Although this post will be written as a result of the various comments from my last post, it's not a response to my last post. The comments offered some interesting thoughts and arguments that did indeed get me to reflect and modify my point of view. Most of the comments, as is quite obvious, simply proved my central point - which was not that parents or children should be treated specially or differently, but rather that there's an astounding and pathetic amount of hatred and anger out there. Clearly, this misanthropy is not limited to Fark.com (or the other three less-quotable news discussion websites I looked at) - indeed, it's also present among some of the readers of psychologytoday.com. I don't particularly have anything to prove about my abilities as a father or a psychologist (to Mr. Anonymous who questioned my graduate pedigree, I am simply linking my vita here. You can decide for yourself if Mr. A has to worry about keeping aspiring psychologists away from my graduate institution).
Instead, I'll talk about my initial thoughts upon the flurry of comments, which was "This isn't one tenth as bad as the Sylvia Plath Effect Spectacle in 2003." In 2001, I published a paper on writers and mental illness. I'd analyzed life histories of more than 1,000 writers and found that eminent female poets were more likely than other eminent writers to show signs of mental illness (i.e., try to commit suicide) than non-female poets. Cool little finding, and easily misinterpreted. I was not saying that all poets are nuts, or all females are nuts, or all female poets are nuts. It was simply a comparison. I also never said that everyday female poets are more likely to be crazy. Luckily, only 47 people read the article; and I knew 41 of them, so it was all okay. Then, in 2003, I combined data from a number of different studies to find that poets (not just female poets) were more likely to die young than other writers. I didn't have a terribly pressing anti-poet agenda; I just had the data available and thought it would be cool to publish in a journal called Death Studies. Given the target audience of the journal, 12 people read that article. Nine of them were related to me. There continued to be no problem.
Until....
About a year later, there were some goings-on with my university and a PR firm. I suppose my full head of blonde hair convinced folks that my work would be of great interest to the public. I put together some info for the firm, and then forgot about it. A few months later, someone from Reuters e-mailed me some questions and I answered them quickly. By the end of the day, I checked CNN and found an article covering my work as one of the highlighted front page stories. By the end of the week, I was the surreal position of having the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times competing to get an exclusive. My main thought was that I wasn't sure what the big deal was.
Then the deluge began. There were posts critical of the research - which was fine. Some were good points (some countries were overrepresented or underrepresented). Others were fine points that could have been resolved by reading the original research article (but, of course, no one does that). Most, of course, were nit-picky, silly, and (sometimes) quite funny. I loved the folks who wrote their own poems about it or wrote hilarious commentary. I empathized with the poets who shared their own struggles with mental illness. I delighted in the pithy quote in response to my work from the reigning Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry. I appreciated (eventually) the people who wrote carefully thought-out and highly critical blogs (and I quoted one or two in my book Creativity 101). I was unsurprised by the hundreds of frustrated graduate students who made blatant analytical mistakes in their attempts to critique me and look smug/smart/smarmy/smirky.
What surprised me were the personal attacks. One person did some detective work to figure out my past and present salary. Several people criticized my physical appearance based on my photograph (Bald, I get; Ugly, I wince but stay silent. But creepy?). One former college housemate posted a long comment about how she knew me and couldn't stand me then, either (which made me doubly glad I never asked her out).
I typically didn't feed the trolls, but sometimes was weak. I got an interesting response when I e-mailed someone who made an incorrect criticism; he wrote, "I also insult Tom Clancy's work, but he hasn't e-mailed me." I paused and thought: "Huh. I get it."
If I'm stupid enough to be in the public eye, even an itty bitty bit, then that gives people the right to insult me. And by "public," I mean on a public forum, of course (I'd prefer if you didn't show up in my class and insult me). If I'm writing away and sharing my ideas with the world, then that means I have to be ready when the world wants to share their ideas/critiques/3rd-rate psychoanalysis with me.
Usually my thoughts are focused on creativity, which is the area I actually study. But I'm sure I'll spout off here again. I'm equally sure that Psychology Today will choose those posts to publicize, as opposed to my posts that I've spent hours and hours creating (I'd much rather have gotten this hubbub over the post on which people will be remembered 100 years from now). And when those future diatribes inspire personal insults, I'll be ready with my IP address tracker and roving hit men on speed dial. No, no, I meant, I'll be ready to face the music with a mature, can-do attitude.
So that's it. I am now officially setting my brain back to thoughts of creativity - how to get people more creative, how to help people from all cultures reach the creative potential, and other topics less inflammatory that my offspring's aviation experience.
Meanwhile, we fly to St. Louis early Wednesday morning. I'll be the guy letting my kid kick the seat in front of him, glaring at anyone who looks at me, and goosing my son to make him shriek.
My last post can be found here.
