But then something interesting happened. The following day, I spoke via Skype phone call to a man who had commented "bitch, you have never even seen cartoons, have you? holy fuck, you are dumb. just stop" under my piece. He's a webcomic writer who lives in Minnesota.

I've cut down our chat because it was pretty long:

How did you feel when I got in touch with you?

I felt really bad. Looking back, I'm appalled at myself. It was stupid. I haven't erased what I said but if you want to erase it for me, that'd be great. I don't think it should be there.

Why did you add a comment to the thread underneath my article?

I didn't understand how you couldn't get it. I was like, holy shit, this person is really dumb. Why are they asking these questions?

But there's a difference between thinking "this person is stupid" and calling me a bitch and saying "holy fuck, you are dumb" at the bottom of an already abusive comments thread.

To tell you the truth, I didn't read the whole article. I read half of it and I was like, this person is dumb. If I had read it completely I would have been like, this is for girls. I am not the demographic for this thing. It was for girlfriends, or mums.

Why did you think it was for girls?

First of all, you say "my boyfriend told me about it". When I realised this is a woman explaining what she doesn't get, I understood. I know that a lot of guys have been watching The Simpsons since they were kids.

And women haven't?

I have a lot of female friends who know about The Simpsons. I just thought it was for women because you are a woman.

You thought that because I'm a woman, I write exclusively for women?

I thought so, yes.

Note: I didn't call him out for being sexist. I figured that, in the moment, it wasn't the crux of our discussion.

To give you a bit of context, I received hundreds of messages from people telling me I was so stupid I deserved to die. It made me feel really bad.

I know, I'm really sorry. It's not like, you shouldn't write about what you want. Please do!

When you wrote that comment did you imagine me reading it?

No. I didn't think that you were going to read it. I sincerely had no idea. I thought other commenters might read it. I thought someone else might agree with me. To be honest, I didn't think that it was by just one person. I thought it was just by staffers.

It was just by one staffer, though. It was by me.

When you go online you don't think about who writes the stuff you read. But I don't leave comments like that any more.

How come?

This is a weird thing to tell you, but last year I was diagnosed with heart problems. My heart could stop and just not start again. It made me realise there's no point in getting angry over stuff that doesn't matter. Your article was for fun, it wasn't important. In a world where there's so much crap, me getting angry about this, letting my heart go fast because of something that's not important, that would be a stupid thing to do.

It makes me really happy to hear that you've realised that.

Sincerely, I feel really bad. And I'm going to make sure that I start reading your work. I'm going to start commenting on your stuff saying nice things.

It was a weirdly emotional conversation. There were lots of long silences. I cried loads. He cried a bit. I told him about writing for BuzzFeed. He told me about writing webcomics.

I guess we got on quite well.

Before I hung up, he told me he was pleased I'd got in touch. "You have no idea how happy I am that you called," he said. "You don't often get the opportunity to say, 'Dude, I'm sorry. I apologise. I made a mistake.'

"I was stupid, and I'm really sorry. I didn't know how I made you feel.

"I promise you that I will never do it again."