I received my first nasty comment from a reader.

I started writing on a site, that I actually discovered back in 2011, it’s called Smith, and they have a section on their site where you can write 6 Word Memoirs.  I posted my little story and picture about the Samba VW Van that I found on the SambaVW site – the pretty green and white one – under Need, Want, Desire, Isn’t She Beautiful. I included the part about donating to my dream at Paypal like I did here. Well that got me a nasty comment: You can read it on the site if you are interested.

The commenter schooled me on the rules of the site, called me tacky, told me no one owes me a damn thing and to get a job.

So, of course, first I needed to check out the “Terms of Use” on the site;

“SMITH Comments and Discussion Terms of Use

In order to make our Comments interesting and informative for our users, the following guidelines must be adhered to by all users posting and/or viewing comments:

– If a comment is made using your identity it will be deemed to have been posted by you.
– Do not post abusive, obscene, threatening, harassing, defamatory, libelous, offensive or sexually explicit material.
– Do not intentionally make, false or misleading statements.
– Do not offer to sell or buy any product or service.
– Do not post material that infringes copyright.
– Do not post information that you know to be confidential or sensitive or otherwise in breach of the law.
– Keep all comments relevant and ‘on topic’ to the particular SMITH posting open for comments.
– SMITH will not accept responsibility for information posted in the Comments.

If SMITH receives notice that any posting is not in keeping with these terms and conditions or the intended use of the Comments, SMITH may remove that posting and/or any other related postings.

Please note that unless SMITH is notified of a posting that is not in keeping with these terms and conditions then we will not remove it, furthermore we do not exercise any form of editorial control or censorship of Comments other than the above stated procedure.”

I assume the commenter is referring to the item I have bolded in the list above: “Do not offer to buy or sell any product or service“.  Now I posted that memoir and link to Paypal with as a “tongue-in-cheek” joke and figured one of my friends would send me $0.26 and tell me they have helped me achieve 1/1,000,000th of my dream and say good luck. But now the commenter made me mad with their snarky comments and it has kind of become the principle of the thing.  I am neither buying nor selling with that post and do not think it violates these terms of use.

Second, no where in that post did I say or even imply that someone owed me a VW Van.

Third, why in the world would this commenter think I do not have a job. That part was just to add to the snarky meanness of their comment?

So I am keeping the memoir and the paypal information, not because I was really interested in a donation, but because if the commenter had politely mentioned the “Terms of Use” I would have said, oh my mistake and apologies, and removed that part of the post. But because they lacked class and manners the “tacky” post stays. Tacky apparently begets tacky!!

Do you think this violates their terms of use or was the commenter right? What do you think of donation solicitations on blogs or other sites?