Better the Devil you Know
Brickwall is where I comment on the world I live in. Sometimes they are a comment on the political world. Indeed, this week's post was going to be based upon the news here that the UK is the worst place in the developed world to raise children. I may blog about it later. Other times, brickwall is a public diary. Very few people read it, but it is still public. When in diary mode, I write about things that have happened to me during the week, significant events that have changed in some way my world view.
I went on holiday with the family this week to Wales. We had a few days of fresh air, kite flying and low-tech terrestrial TV. I was going to post about this and make the connection between our experiences as a family unit on holiday and the UNICEF report that placed the UK at the bottom of the heap in terms of raising a family.
However, plans change. I have had a strange encounter with another blogger and I feel I need to write about what has happened, if only to sort things out for myself because the whole incident has left me feeling confused, depressed and a little frightened.
The language used to describe the blog world draws comparison to the real world in which we engage. Bloggers talk of a community. We have friends and conversations. The Internet as a whole is modelled on our real-life social interaction; we have chat rooms and emoticons. In essence, the Internet and blogs provide us with real social interaction and communication without us leaving the safety of our own homes. There are many reasons why we find this form of social interaction appealing. Maybe we find it safer. Maybe our lives are so busy we find it easier. Maybe we really are social animals at heart and the opportunity to interact with a wider community touches something deep and ancient in our genes. Whatever the reasons, my point is that through our blogs we do what we do in our 'real' relationships with people. We talk, we express ideas and we disagree at times.
What we also do is choose our friends. In the real world I meet a few friends in a pub that accommodates several hundred people. I don't meet all of them, I meet a few friends. We are all part of the town pub culture, but I only engage with a select few.
Occasionally, we share a joke or a comment with a stranger. Even more occasionally, we strike up a conversation, but these new relationships are made after we have observed the behaviour of the other people.
I would not go up to a stranger in a bar and tell them that they had made a mistake when combining that shirt with those trousers. I would not go up to a stranger and suggest that the beer they are drinking is inferior to the beer I was drinking. I would not make up nicknames for a stranger in a bar. I would not do these things because they break the customs of social interaction. People who do these sorts of things end up in fights. I don't like fighting, so I stick to the rules of engagement.
My experiences this week have led to me to conclude that the blog world also has these rules of engagement. The blogosphere is like a bar. We enter it in order to chat with a few friends and occasionally we end up talking to others; mutual friends, acquaintances, colleagues. I started my blog to engage artistically with something that my real friend Martyn was talking about. I bumped into Rosemary and we said hello. We got chatting and realised we had things in common. I introduced her to Martyn and he introduced her to Lorenzo. She introduced us to Michelle and Kenju. We did this through links on our pages.
I once upset Kenju. I broke the rules of engagement. I raised a subject that was inappropriate for the company, just like talking about blow jobs with your mother-in-law would be inappropriate. She raised the issue and it was dealt with - I apologised, moved the link and added a warning. Kenju was in a position to criticise because she was already part of the social circle. It was me who had broken the social rules and because she was part of the circle she was entitled to comment. It really does work like conversations in a bar.
Martyn, Lorenzo and I know, without it being made explicit, that there are somethings we don't talk about when certain people are present. If we broke the rules, the others would let us know; we would fall out.
When we 'bump' into someone in blogland and say hello, we follow very similar rules. We are more polite than we would be with people we know. We say nice things about their blogs and maybe invite them to visit our site. It takes many visits and polite comments before we renegotiate the rules and begin to offer advice. This is just like making real friends.
I have had, on and off over the past months, a visitor who I have found to be rude because they don't follow these conventions. This visitor does the equivalent of the guy in the bar I mentioned earlier. This person goes up to strangers and says that they don't like their shirt. In this person's case, the problem seems to be the way I accept comments on my site. I have answered politely a few times; it's my site and I get to choose how it works. I have been more polite than I would have been in a similar situation in a bar. In a bar I would have told them to fuck off. Here, I simply suggested finding another blog that was to their liking.
Things escalated this weekend when I received a massive amount of identical comments - 63 containing a repetitive message followed by a further 28. In a bar this would have led to confrontation. If you don't like me why are you here talking to me? The comments made me feel threatened. I take my blog very seriously and it is set up how I like it. It took me a long time to get it like this. I am not an expert user, I work full time and I have three kids. Getting my blog to this stage has been hard work. I understand that not everyone will like it, but no one is making you read it: That's what the next blog button is for.
The final (I hope) comment suggests that it is me who has done something wrong. It may be a case of mistaken identity or a problem with the way site meters work, but I have not spent 10 hours on any one's blog, and I have no idea what my "other activities" are.
The bottom line is that despite us all hiding behind screens, the rules and conventions of social interaction and communication are as relevant here as they are out there. We shouldn't use our relative security and anonymity as an excuse to engage with people in a manner that we would not get away with face to face.
In the real world, me and this person would have fallen out instantly, and that is fine and healthy. It would be an awful world if we liked everyone and agreed with everything. But in the real world we would have kept our distance and never engaged in conversation again, unless one of us was actually looking for trouble - and in bars you do meet those people.
In blogworld, the conversation has gone on for too long.
