3 ms·

As someone who runs a fairly popular "personal" (not corporate, opinion-based) blog, it is an ongoing fear. We have to try to make sure the things we say are as

As someone who runs a fairly popular "personal" (not corporate, opinion-based) blog, it is an ongoing fear. We have to try to make sure the things we say are as least controversial as possible. But in a way, this is a good thing. My blog is about my city, and there are plenty of things we "can" talk about but probably should't. For example, I don't think the business that's in one of the cornerstone buildings downtown is the right business for the neighborhood. But I'd never say it. It'd be needlessly confrontational, my opinion isn't going to get that business to move, they're paying their rent so they have every right to stay there, and all it would do is piss people off who disagree with me. On the other hand, we generate minor controversies all the time. People who live outside of the city always want more parking, we're pretty strongly against setting minimum numbers of parking spaces when putting in new buildings. We support new higher-density living in the city, many neighbors are strongly opposed to it. As such, we're the target of smear campaigns and any relevant social media post is often swamped with the people who disagree with us. We've also been factually wrong in the past, and some people do their best to remind us of it as often as possible. The trick is to ignore it. Haters gonna hate. Don't be unnecessarily confrontational, and just roll on without acknowledging your public critics. They're just trying to piggyback off your success. It's not really a "one wrong word" situation, it's "one word you really knew you shouldn't have said, but against all better judgement you did anyway" followed by "engaging your critics in arguments", then topped off with "caving and admitting defeat because you knew you were wrong all along". I can't think of a single collapse of a public figure because of one wrong word that wasn't extremely egregious and then handled extremely poorly.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
Could you pretty please email me a link to your blog and let me know what kind of traffic it gets?
a1369209993 8y ago
It's more "one word you should say but know probably isn't worth the trouble" followed by "feeding the trolls", then topped off with "giving up because you can't summon the energy to stand up to a never-ending flood of ignorant assholes". It is best to just ignore them.
glenra 8y ago
> We've also been factually wrong in the past, and some people do their best to remind us of it as often as possible THAT dynamic is toxic and we need to somehow evolve a social rule against it. Something like Godwin's Rule, back when that worked. Everybody has at some point said something factually incorrect and everybody has at some point said something that sounds wrong or mean when taken out of context today. If forever bringing up "Remember, this is the person who said (worst thing ever)!" is a valid move, it's an attack on identity continuity. The existing defenses against that attack seem to be: (a) completely abandoning identity continuity (eg: 4chan) (b) trying to appear perfectly accurate and inoffensive at all times by retroactively deleting any posts that might make one look inconsistent or mean and hoping nobody notices or keeps an archive. There really ought to be more options than those. For instance, one could adopt a statute-of-limitations approach: Anything said more than two years ago is off-limits as an attack on that person/blog/institution today. Once the right rule is documented, those who break it are demonstrating they are too dumb or ill-informed to engage with what is being said now and thus have lost the argument.
- currymj 8y ago
  There’s an evolving social norm against this, I think. Increasingly, I’ve noticed the people who trawl through years-old posts looking for controversy are seen as deranged.
  - foobarchu 8y ago
    That only applies when the target was relatively anonymous to begin with. It's frowned upon to crawl back in time to look for ammunition against someone, but if that ammunition is something that went viral and is part of public consciousness, then you're good. One example is Bredan Eich. Because he chose to donate to a Prop 8 fund and it got out, his opinion on all subjects is automatically null and void for many people. Another case is that of reddit user 'Unidan', who became an immediate pariah overnight because he was a dick to someone online, so he abandoned the entire identity. If any of his alternate identities were somehow linked back, it would likely become useless as well. I'd be willing to be his professional career suffered greatly because of that rant, too. There's also Joy Reid, who has been in hot water lately because people found old tweets and blog posts that were offensive. In that case, people actively went back to look for things she said in the past. None of these would have been possible pre-internet.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Could you pretty please email me a link to your blog and let me know what kind of traffic it gets?

a1369209993 8y ago

It's more "one word you should say but know probably isn't worth the trouble" followed by "feeding the trolls", then topped off with "giving up because you can't summon the energy to stand up to a never-ending flood of ignorant assholes". It is best to just ignore them.

glenra 8y ago

> We've also been factually wrong in the past, and some people do their best to remind us of it as often as possible THAT dynamic is toxic and we need to somehow evolve a social rule against it. Something like Godwin's Rule, back when that worked. Everybody has at some point said something factually incorrect and everybody has at some point said something that sounds wrong or mean when taken out of context today. If forever bringing up "Remember, this is the person who said (worst thing ever)!" is a valid move, it's an attack on identity continuity. The existing defenses against that attack seem to be: (a) completely abandoning identity continuity (eg: 4chan) (b) trying to appear perfectly accurate and inoffensive at all times by retroactively deleting any posts that might make one look inconsistent or mean and hoping nobody notices or keeps an archive. There really ought to be more options than those. For instance, one could adopt a statute-of-limitations approach: Anything said more than two years ago is off-limits as an attack on that person/blog/institution today. Once the right rule is documented, those who break it are demonstrating they are too dumb or ill-informed to engage with what is being said now and thus have lost the argument.

currymj 8y ago
There’s an evolving social norm against this, I think. Increasingly, I’ve noticed the people who trawl through years-old posts looking for controversy are seen as deranged.
- foobarchu 8y ago
  That only applies when the target was relatively anonymous to begin with. It's frowned upon to crawl back in time to look for ammunition against someone, but if that ammunition is something that went viral and is part of public consciousness, then you're good. One example is Bredan Eich. Because he chose to donate to a Prop 8 fund and it got out, his opinion on all subjects is automatically null and void for many people. Another case is that of reddit user 'Unidan', who became an immediate pariah overnight because he was a dick to someone online, so he abandoned the entire identity. If any of his alternate identities were somehow linked back, it would likely become useless as well. I'd be willing to be his professional career suffered greatly because of that rant, too. There's also Joy Reid, who has been in hot water lately because people found old tweets and blog posts that were offensive. In that case, people actively went back to look for things she said in the past. None of these would have been possible pre-internet.