Here’s a sample of the comments I have been receiving today:
Go to wuhan and report on the virus, make sure to get 1st hand reporting yourself of the virus, don’t tell me how other people feel having it let me know how it feels when you have it.
So yes, I will no doubt delight some people when I say that I am closing down this blog, effective immediately. I will figure out my next move later. I’m done here.
UPDATE Feb. 13th: I have shut down commenting on this blog and removed my Contact Me page. As I said, I will figure out my next moves later. I want to thank, from the bottom of my heart, everyone who has reached out to me to express their concern, encouragement, wisdom, and/or support. I am seriously struggling with the decisions I’ve made in the past 48 hours, but I take full responsibility for what I’ve done.
One of my readers, who has lived and worked in China extensively, told me something that I did not know:
You should know that the Communist Party of China pays people to search the net for anything perceived as critical of China, and they leave hateful troll comments like the one you got. It might have just been a CPC troll that was angry about your Coronavirus coverage. These trolls even have a special nickname – wumao. You can google that term. Don’t let a troll ruin something you love.
Also: I have promised Galen that I would publish a guest editorial he is writing about Sansar, and I do intend to keep that promise, which I made before this sh*tstorm happened. Other than that, I will be offline.
Oh, and I have decided that I will no longer be writing about the Wuhan coronavirus—not because I let a troll chase me off, but because the worry and stress I have put myself under these past three weeks in covering the widening epidemic have had such a negative impact on my mental and emotional health.
And frankly, a lot of other people out there can do a much, much better job of covering what is now called COVID-19 than I can, so I am leaving it up to them. So I will officially end the tangent this blog has taken, and stick to my knitting: social VR, virtual worlds, and the ever-evolving metaverse.
