Lately I've been mulling over blogging, etiquette, and other such matters, and I've read some interesting takes on the issues. There's a good piece of commenting on blogs here.
I've broken more than a few of these rules myself, especially this:
Don’t post when you’re angry, upset, drunk or emotional.
There’s no taking back a published blog comment - once you post, it’s there for everyone to see and for Google to cache. Remember, you’re not going to show your best face in the heat of an emotional moment. If you find yourself angrily typing a message into someone’s blog comment box - STOP. Get up. Take a breath. Walk around. Give it a day. Revisit the thread when your head is clear. This goes doubly for public blog comments as it does for private e-mail messages.
Yep. Good advice, really.
I will admit, I have a temper, and I can be impulsive. I often ignore the nagging voice in my head that tells me to calm down. I can easily be drawn into slinging matches, but my energy isn't high enough to sustain me as long as many others, and I do get emotional. I like to think it's because I'm engaged and because I actually care about the things I write about or comment upon; the flipside of this is I can take things very personally and I do get very, very angry when I think I'm being baited.
So. What to do? How to regain some sense of dignity?
For me, I think it means not taking part in the pissing competitions that seem to go on in a lot of blogs. For a long time I was a lurker and it took me months to get up the courage to comment at other places. I need to return to being a lurker, for a little while. To bite my tongue, to think about things, to write my reactions here in my little backwater.
This post by Frogs and Ravens is also a good discussion of issues of blogging and commenting, and I found her comments on the culture of a blog really interesting.
In the end, she's right: blog culture is only partially about the blogger, and there's a whole lot more here I could say about masculine and feminine spaces, but I think I'll save it for another day.
Anyway, the real gift of blogging for me has been community, and I've come to realise that such community is a fragile thing. And while I seriously considered quitting blogging (in fact, yesterday I wrote a 'Gone Fishing' post which is still saved as a draft in case I need it) I don't want to give up the connections I've made with other people.
Specifically, if it weren't for blogging I'd have never have met Rob, Anthony and Nicole. I'd have never have found Ampersand Duck's blog, or Zoe's, or Cristy's or Jennine's. I've have never snagged myself one of Laura's gorgeous bags -- photos coming soon -- and 'meeting' Laura in this virtual space has been a real pleasure. For Battle is one of my favourite blogs because there you see a group of good friends doing what friends do, which reminds me of the pleasures of actually being in such a group, which is something I've missed in my adult years as I've moved from place to place. There are more, of course, and my sidebar is a testament to the many smart, wise, intelligent and kind people blogging.
And yes, there are idiots, dickheads and all round shit-stirrers. Just like in real life. But why should I let those people deny me the good stuff, the good things about blogging, the good things about an on-line life? The answer, of course, is that I shouldn't let them at all.
This is the last self-reflective post I'm going to write for a while. I've been a bit self-absorbed of late, with work stuff and life stuff, and last night I said to JW that I've been feeling like a bit of a failure. JW gave me a hug and told me to stop being so hard on myself. Which really sums it up, I guess.
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