Heather Armstrong made a big announcement yesterday. And people started bitching. Seems like when Heather does almost anything people start bitching. Dooce.com’s got a huge following (including me — I’ve read the site since 2001), but Heather’s also got extremely vocal detractors who love to talk about how much they hate her. Heck, I got an anti-Dooce comment within a few hours of linking to the Mediabistro article about Heather yesterday. People love to bitch about Heather.

It’s remarkable how much hate people can work up towards a woman who’s just writing a blog — and most of the time she doesn’t even write about hot topics like politics. She writes about her daughter, her dog, her husband. I get that her brand of humor may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but why the hate? Perhaps her website’s financial success brings out the resentment in people — “She’s successful writing THAT? I find myself much funnier and my blog doesn’t have that level of success. Therefore, I hate her.” Seems pretty petty to me, but the web can be a petty place.

I’m guessing that another factor in people’s hate-mongering is a response to the bite that Heather’s writing has. She’s deliciously opinionated and can be snarky as hell when she wants to be, and people may see this as their invitation to be twice as mean in their criticism of her. That said, it’s truly remarkable how cruel people get. They don’t just bag on Heather’s writing (which they have every right to do — writers get critiqued. It’s part of putting yourself out there), they insult every aspect of her personality, her family, her daughter, her parenting. Since she writes so intimately about her life, I suppose it could be argued that she invites this level of hate on the topics she covers. She’s in essence inviting internet strangers into her home, showing them around, and then dealing with the fall-out when some of these people wander into her living room and take a big fat steaming acidic shit that eats through the hardwood. Daily, from what I can tell. I have no idea how she’s able to deal with the constancy of internet spite people toss at her.

There are times when I worry about Heather. She’s written extensively about her battles with depression, and I get clucky and concerned that she’s chosen a difficult career for herself, given her personality. I mean, I’m not prone to depression and I have nowhere near the level of detractors and trolls that Heather does, and even I get seriously bummed and moody when I get hateful shit tossed at me on the web. Is the web-hate contributing to Heather’s depression? This leads me to wonder if the Internet is slowly killing Heather Armstrong, even as it pays her bills. Her website may be supporting her family, but the revenue flow seems to come with a steep emotional toll.