Today, on the Gingerbeer messageboard,¬†I got my first ever piece of arbitrary hostility from someone I’ve never met. Here it is, preserved for posterity:

“No, you haven’t offended me at any particular time,¬†I decided that i do not like you.
So the prospect of seeing you, perhaps, leaving, did fill me with joy.”

Leaving aside the terrible punctuation, I was rather flattered. I’m rarely aggressive, never antagonistic, sometimes a bit ranty but actually pretty rarely there. And in spite of that, someone I’ve never met has weighed up what they can gather of me from the stuff I’ve written and decided I was worth¬†an ad¬†feminem attack.

That means that, in someone else’s mind, I’ve stopped being my rather mundane self and¬†become a foil for someone else’s projections. And this¬†has got to be¬†the first time ever that’s happened¬†to someone who’s never actually met me.

At this rate I’ll have groupies by Christmas.