Post a Picture and DIE!!!!

So, this is going to be a bit of a rant. Just so you’re prepared. It started about a month ago when I came across a picture that really captured the essence of the heroine of my book, The Last Ranger of Sarn. Of course, like almost every piece of art that floats about on the internet, there was no artist signature.

Still, I loved the look and put it on my website. Not as a cover to be released, not as a poster, coffee mug, book marker…absolutely nothing that would make me a penny. I simply put a statement saying what the picture conveyed to me and also asking that if anybody knew the artist, to please let me know. I wanted to buy the pic if possible or at least give the artist credit for doing such a great job.

Yesterday, I get this irate person yelling at me all over facebook and twitter that I had stolen his work and illegally put his image on my webpage. He ordered it taken down…or, I should pay him for having it there. Well, even with his acerbic attitude, I was very tempted to buy the picture. I apologized and started removing it from my website. I even wrote a nice little thing about it on my site where the picture had been explaining I had put it up mistakenly, not with any intention of “stealing” it.

Now, it was a bit late when I started doing it and I had work the next day. I figured I could finish removing it from all of my social media the next day. Oh nooooo… This cheeseball continues the harassment, placing his little attention-seeking rants about how I stole his work and how I was the world’s biggest art thief and so on. He floods my Facebook and Twitter with this nonsense and doesn’t let up for a minute.

Now, I design book covers and I use paid images when I need specific things. Any other pics I use are under Creative Commons license. When attrition is called for, I graciously give it…it’s only fair. I’m not a thief. I’m no more a thief than any of the millions of people that post pictures to their social media pages. But this little twit, has the brass balls to create this huge fuss about it and it had me wondering why.

Then it came to me. He has a total of 8 followers on Twitter. There’s hardly any interaction on Facebook. A handful of connections at LinkedIn. So, despite every effort on his part to act as if he’s a normal person going about his daily life, it seems to me that he’s what’s known as an internet troll. Someone that takes a very small bump and rubs it until it’s the size of Vermont and festering. An attention whore to put it bluntly.

So, take this as a warning. Don’t post pictures. None. Not even the cat with the frown. You might get called out on it. You might wake up with 3 dozen posts on your social media pages about what a terrible human you are. The world will turn against you until you’re just a sad excuse for the person you used to be. And then one day, you’ll open your mail and there it is…poop from the frowny cat. All because you posted a picture.