There are many badges of honour that an earnest blogger can earn from pumping out pithy posts from a darkened secret lair while hunched over a keyboard.
Gaining your first obsessive, schizophrenic troll is a monumental occasion in a blogger's life and every spooky contact received can brighten up your day.
Legal and physical threats are another motivation that spurs bloggers on.
Probably the ultimate prize is an actual legal letter arriving via an outraged and confused reader. These letters are rare prized trophies that are to be be savored by exposing the pettiness to the world over several amusing blog posts.
So far I've manged to accumulate a couple of disturbing trolls and have received inarticulate emails threatening a thump on the nose and/or to set a lawyer onto me.
Sadly, I've yet to receive a prissy lawyer's letter.....but probably the next best thing that a blogger can achieve is being tag-teamed by New Zealand's number one blog, Whale Oil after being first to break a story:
