Never understood the rude behavior. People take so much and then send one sales email and they explode. Ridiculous and definitely NOT the business for them to be in You do wonderful things for people, Craig. Don’t let the random ingrates get you down

We are all creatures of emotion. Our rationality is like a tiny boat floating on a vast ocean of emotion. If the conditions are just right, the boat gets upset and goes off kilter.

I’m no exception to this. There are many reasons why people react with anger. Some people truly are the ingrates mentioned in this post. But some are coping with enormous stresses in their lives and it just takes something small to momentarily tip their boat over.

I’ve been angry with Craig more than a year because of a typo in one of his responses to me in his forum. The typo was the omission a single word that made his response seem almost evil (to me). This typo transformed a kind and well meaning remark into something offhand and mean. Typo’s happen all the time with little effect on the reader. But this one was truly remarkable in how it so utterly changed the meaning of the sentence. Because I didn’t confront Craig immediately about his remark last year, it festered in me until I finally confronted him recently and it was finally resolved. I’m only glad that I never went public with my anger which would have done Craig a great disservice.

The point I’m making is that often there’s more going on beneath the surface of someone’s nasty or angry remark. Perhaps understanding this makes coping with these remarks a little easier to do. This doesn’t absolve the angry person for his lack of “class” that Craig mentions here.

What’s truly amazing about a lot of this is not only the sense of entitlement, but also the notion that if it’s on the web, it’s free or should be free. Every now and then I get flamed by people on my list who get mad because I’m promoting products to sell (even my own). What so many of these folks don’t seem to realize is that this is a business and while they do get free stuff from time to time, a business exists to make money.

Awhile ago I got flamed by one subscriber (twice) for “not doing enough or giving subscribers a better deal.” This was despite the fact that I was running a half-price deal and offering 5 bonuses that took me a week to create. He even took advantage of another half-price deal and was still complaining. His greed was profound. I didn’t even bother to respond. I booted him off all my lists and blocked him from ever returning. No one needs this kind of crap.

Nathan