This reminds me of the time that, after having publishing my first ever piece of professional work, a competing academic privately threatened and later actually

This reminds me of the time that, after having publishing my first ever piece of professional work, a competing academic privately threatened and later actually did put out a series of tweets calling me a liar and a fraud. He was wrong, of course; my benchmarks were accurate, it was just that I was using the tools for a very particular task and he was doing something quite different in his own tests, but holy shit did I cry so hard that day. It's terrifying being effectively whipped in the town square and called a fraud in front of not only some hot shot's 50k followers but also your academic and professional colleagues. I was panicking because I knew I had done good work and I didn't want someone ruining either my work or the reputation I had just started building. I ended up talking with some friends, my advisor, and some mentors and ended up calming down. I ended up just muting him on twitter and walking away from the entire thing, though I have heard he still brings it up to this day any time anyone mentions this project within earshot of him. From what I hear, it's unfortunately not uncommon for publications to go this way when performance-crowns are up for grab. I've mostly slipped off the public publishing route since I found it's not something I love, but you know some people really are assholes and, well, so it goes...