Be Careful What You Blog – You Can’t Take it Back
Here’s a blogging parable… A Dad once held up a $20 bill and handed his child a tube of toothpaste and said, “Wanna earn a quick $20? Squeeze all the toothpaste out on this paper plate.” The kid had a blast (after all, what kid doesn’t love wasting toothpaste). When he reached for the twenty his Dad drew it back, “No, you can have the $20 when you get it all back in the tube.”
You can apologize. You can delete posts. You can backtrack, re-write, and add updates. But here’s the thing about spewing venom, sharing gossip, or harshly criticizing in a blog post – the moment you hit “publish” the damage has been done.
Effective blogging requires critical thinking. And like good journalism, it also requires critical analysis. To avoid controversy is to avoid the potential to influence and change culture. This post isn’t being written to encourage you to back away from trouble, but rather to carefully filter your words and emotions when you write.
Why the Damage is Irrevocable
When you become vehemently angry about something, furiously type out your reaction and hit the “publish” button, your information instantly becomes a part of the real-time web. It’s in the feed. It gets tweeted. Wayback machines are taking snapshots feverishly. Search results are cached and pages are indexed faster than ever before. In case you hadn’t noticed, word gets around quickly these days.
Why We’re Prone to Spew
There are three factors that make blogging a beautiful thing for our culture…
- It’s affordable. You can start a blog for free. Of course, if you want something really good, it will probably cost you something, but nonetheless, it’s affordable.
- It’s accessible. You can start a blog with almost no technical knowledge. If you can get online, you can publish online. Just type and hit “submit.”
- It’s anonymous. Great blogs have personality, and the personality of the blogger shines through. Having said that, it’s still entirely possible to publish content without being identified.
It’s very easy to strike out from behind the safety of a detached online identity. We can yell louder with a keyboard than we normally would face-to-face.
Why We Need to Have a Filter
Again, we would never encourage the avoiding of controversy but there are some important factors at stake when filtering our words. Our credibility and integrity are on the line. Relationships (which are always delicate anyway) can be smashed in an instant. And when our credibility is damaged and vital relationships are destroyed, we lose the one thing more important than money to a blogger – influence.
When we fail to filter our words, people stop listening. And when people stop listening, what’s the point of blogging?
photo credit: stucklo6an
In addition to serving as Editor of Fuel Your Blogging, Brandon is also a Pastor at Saddleback Church and Online Community Coordinator for Pastors.com. He’s also a web designer, blogger, and church communications consultant. Catch him on his own blog or on Twitter.
Excellent post; I’d argue that there are some people who can get away with ’saying anything’ because of the kind of audience they’ve attracted. Though at the same time those people do filter a lot because they’re trying to keep that persona alive and growing.
Additionally this is why I’m anonymous online, when I was in my teens I was and I was a little hellion, posting everything in my name forces me to consider the consequences of saying something stupid and has really helped me in the long run :)
Good poing, Michael. Who knows what will come up in a job interview a decade later.
Amen to that! So true! Once you hit the publish button, it’s history!
Trudat!
Great post Brandon! A good reminder and challenge for everyone.
Thanks, Kevin!
Nice post, Brandon — we ll know about the super-popular celebrity blog that revels in this type of posting behavior … but when it comes down to it, I can’t even bring myself to link it up due to how negative and off-putting the blog is.
Though this style is what made this blog famous, I think it’s extremely shallow and for the simple minded, which is fine — but tearing down one another is just primitive and catty.
For the rest of us, I agree that we need to resist blowing up about something or someone — and not only when it comes to publishing. For an awesome example why, check out Gary Vaynerchuk’s smooth reaction when he’s prank called at 5am during SxSW
http://garyvaynerchuk.com/post/455059045/i-was-pranked-at-5-am
You’ve gotta nurture your readership — one wrong move can destroy everything you’ve worked toward up to this point.
Absolutely, impulse control is crucial.
This reminds me of the Idea of, “Blogging under the influence.” Under the influence of emotions, anger, hurt, depressed thoughts and such. Sometimes I have to be careful that I’m not blogging under the influence because once I hit publish I can’t take it back.
Even if I go back and delete the post, it has reached the masses that deleted post is forever embedded into their thoughts. You are right we all have to be very careful not to blog under the influence, or to simply be careful of the words we type.
Great post, thanks for sharing!
It can be dangerous, but I think emotion is what makes blogging blogging and not traditional journalism.
Transparency.
True, Jarrod, and you’re right, Chris. If we strip authenticity away entirely, authority goes away with it.
Hey! Goed artikel, helaas is mijn engels alleen niet zo goed. Zelf bezoek ik vaak nederlandse msn websites. In nederland worden veel chat gerelateerde artikelen gepubliceerd.
Thanks for the great post ,Nice