Life in the Blogosphere: Have You Gotten Your “Anonymitis” Vaccination?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about com­ment mod­er­a­tion. Since then I have noted that the dia­logue among blog­gers about com­ments has inten­si­fied, but it is not lim­ited to just the issue of whether or not to mod­er­ate com­ments. It is also cen­tered around whether or not to com­ment and/or allow com­ments on one’s blogs, how to encour­age read­ers to leave more com­ments, and whether or not to respond on your own blog to com­ments left there. The con­ver­sa­tion is also cen­tered, from the read­ers’ per­spec­tive, around com­ment eti­quette and strategy.

Recently, Car­o­line Mid­dle­brook wrote an arti­cle enti­tled “Do You Thank Your Stum­blers?” in which she shared tips for not­ing when Stum­ble­Upon users review your site and explained why she sends a follow-up e-mail to read­ers who give her site a “thumbs up” for the first time.

A cou­ple of days later, the head­line on her blog was “Who Would Have Thought the Idea of a Thank-You Could Illicit Such an Abu­sive Response?” Shar­ing and dis­cussing some of the unbe­liev­ably rude and taste­less responses she got from her ear­lier post, Car­o­line noted: “It makes me won­der how they live their lives in the offline world. What if some­body smiled at them walk­ing down the street?”

I had my own expe­ri­ence with an extremely hos­tile and coarse blog­ger this week that, in com­bi­na­tion with my ear­lier arti­cle, all the oth­ers I have read in the interim, and Caroline’s words has had me think­ing a great deal not just about the com­ments I receive here at Col­lo­quium, but also whether or not I will con­tinue post­ing com­ments on other blogs. In the past few months, the num­ber of com­ments I have left on other sites has dimin­ished greatly because, to be per­fectly blunt, I find that there are far too many blog­gers who nei­ther want nor appre­ci­ate a view­point that dif­fers in any degree from their own. More­over, there is an aston­ish­ing amount of inac­cu­rate infor­ma­tion posted on blogs and, with rare excep­tions, blog­gers do not want to be noti­fied when they have posted erro­neous data, no mat­ter how innocent.

Case in point: I vis­ited a blog recently where the author made a blan­ket state­ment about the law that was patently over broad and, hence, wrong. She then opined about a news arti­cle. I gen­tly offered an accu­rate legal per­spec­tive and con­cluded my remarks with my own opin­ion on the mat­ter (child­hood vacinations).

What fol­lowed was an alarm­ingly vit­ri­olic dia­tribe in which she not only attacked my legal prowess, but maligned my intel­li­gence, ques­tioned my par­ent­ing skills and com­mit­ment to my chil­dren, and impugned my integrity at numer­ous lev­els. I responded gin­gerly in an attempt to make her under­stand that I was sim­ply express­ing an opin­ion and sug­gested that if she did not want opin­ions other than her own expressed in response to her writ­ing, she might post a com­ment pol­icy to that effect. When I vis­ited her blog, I noted that she had responded to me again via e-mail but had deleted our exchanges after the ini­tial two, i.e., my com­ment and her first response thereto in which she vocif­er­ously attacked me. So I respect­fully sug­gested that, in the inter­est of fair­ness, she delete my first com­ment as well as her response so that we could just go our sep­a­rate ways, agree­ing to dis­agree. That evoked “I put you in your place” and “Ha!” in response.

I hope that made her feel better.

Since that unpleas­ant exchange, I have been giv­ing seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to sim­ply dis­abling com­ments on my sites, as well as dis­con­tin­u­ing my own prac­tice of vis­it­ing other folks’ blogs and remark­ing on their arti­cles. I am rapidly reach­ing the con­clu­sion that there is an epi­demic of bad behav­ior in the blo­gos­phere which I call “Anonymitis.”

As I read the words of the blog­ger who attacked me via e-mail, I found myself won­der­ing what kind of per­son she is in her offline life and ask­ing this ques­tion: Would she have talked to me that way if she were stand­ing face to face with me, look­ing into my eyes, observ­ing the expres­sions on my face, and hear­ing the inflec­tions in my voice?

I would hope that the answer is an unqual­i­fied “no,” but given that I have never met her or spo­ken with her on the tele­phone, and have only vis­ited her a blog on a cou­ple of occa­sions, I have no idea how she behaves when inter­act­ing in person.

And therein lies the dan­ger of the Inter­net as a whole and, more specif­i­cally, blog­ging, as well as e-mails. “Anonymi­tis” leads far too many peo­ple to believe that they are shielded from account­abil­ity and respon­si­bil­ity when typ­ing from the com­fort of their own home, address­ing face­less and usu­ally name­less indi­vid­u­als about whom they know noth­ing. Far too often, peo­ple using com­put­ers com­pletely lose sight of the fact that real, live, breath­ing, feel­ing human beings are going to read and be impacted by their words and deeds.

What­ever hap­pened to the Golden Rule? Shouldn’t it apply to blogging?

As one reader com­mented in response to Caroline:

I feel sorry for the peo­ple who seem to need to spew invec­tive and poi­son around the web from behind the safety of a key­board. I think it says a lot more about a person’s gen­eral lack of char­ac­ter and man­ners than the con­tents of your post does.

I agree whole­heart­edly. The behav­ior of the vaccination-phobic woman speaks vol­umes about her and says noth­ing about me.

That doesn’t change the fact that I did not enjoy the expe­ri­ence of being attacked with obvi­ous aban­don and down­right glee. I do not blog to earn my daily bread. Blog­ging and con­tribut­ing to Write Stuff are hob­bies in which I engage solely for my own enjoy­ment. If some­thing is not ful­fill­ing and enjoy­able, I don’t believe in doing it. I have no desire to be a vic­tim of “Anonymi­tis.” Even though I am a thick-skinned attor­ney (and yes, I have heard all the jokes about lawyers hav­ing ice water cours­ing through their veins), such inci­dents are as dis­turb­ing, upset­ting, and hurt­ful to me as any­one else. What an oppo­nent flings at me in the heat of lit­i­ga­tion is far dif­fer­ent in char­ac­ter and tone than the ad hominem attacks to which I and many other blog­gers have been subjected.

I once again urge all blog­gers to “blog respon­si­bly” through self-control and self-editing, employ­ing a cooling-off period when tempted to respond in a purely emo­tional man­ner to a fel­low blogger’s thoughts, opin­ions, and remarks. Above all else, if you haven’t already done so, get vac­ci­nated imme­di­ately lest you ever come down with a rag­ing — lit­er­ally — and openly hos­tile case of “Anonymi­tis” and infect your cor­ner of the blo­gos­phere with it.

Rec­om­mended Read­ing: Blog Eti­quette: The Rules are Quite Simple

Tech­no­rati Tags: Col­lo­quium on Writing

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