A Quick Word To The Anonymous
Feb. 4th, 2011 06:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teleen_fictionRight now, I allow everyone to comment on my journal, though thanks to a long-ago troll, I screen every comment from non-friends. As I've mentioned several times before, if I feel that your comment is civil, I'll unscreen it even if it disagrees with me.
However.
From this point forward, if you're going to disagree with me, I must insist that you do it from your main journal if you want me to engage with you. If you don't have an LJ account (and if you say that you don't I'll believe you because I tend to believe that no one has a good reason to lie), I'll take it into consideration depending upon the tone of your comment, but from this point forward, I will no longer engage with sockpuppets anywhere online.
I'm often wrong. I'm often seriously wrong. However, I just can't feel respect for someone telling me I'm wrong if they're going to do it anonymously. If you feel that strongly about your beliefs, don't use a sockpuppet or an anonymous comment or meme, use your real journal and back up what you have to say by signing your (virtual) name to it. If you don't want to comment, just PM me. I'm willing to discuss it privately if you prefer to do it that way.
For the record, anonymous memes can be fun (if really, really time-consuming), but it's really hard to care what anyone there thinks when they're doing the internet equivalent of writing on the bathroom wall. If you don't like me, cool. You can't like everyone. And I've been guilty of (and, I'm sure, will continue to be guilty of) some serious fail. Plus, if it makes you feel better to vent about that fail with other like-minded individuals, I can't judge you for it and I must apologize because I know it sounds as though I am, in fact, judging.
To me, anonymous memes are a guilty pleasure, but with very few exceptions, I don't see them as being anything more than a collective circle jerk. Not that there's anything wrong with circle jerking per se - sexual freedom is something I agree with wholeheartedly. Just for me personally, if I'm made of fail I'm only going to do my best to only care about it if it comes from someone with a name. I won't sit here and deny that being the subject of anonymous criticism hasn't been hurtful - it has, so if that was your only goal, you've succeeded. However, if your goal was to actually try and let me know of the many ways in which I fail as a human being and how I could correct them, you've failed. But then, it's not your job to educate me, so I guess if you don't care to tell me to my face how I've failed, you are under no obligation to do so.
I've just realized that I'm essentially addressing this to people whose minds are already made up about me, who feel that I'm utterly irredeemable as a person and that I have no chance of ever being a better human being. My apologies and happy wanking to you, :).
However, if you feel that I have a chance to be better, go ahead and comment.
Tell me about where I've gone wrong. Again, I'll listen. I may not enjoy it (or be as gracious about it as I should be), but I will listen. Heck, there are a few people on my friends list that disagree with me practically every day and I appreciate having them here to keep my head from going too far up my own ass. Sometimes it's stuck pretty far up there, but I do my best to remove it when I discover it's been lodged.
I'm still allowing comments from everyone and that's unlikely to change simply because there are a lot of cool people out there who don't have LJ accounts who still want to comment here. They're welcome and always will be, :). I'm just going to be more judicious about unscreening comments from those who comment anonymously to tell me I'm made of fail in one way or another.
tl;dr: If you comment here and you're not on my friends list, I will unscreen your comment at my own discretion and there may not be a visible pattern as to which ones get through. I would like to allow serious discussion here, especially discussion that forces me to broaden my worldview, but if I don't feel that you are respecting me as a person I'll leave the comment screened and/or lock the post faster than you can say 'censorship'.
However.
From this point forward, if you're going to disagree with me, I must insist that you do it from your main journal if you want me to engage with you. If you don't have an LJ account (and if you say that you don't I'll believe you because I tend to believe that no one has a good reason to lie), I'll take it into consideration depending upon the tone of your comment, but from this point forward, I will no longer engage with sockpuppets anywhere online.
I'm often wrong. I'm often seriously wrong. However, I just can't feel respect for someone telling me I'm wrong if they're going to do it anonymously. If you feel that strongly about your beliefs, don't use a sockpuppet or an anonymous comment or meme, use your real journal and back up what you have to say by signing your (virtual) name to it. If you don't want to comment, just PM me. I'm willing to discuss it privately if you prefer to do it that way.
For the record, anonymous memes can be fun (if really, really time-consuming), but it's really hard to care what anyone there thinks when they're doing the internet equivalent of writing on the bathroom wall. If you don't like me, cool. You can't like everyone. And I've been guilty of (and, I'm sure, will continue to be guilty of) some serious fail. Plus, if it makes you feel better to vent about that fail with other like-minded individuals, I can't judge you for it and I must apologize because I know it sounds as though I am, in fact, judging.
To me, anonymous memes are a guilty pleasure, but with very few exceptions, I don't see them as being anything more than a collective circle jerk. Not that there's anything wrong with circle jerking per se - sexual freedom is something I agree with wholeheartedly. Just for me personally, if I'm made of fail I'm only going to do my best to only care about it if it comes from someone with a name. I won't sit here and deny that being the subject of anonymous criticism hasn't been hurtful - it has, so if that was your only goal, you've succeeded. However, if your goal was to actually try and let me know of the many ways in which I fail as a human being and how I could correct them, you've failed. But then, it's not your job to educate me, so I guess if you don't care to tell me to my face how I've failed, you are under no obligation to do so.
I've just realized that I'm essentially addressing this to people whose minds are already made up about me, who feel that I'm utterly irredeemable as a person and that I have no chance of ever being a better human being. My apologies and happy wanking to you, :).
However, if you feel that I have a chance to be better, go ahead and comment.
Tell me about where I've gone wrong. Again, I'll listen. I may not enjoy it (or be as gracious about it as I should be), but I will listen. Heck, there are a few people on my friends list that disagree with me practically every day and I appreciate having them here to keep my head from going too far up my own ass. Sometimes it's stuck pretty far up there, but I do my best to remove it when I discover it's been lodged.
I'm still allowing comments from everyone and that's unlikely to change simply because there are a lot of cool people out there who don't have LJ accounts who still want to comment here. They're welcome and always will be, :). I'm just going to be more judicious about unscreening comments from those who comment anonymously to tell me I'm made of fail in one way or another.
tl;dr: If you comment here and you're not on my friends list, I will unscreen your comment at my own discretion and there may not be a visible pattern as to which ones get through. I would like to allow serious discussion here, especially discussion that forces me to broaden my worldview, but if I don't feel that you are respecting me as a person I'll leave the comment screened and/or lock the post faster than you can say 'censorship'.
