The Good Rachel, Blogs, and trolls

I started this blog because reading the blogs of other women inspired me to start writing again. I think that blogs, at first glance, could easily be deemed very self-serving. But truthfully, I would be so unhappy if any of the bloggers I read STOPPED blogging. I love hearing their stories, laughing and crying with them, and seeing their lives, families and sometimes bellies grow and change. I think these blogs are a wonderful tool of introspection for their writers and they create a community of readers all their own. *Usually* a community of support, caring, and hand-holding friendship. Recently, some judgmental asshat posted a comment on Karen's blog. Unfortunately for me, her name is Rachel. Hence "The Good Rachel". This is how I've started referring to myself on the comments sections to avoid being mistaken for this highly unpleasant woman. As a child, I didn't meet another Rachel until I was 13. Now - they're EVERYWHERE. It is so disconcerting to be walking through the mall and hear some mother, clinging desperately to the knot she's tied at the end of her rope, shrieking "RACHEL!!!!" at the top of her lungs, in some futile effort to verbally stop her running pre-schooler that is half a mile away on the concourse of the mall. After 30-odd years of conditioning to respond to my own name, hearing it screamed out in fear, fury, and desperation makes me feel, if only for an instant, terribly guilty of some heinous infraction. It always takes me a moment to realize that *I* am not the intended target of my own name echoing off the mall walls. Anyway. Trolls. When I think of trolls, I think of people that pop in and start an argument by stating the opposite viewpoint of the blogger (i.e. the red states v. the blue states), in some greatly demeaning and condescending manner. Of course, with the requisite name-calling ("you must be an idiot to believe. . . . . . ) and then they go away and return only infrequently. To call the Bad Rachel (ok - I don't really know her. How about the Mediocre Rachel?) a troll, is perhaps too kind. Because she's one of those asshats that comes in and presents her devastating message as one of care; a message that she was just duty-bound to write, out of concern for the well-being of the blogger and the blogger's future children. And she makes this judgment based on one or two blog entries. I think there needs to be a stronger word for these types of trolls. They are stealthy creatures, in that they present themselves as a caring friend that will make this tremendous sacrifice of themselves on the alter, to deliver their terribly-hard-to-hear, unwarranted, untrue and often damaging message. A true troll just comes in, calls you stupid and runs off. These "helpful" trolls are usually stupid enough to stick around and try to defend themselves under the barrage of defenses from the blogger's faithful following and friends. Amazingly, they seem to think that the blogger actually wants this sort of feedback; that the blogger puts up his or her posts because they crave judgment and criticism from ignorant people? IMO, a truly caring individual would have emailed the blogger privately to state his or her concerns. Posting them publicly on the comments section, seems to be a misguided effort to rally support for the criticism. And to post this on the blog of the very person she's attacking ......well, that's just plain dumb. So let's review. Misguided, Relatively stupid, judgmental, Caring friend (Wolf in sheep's clothing) presentation ...... hmmm......... What shall we call them?