New slang

All over town (by town, I mean webernets) there are these hoards of people who lurk in the dark shadows of popular blogs and online publications, voraciously devouring every word written, waiting with bated breath to pounce on something... any small morsel they can concoct an elaborate vitriolic diatribe around in the comment section. This brand of feedback is almost always entirely indicative of their lack of comprehension of the writing's true content/purpose and generally serve to disparage the author in some ridiculous, single-minded way without addressing any larger issue.

Frequently rife with misspellings, poor sentence structure, and/or faulty grammar- these diarrhea-of-the-mouth style (for lack of a better expression) missives serve no purpose other than to chip away at the self-esteem of the writer (or worse, the subject of the post/story), while demonstrating the higher intelligence/morality/social standing of the commenter.

Ladies and gentlemen of the webernets, without further ado... allow me to introduce you to:

Netpicker (n) - Original Etymology, Nit Picker (n) 1951 - pedantic critic. Adopted for the web (or internet) in 2009. - Specifically characterizes an individual who seeks to criticize the work of another in the public forum of the comment section of any online published content with thinly-veiled attempts to elevate his/her own standing on unrelated grounds.

Synonyms: Hater (variant, "player" hater), troll, sniper, naysayer, @sshole, misanthrope.

I should add here that I've been very fortunate to avoid the steel gaze of most netpickers by flying largely under their radar with this fun little blog of mine. I've come up with this expression to put a name to the endless supply of jack@sses I come across while enjoying the work of other bloggers.

Most notably, I'm alarmed on a regular basis at just how many readers flock to Heather Armstrong's thoroughly amusing and insightful dooce.com, seemingly for the sole purpose of netpicking. She regularly posts excerpts of her most amusing hate e-mails and I applaud her for taking it all in stride. Netpickers should largely be ignored... but it's about time we put a name to their nasty little spiteful faces.