We’re social animals. We often define our lives by the relationships we have with other people - children, partners, parents, friends, siblings, colleagues, clients. These relationships can (and do) form the basis of many a fine blog.
Relationships can sometimes be positive, and sometimes not. Sometimes, clouds can creep into each of the many relationships that we have. Sometimes it is more than a creep - it can be a slam. People die, marriages end, employer and employee can part company. It is traumatic for all concerned - the people who are directly affected, and the people who live, love, and/or work with them.
We can blog about the personal stuff or not - and sometimes, we will offend people without meaning to. I think that we can all name several examples within recent experience of where we’ve offended someone without intent to cause harm - sometimes, these people are dear to us, and we try to make amends. Other times - when the relationship (for whatever reason) has soured, we let the supposed insult slide, and may come to regret it later.
Then there are the people that we don’t mind offending - people with fundamentally different worldviews that may be abhorrent to us. I think that it is hard to be controversial without offending someone (indeed, that is the point - getting a comment debate going after one of your blog posts is extremely good for your numbers).
Herein lies the rub, and my question for you: how do you get away with it? In annoying someone you don’t mind annoying, you can sometimes offend the people that you do care about - I’ve experienced this myself recently. Out of respect for the person that I do care about, I won’t mention the details - suffice to say that there are two less comments on Blogging the personal stuff now. I feel bad that there was pressure applied to remove the comments - not on my behalf, but that it was the continuation of a pattern of abusive stupidity that caused the comment in the first place. But I was asked to remove the comments by someone that I do care about - so I did.
So… what do you do if:
- a comment war takes a nasty turn and there is a threat of legal action from one of the parties?
- a friend asks you to choose between a particular topic and their continued friendship?
- a topic pushes buttons in those close to you that you didn’t know existed, (for example, old memories of child abuse) and you then have to deal with the emotions around it?
- you raise some controversy and get a lot of personally distasteful comments?
What do you think?
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