with. But the lesson for the day, still remains...