Blake Snow

writer-for-hire, content guy, bestselling author

As seen on CNN, NBC, ABC, Fox, Wired, Yahoo!, BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal
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Tagged fan mail

Fan mail ends the year on a warm note

Julie from Chicago emailed this week:

Hi, Blake.

Thank you for your wonderful book, Log Off. I believe it is more relevant than ever, especially with the rise of artificial intelligence, and people being addicted to AI tools, in addition to social media. (Really, to anything on the internet.)

I am a twenty-four former social media addict from Chicago, and as I grow older, I want more and more a life with less internet and technology in it. Living in the online world distorted my perception of reality too much. It is far better to spend more time offline and away from the screen.

Thank you so much for writing your book!

As I’ve said before, writers get a lot more hate mail for simple things like missed commas, differences of opinion, or just being the messenger. So it’s thrilling, delightful, and totally makes my day to get fan mail like this.

Even if it’s just one starfish at a time it’s wonderful to see how our creative efforts—in my case books and writing—are changing lives.

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Why writers get more hate mail than fan mail

Courtesy Lindsey Snow

I became a full-time writer 17 years ago.

While covering consumer technology and video games as a twenty-something blogger, I would regularly receive hate mail from fanboys (never girls) who disagreed with my reporting.

I even received several death threats on occasion. While I never took these threats seriously, it never feels good to have your life, family, or property threatened.

After leaving video games in the late aughts, the hate mail mostly stopped. But I still get upset emails sometimes.

A few years a go, a man berated me for an article I wrote for CNN that was missing a comma. “You have no credibility,” the anonymous man concluded. “If you can’t master simple grammar, you have no business writing.”

He’s not the only one who has questioned my continued mistakes, two books, and thousands of published articles. In fact, the hate mail I’ve received far outweighs the fan mail—which is not unlike sustained rejection in general. Continue reading…