Ignoring the cheap shot

Today a man that I know professionally attacked me on a social network site, in a particularly puerile and ignorant way. My first instinct was to fight back, to publicly defend myself.

And then I realized that the entire episode was simply ridiculous, that this guy was just taking a cheap and intellectually lazy shot. To directly respond to such an attack would be, at best, a waste of time.

You never know when somebody will try to misrepresent you, whether through malice, ignorance or stupidity. And you may feel the immediate instinct to fight back.

But often the attack is so evidently ludicrous and ill informed that no defense is required. You just need to trust that the people reading these things are not idiots, and will see such nonsense for what it is.

Or else what’s the point of anything?

4 thoughts on “Ignoring the cheap shot”

  1. Sally: Strangely, when I talked about this with another friend, she told me exactly the same thing.

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