Nobody likes criticism, but novelist Alice Hoffman may have taken her anger a little too far when she turned to Twitter to vent her frustrations about a negative book review. As reported by the New York Times Media Decoder Blog, Hoffman took exception with a  review from the Boston Globe’s Roberta Silman. Rather than merely taking the criticism with a grain of salt, as we were all no doubt taught to do as children, Hoffman tweeted out her dissatisfaction 140 scathing characters at a time.

From the post:

Reviewing the book for The Boston Globe on Sunday, Roberta Silman wrote: “This new novel lacks the spark of the earlier work. Its vision, characters, and even the prose seem tired.” In a series of Twitter posts, Ms. Hoffman fired back with her own opinion. “Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron,” she wrote. “How do some people get to review books? And give the plot away.” Ms. Hoffman also lambasted The Globe and went so far as to post Ms. Silman’s phone number and email, inviting fans to “Tell her what u think of snarky critics.”

Naturally, Hoffman’s rant, particularly the part where she gave away Silman’s phone number and e-mail, did not settle well, leading to a full apology the next day. Hoffman also disabled her Twitter account, presumably to mitigate any further reputational damage caused by this unfortunate affair.

While there are some out there who will no doubt feel sympathy for Hoffman, or even say her actions were justified, the truth of the matter is that she chose the wrong venue to air her grievances. Social media makes sharing your opinions easier than ever. But, that doesn’t mean that all of your opinions need to be shared.

In his coverage of this story, Frank Reed at the Marketing Pilgrim Blog suggests that people should have licenses to use social media in the same way they have licenses to drive cars. While he’s clearly joking, or at least half-joking, maybe there’s some value in that idea. The Internet can be a wild place, for sure, but social media doesn’t have to be. Intelligent, productive, and meaningful conversations can happen online. You just have to be the one that starts them.