However beguiling for spiriting gadgets to our doors, the internet has also become the vehicle of choice for the disgruntled, the spiteful and the cruel. But here is the thing: we ask for it. We actually go looking for vileness, slander and abuse at our own expense. We put ourselves in the way of it every bit as perversely as coalition forces deliberately place young Western men in the sights of terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some time ago, I got a small, poisonous taste of the inaccurate, poorly written and poorly reasoned nastiness that lies in wait on the internet about me. My husband had started reading aloud choice titbits from the long, snarling reader comments that ran under my columns — often intrusively personal snipes with nothing to do with the subject at hand. I had to beg him to stop, and for years now he's been forbidden from sharing any more unpleasant discoveries on the web. 

Had I instead pored over every line of vitriol, or — shudder — mucked in and joined the conversation (i.e. gormlessly volunteered for Afghanistan), I'd have soon stopped publishing journalism altogether. If nothing else, the unremitting revelation that so many readers cannot comprehend standard prose — that so many people prefer to make up what they wish you had written so they can object to it; that, not to put too fine a point on it, readers cannot read — exposes the whole business of writing comment pieces as utterly pointless. I long ago opted for the happy delusion that, while my audience may not always agree with me, they at least roughly understand what I've said.

Lo, I am wearing Dorothy's shoes. If I don't read that slop, my feelings don't get hurt. I don't waste precious mental time on responding to ludicrous, unfounded accusations and unwarranted name-calling even in my head. I can deny any so-called "trolls" satisfaction by refusing to submit to their conniption fits. I got the power.

We all have that power. When the internet was young, it enticed us with intoxicating access — to information, to purchases, but also to other people, and they to us. But access has got out of hand. Especially with the burgeoning of social networking, the problem is no longer how to invite throngs of other people into your study. The problem is how to keep them out.