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Thanks. Hey and welcome back to conversations with people who hate me. I'm your host

Dylan Marion. As you know I'm interested in figuring out the story behind negative online comments, and more importantly, the full three-dimensional humans who wrote them.

Some of these comments can be very intense. I've spoken to people who have called me a piece of shit, a moron, a talentless

hack, and yes, a faggot. I've moderated calls between pairs of strangers who have sent and

received some very charged words too, like you should be burned at the

steak or I hope you're eaten alive by a pack of wild dogs.

But as listeners of this show know, I'm also fascinated by the less intense digital interactions that still managed to stick with us.

Comments like, that person is annoying, tweets like, you're a hypocrite, or even the silent act of being unfriended.

These more tame instances of online negativity aren't overtly hateful, but when we receive or experience them, it can feel like hate,

especially when it's coming from a stranger.

But today's comment isn't hateful, and today's guest is not a stranger. In fact, I'd now call him a friend.

In the fall of my freshman year of high school, months before Myspace came around a year and a half before the dawn of Facebook and four years

before Twitter asked us to share what we were thinking in 140 characters or less

I came across the very first negative thing to ever be written about me online.

...