At first I thought this article on Bad Advice for Writers was pretty funny:

Advice #4: Correct negative reviews

There are only two types of reviews: the positive kind, and the kind where the reviewer didn’t understand the book. A bad review of your book is actually a cry for help!

Whenever you see a negative review that makes you say to yourself, “I should reach out to this person, perhaps in a borderline illegal fashion,” by all means do so. Find out where they live if you want! Show up on their doorstep and offer to politely explain how they simply failed to understand your novel. Make it clear that this is something they need to resolve within themselves and not a reflection on your work, and also that there’s no need whatsoever to call the police, so please put down the phone and stop crying.

Interaction is what reviewers are really looking for from you, the writer. Words like “awful” and “incomprehensible” and “this may have been written by a very dumb parrot” are really their way of saying, “I have failed to fully grasp your clear brilliance and would like for you to explain it to me”. So get out there and interact!

Then I read this, and I stopped laughing:

In an update to the fabulously written Goodreads review of Brittain’s awful self-published opus, a reviewer going by the pen name of Paige Rolland describes how Brittain stalked her Facebook page, discovered where she worked and traveled all the way to Scotland where he violently hit her over the head with a full bottle of wine, causing her to be hospitalized.

The reviewer describes the attack:

I was in the cereal aisle, bending down to get something from the bottom self. When I stood up, something hit me on the head. Hard. At first, I thought that maybe I’d hit my head off the shelf, and as everything started to spin and go black, I wondered how the hell I could be so stupid as to hit my head so hard. My vision was black, and my hearing was muffled, but I was very much conscious – I did not pass out (and this is important ’cause of my pride). I turned and put my hands out to lower myself to the floor gently, which is something my mother has always taught me to do should I think I’m going to pass out. It prevents further injury. As I lowered myself, I heard the tinkle of a bottle on the floor and I thought that something had fallen on me (even thought there is definitely no wine in the cereal aisle).

This is inconceivably awful.

And then there’s this weird story.