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This internet thing is often a "bully pulpit" making it too easy for folks with issues to lash out....

I agree. I’ve no doubt at all you would do an excellent one, but the satisfaction of making it, and the gratitude of the relatively few who would make use of it, would not be worth the backlash. We just don’t live in that kind of world. I did a personal photography project a few years back that received a lot of press. And while the comments sections were overwhelmingly favourable, some of the negative ones were truly mind-boggling in their nuttiness and eagerness for confrontation. And that for a photo project that was totally benign and uncontroversial

I suppose it is wise to consider that silence doesn't necessarily equal tacit approval. The main point I was trying to make is that the internet allows people to be their worst selves, evidently without guilt. This refresher course in human fecal matter has definitely swayed my personal needle toward not making a "How to Walk in High Heels" video. Who needs that kind of abuse?

I take a similar view. If I can’t say something positive I say nothing at all. Everyone’s tastes are different and the fact that we all wear heels, of whatever style, a.ready puts all of us well out of the bell curve. Obviously if a member announces in a post that they’re planning to wear their pink patent thigh high stilettos on their golfing holiday in Dubai one would be doing them no favours by staying silent

A thought-provoking observation. I agree that it is not so easy to criticise (even if constructively) someone here with whom one has a relationship, albeit only online and remote. However, that can lead to an individual assuming that his activity or opinions are more acceptable than is truly the case, which is not altogether fair to him and indeed could result in some danger to him. It is difficult to strike a balance between fair and well-meant criticism (using that word in its proper sense of appraisal) and simply being 'nice', friendly, supportive, accepting or whatever. Needless to say, my comments here are not aimed at mlroseplant personally. I think he knows me well enough to realise that anything I might say about him or his posts is not intended to be unfair, let alone offensive!

And to be fair I have done this myself in a recent novel. In my case an adult daughter of 24 years old with a self-sufficient homestead was trying to figure out where her place was in the world and yet it was NOTHING like her attorney mother. This bothered her mother to no end. It was not so much in showing that her mother wore high heels as much as her daughter would not be caught dead in them, even when she went to court. While it was not THE PREMISE of the novel, in the end her mother had learned to accept her daughter even if she was taking a much different path. And what the two wore for shoes was true symbolism of that... her mother struggling down a hiking path on her daughter's homestead wearing high heels was as telling about her personality as her daughter was in wearing Birkenstock's to a court hearing. If this sounds like it was anti-high heels I assure you it was not. The novel was about self-sufficient farming with legal troubles. It was just how the story worked itself out. My wife and I adore high heels, and HATE the look of Birkenstock's but you can't always write about just the things you love when you are a writer. The story (novel) just has to work.