Every few months I will get an email from someone who is writing to express their ire or my page will show up somewhere (usually on a message board or a blog) where people will talk voluminous amounts of shit about what it is I do, how I dress, my car, my writings, etc. 

If you are one of these people, who absolutely cannot stand what I am doing and has taken it upon themselves to post links to my page in an effort to show all your friends how much I suck, I have one thing to say to you...

Thank you. 

First off, despite what you may think, I don't actually give half of a rats ass what people think of what I am doing. If they love it, great. I do what I want with my life and if other people like it, that's a bonus. If not, it doesn't affect me one way or another because I would be doing these things even if no one liked them because I live my for myself. Long before goth was popular I was dressing this way, saying these things and doing art as I do now. Back in 1991 Marilyn Manson hadn't yet made Goth a household word and you could still get fired, expelled from schools or into some pretty hefty fist fights just for doing your own thing. I've sustained and grown through all that crap, so just because someone posted some (usually alarmingly unoriginal) defamatory comments about me on the web doesn't mean I am all of the sudden going to rescind my personality or be incredibly hurt.

Secondly, you're doing my work for me, much like a trained monkey (although in fairness, I have to say I have taken the time to look at the profiles of some of my haters and I gotta say, an aesthetic comparison to a simian is indeed an insult to the monkeys) let's take a look at some simple math here...

Say you post my webpage somewhere. 300 people see it. Let's give it a generous number and say that 99% of the people who follow the link agree with you and think I suck. That means you just sent 3 people my way who will check back from time to time, increase my hit counter, add to my Google rating and subscribe to my journal. You just gave me 3 more people who help my cause of...well, whatever the hell my cause is.

The central point here is that the other 297 people don't hurt me in any way. They don't like what I do, but their hatred isn't going to take my page down, nor is it going to convince the people who do like what I do to stop. The best thing they can do for me is to continue the chain reaction and go cross post my links AGAIN.