This was written for The Star newspaper in 2012. It’s still so relevant. I thought I’d share it again.

You’d think that you have to be a celebrity of some sort to be hated by someone but these days anything goes, really. You just have to be a bit better off in any sense of the word – be it wealth, health, looks, happiness, friends, anything at all, and that is usually enough to trigger a sad pathetic loser to vent their resentment and jealousy on you. You’re there, just minding your business, getting on with your life and suddenly you’re on the receiving end of some idiot’s deranged thought process.

I’m not sure what makes a person go to these levels. Yes, I have established that it’s either jealousy or some sort of mental imbalance but to stoop so low as to hide and abuse? You seriously need a grip on life. I worked with a fabulous editor once and she was telling me how a certain celebrity-wannabe would hide behind a fake email ID and abuse co-workers who fared better than her. She’d go to the extent of even writing good things about herself while spewing mad hatred at her object of hatred and perhaps feel good about herself. What she didn’t know was that people had caught on and in this day and age of technology acting like Big Brother nothing is ever hidden.

No one confronted her – in fact they let her make a fool of herself for quite a while until she changed jobs. After that I didn’t hear any more gossip about her but needless to say I don’t think she’s ever stopped doing what she’s so used to doing!

I’ve been on this receiving end many times. At first it really used to get to me – in fact right up to late last year I was really disturbed with the malicious messages I was receiving. I had an idea who might be doing it but then you can never be sure without proof, can you? But in one message the idiot let out who it was and I pounced on that and gave as good as I got. It astounded me to find out that it was someone I knew very well and actually liked a lot so I was really disturbed about this person’s attitude towards me.

A friend of mine was also on the receiving end and the more I talk about this the more I find out I was not the only one. A lot of people have gone through this at some point or another.

Look… I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t abuse me for it. If I’m good at what I do and you don’t like it then just better what I am doing and get on with it. How do you know that I’m not perfect? What makes you think that life is a bed of roses for me? How can you even think that abusing me will make me do less than I already do? It won’t so take your nonsense elsewhere or just forget the whole sorry affair and start off as my friend. You have more benefits that way because I won’t be the type who’ll send you anonymous abusive messages. I’ll tell you straight up what I don’t like about you and if I’m jealous of your new sexy shoes which I can’t afford, I’ll let you know that too. I won’t go to the extent of buying a new phone SIM card so that I can anonymously let you know that I’m jealous of you.

As it is, a jealousy shared is a jealousy halved, right…?