In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Another Reason to Blog

Lauren

Screw the notion that blogging is dangerous. If anything I think it makes us more honest.

Neither she or the evil landlord is a blogger. But a wee voice tells me, had they both been bloggers, there’s no way he would’ve done what he did.

Because he’d know other bloggers like you and me would be over him like a rash, telling everybody about what a scumbag he is. And so the next time you searched his name on Google, the front page would be splattered with his scumbag act, his reputation in tatters, and his ability to conduct business damaged forever.

Having a valuable online reputation keeps you honest. Because if you do something squirly, you will pay dearly, and you will pay fast.

And of course, the more this becomes self-evident to me, the harder I find it doing business with non-bloggers. An increasingly essential trust mechanism seems strangely absent.

One thing about being a blogger is that part of your goal is to build and maintain credibility within a public set. Arguments that can go public are more likely to be resolved in a calm manner, saving the vitriol for a more private venue. Those that choose not to be reasonable have potential threat on their heads. When you have a modicum of publicity, your integrity is on the line. If you don’t believe me, check the addendum on the cited post.

via Chaos Theory

10 thoughts on Another Reason to Blog

  1. This is exactly right, though I’d never really thought of it in those terms.

    I know that the permanence of what we write is one reason why some people do it anonymously. I can’t say I thought of it before hand, when I started blogging, but I’m kinda glad that my real name is associated with my blog. It keeps me honest and serves as a self-editing tool. These words we right stay out on the internets forever, and it should require us to take a second before pressing publish to make sure that we intend to stand by everything we write.

  2. Anonymity, the shield that makes some honest, is also the cloak some lie under. Upside and downsides to turning your insides outside to the world and to be an outsider no longer. We are what we say and do.

  3. Old man Robert Putnam and his friends would never have called it “increasingly essential” – they would argue that these trust mechanisms have been essential since the beginning of society, existed (in America) in the past and have been steadily eroded as the small-town paradigm has died (a victim of greater mobility, immigration, increase in commuting time et al.). Obviously the blogosphere is no small town (or Greek agora, to make a more hackneyed but appropriate comparison), just as craigslist is not the cork message board on the public library’s wall.

    It may be that that communication technology has made the world transparent enough to evolve trust, yet large enough to avoid the condemnation of difference that defines “small-town” – or at least large enough that no one need suffer it alone.

  4. I really should have said that communications technology is in the process of making the developed world transparent enough to evolve trust for those of means etc.

    Turn on the real; turn on the liberal self-hatin’.

  5. It seems to me that, given how search engines work, those with no online presence to speak of are much more vulnerable to having their reputations ruined online than those with a more established presence. And those whose presence is pseudonymous are always vulnerable to outing, whereas those who have always appeared unmasked cannot be outed unless their public personae are substantally at variance with the onlone personae.

  7. Yawn all you want — people who have been doing this for awhile understand how important it is to develop ethos. And once you have credibility in your publicity (and an audience) most don’t want to lose it.

    It may not matter from the outside, but I think that other longtime bloggers get a feel for what the dude at gaping void is saying up top.

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