tea berry-blue

But it doesn't come across as negative, I don't think, because you wrote it as a story, represented in a very reporter-y manner, without really attaching much in the way of value judgments. Like, you still considered how to present the story and presented it in a way where you're also criticizing your own perspective. You could have taken the same set of events and written "I met this guy online and now he's not calling me back! What the fuck; he's such an asshole! I hate men so much! Men are horrible people." The same set of events, presented in two different ways, could come out reading like a more universalized set of experiences or come out reading like a bitch fest, and I think you achieved the first. Does that make sense?

I should also say that I think this is slightly less true for veterans, because, for example, you have a core group of people who already know you, and know that's not what you usually write. Even if you wrote something that was really super whiny, I think you'd still get a certain level of forgiveness from the other vets, because they'd be like, "oh, no, tigrkittn is having a bad week!" You'd only have to work on charming the new folks. Whereas the new folks are new to everyone except maybe a limited number of friends they knew before.