The Scrolls

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There is no rule that says you have to be be nice on the Internet

I wish I could say that I’m not afraid to be the dissenting voice but it’s not entirely true. I will speak up when I feel I should but I fear.. retribution. This is largely due to the fact that my ex-husband avoided conflict in any form, even when avoidance was actually more of a problem than whatever the conflict would be but it’s also due to certain online communities refusing to ever mutter a discouraging word. Coincidentally, I was the voice of dissent on someone else’s blog today and she deleted the post and comment. I have strong feelings about avoiding criticism and conflict and I shall list them here because a list is the only way this post won’t be ridiculously confusing.

•  There is no rule that says you have to be nice on the Internet. While this means you can get away with being a douchebag, it also means that people are going to occasionally treat you like crap. We’ve all experienced it and, no, it’s not fun but that’s the reality of it.
• But just because you can be a dick without getting your ass pounded or are anonymous on the Internet doesn’t mean you have to be. You can still be a decent person when it calls for.
• People won’t always heed the previous so you should surround yourself with people who are supportive.
• But you should avoid only communicating with those who put a positive spin on everything because honestly is necessary. It may be uncomfortable but dissent and criticism promote growth, whether it’s improving upon a product after a less than thrilled review, becoming a bigger person, redesigning a website, learning to communicate better with your partner or working to better your customer service. Without conflict, no matter the degree, we’d all be stuck in the same place forever.
• And avoiding conflict may put off that momentary discomfort but will make you miserable all the time. It will also ruin your relationships. Fact. Marriages where the couple fall into the pursuer-withdrawer roles usually end within 5 years. Mine did. Ha!
• No one wants to be the voice of dissent, either. Even when I know I’m right, I’m worried about what people will say, if I’ll get attacked because I don’t agree or if someone might delete my comments. We’re all people, here and I’m pretty sure we’re strong enough to get through this.
• With that said, sometimes you have to speak up even when no one else is. It can be difficult to be the first person to voice your concerns but it shows strength of character. Honesty is a valuable trait. Perhaps I’m honest to the fault when I play the Devil’s advocate but no one would ever fault me for being a liar.
• But you can be honest without being a dick. Use tact.
• When you experience conflict or criticism, there’s no need to throw in the towel. In fact, feel free to argue, reasonably, if you believe yourself to be in the right. But one bit of adversity is not enough to shut down a website, end a relationship, or even delete a post or comment. Accept conflict because it shows strength of character.
• Respond like an adult and learn to recognize when you cannot so that you can step back from the fray, temporarily, to regroup. Rather than avoiding conflict, allow yourself to calm down and reflect upon whether there is any truth to what is being said. Return to the conversation after and then respond, if it benefits you to do so.

Look at that cat in the Santa hat

The last page on our 2011 calendar features a kitty in a Santa hat. All the other pages feature other types of cats, too. This means that November is over and while I did not sign up for NaBloPoMo, I tried to make an effort to post more, across all my blogs. I was pretty successful and even though I didn’t post nearly close to every day on Her Realm, I posted a lot more. It felt good.

I’ve been mulling over this post in my head for a while because.. I don’t know if anyone will read it and I don’t know if it will leave an impression on those who do. But it’s important to me and I still rely on the validation of others just enough that the idea that it will go un-noticed and that’s kind of precisely what this post is about.

You see, I started this blog as a cry for help. I was angry and hurting and frustrated and confused and I was never taught how to express that and I had a hard time reaching out to those who cared about me the most, when they were even around. I desperately wanted someone to see that. I needed someone to understand that I was not okay and I wished that my blog would make someone force through my walls, break them down to get to me. And, as much as I wanted someone to reach out, I still strangely veiled my feelings. I was passive aggressive, vague and cryptic about my feelings. I put up another wall even as I tried to reach out.

I purposefully sent my friends and family to my blog and when people would ask how I was, I would send them here. When I look back at some of my archives, I am so sad that anyone could ever feel that way. Reading those words brings up the feelings and I hate that they ever exist. No one should ever feel that way but I did.

If I read long enough, though, I will see a change. I will see happiness emerge here and there. I see the struggles of a long term relationship but I see the happiness I felt at having found my one. I’ll see the frustration at growing up, moving away from the people I love. I’ll see the emergence of maturity and understanding. Skip ahead a couple years and I see the acceptance of my divorce and the sheer will power it took to finally change some of those awful habits and attitudes that made me unhappy for so long. There’s a period of time where I feel like I only tried to express positivity and there’s a lot of talk about the progress I made. There’s pride. And hope.

It has been difficult to keep up that positivity this year. There’s been new stresses, many of which related to finances, work and sharing a home with another person. There’s also been a lot of things I’ve crossed off the bucket list I didn’t even know I had and I think the more recent entries express the things I’ve gotten to do and the people I’ve been able to spend time with. I’ve unlearned bad habits and tried to connect more fully with those I care about, without a crutch. I’ve become more open about myself, some might argue too open about some things. I’m not constantly looking over my shoulder, afraid that people will discover something unseemly about me.

The more recent entries have been more balanced, I think. There’s been some serious, personal topics but there’s been humor and pictures of cats and I’ve felt comfortable enough to be more opinionated than I have been (although, not as opinionated as I once was).

So this blog did not do what I expected it to. In the end, I’ve had to be far more direct to connect with those around me and, sadly, I spent far too long in a dark place. But this blog has helped, slowly. It connected me with other people, new people. It helped me to feel not quite so alone and it gave me a place to vent, to joke, to think and to express myself where one otherwise did not exist. Finally, it has come to a place that I will not be ashamed or sad or frustrated to look back upon in the future.

It’s funny how life gives us what we need when we’re too busy working about what we think we want.

NaBloPoMo

November is national blog posting month/national novel writing month. I didn’t sign up for either. Can you imagine me writing a novel? But, for whatever reason, I have been writing and blogging a whole lot more anyway. So even though I’m not participating, I’ve been trying to blog every day on all my blogs. Technically, I’ve been successful even though it’s a cheating sort of successful.

It’s interesting, though. Normally, I try to post every three days on each of my blogs. I throw in extra posts, like paid posts on Reviews by Cole, in between. I don’t really count them as entries, I guess. I do this because, as a blog reader, I become inundated pretty quickly. I find is so difficult to follow blogs that update every day, let along several times per day.

But the search engines? Those are an entirely different story. You see, websites that update several times per day really do rank higher. It’s especially noticeably with Alexa. When I’m posting like a madwoman, my rank increases (drops?) like whoa. But that’s crazy. I mean, who really has so much to say that they can put out two or three quality blog posts per day? Chances are, if you’re that person, I have to wade through a lot of crap in order to find something I find interesting. Sorry.

So here’s just one post for the day. Thank you very mucy.

Ranty Thursday (Working on a new name)

Yesterday I posted a picture of a pony. It was facetious in several ways.

First, when I asked for suggestions of what sort of pictures I should put on this blog, Damita suggested ponies. I actually ignored her suggestion for some cat pictures. Sorry! Forgive me?

Second, I was irritated at a trend I’ve noticed lately regarding Wordless Wednesday posts. Here’s a hint: they aren’t wordless. This meme is simple. If you participate, you post one or more photos and nothing else, save for maybe a link to your Flickr or what-have-you. It’s about expressing yourself or simply showing something beautiful without words. I’m a wordy bitchy but I appreciate the sentiment, you know?

So how dense must a person be to post a “Wordless Wednesday” post and fill it with words. If the pictures don’t do all the explaining, then save them for another post and skip the meme. Someone I follow on Twitter keeps posting for this meme but doing it completely wrong and, in my opinion, cheapening it.

I usually don’t participate because I’m not a photographer. I don’t have a great camera or take amazing pictures, even if you all love Phantom. But that’s kind of the point. My photos are almost all of cats and I know people don’t want to see that all the time. I also don’t want to use others’ photos, even though I think that’s permissible. I’m not sure who started Wordless Wednesday so I can’t say.

But even if I only participated in it and used others’ photos, I’d still be participating in a way that is in line with the purpose. If your Wordless Wednesday has a word count, you’re doing it wrong.

WTF Facebook

Lately, I’ve noticed some new behavior from Facebook. Specifically, when I go to post a link as my status or onto a group, it’s not generating the description and title for the specific link but is only showing the URL and description for the domain. When I post links to this site, it doesn’t even show my blog title, just the URL. When I post a URL to a single post on Reviews by Cole, it shows the domain URL — rather than the post itself — and the description I’ve entered into my SEO plugin. But it works just fine with another blog.

Originally, I thought I may have different settings for each blog on my SEO plugin so I’ve updated them to be identical but only the review blog differed anyway. This blog should still show up normally. And, in fact, when I look at the website properties in Firefox, the titles and descriptions are accurate. Facebook also isn’t bringing up all the thumbnails that it should for the review blog. So whatever system Facebook is using is either having trouble finding this information or ignoring it all together and, if that’s the case, why?

I’ve posted links before that worked normally so I don’t understand the change. Boo.

When a blog is not a blog

There are two definite types of blogs that I read. There’s the “Real people” blogs. Chances are, if you’re here and especially if we comment back and forth, you’re a “real people.” Congratulations. You tend to blog about your real life like I do mine here. No ulterior movies there. We both probably value commenting back and forth as a way to reach new visitors and you probably know a little bit about me.

Then there’s the.. other blogs. Those other blogs are like my other blog, actually. The focus is more business like. The goal is more specific. It’s all reviews and giveaways and coupons. There’s a lot of mommy blogs that I spend time on because mommies and me seem to like to save money. My review blog is sort of a fish out of water because I have no children. Granted, I think I started it before the mommy blog explosion but I’m often overlooked because my lack of parenthood. I chug along anyway.

And I’ve noticed that a blog is not a blog and things are done quite differently in those two different worlds. Real people try to respond to every single comment with thoughtful comments of their own. Real people use comments to form friendships. It’s not the easiest way but it’s the way things were done.

This doesn’t happen on the other blogs. Partly because comments are frequently a form of giveaway entry so there’s no freakin’ way a blog own can visitor hundreds of blogs and return all those comments and, because those comments aren’t heartfelt to begin with, who would want to? There’s a whole sense of anonymity and almost disconnectedness. It’s much easier to get lost in the crowd as both a commentor and blogger and it seems more difficult to foster relationships and friendships apart from working/business ones.

It’s interesting, too, that some of my readers on Reviews by Cole aren’t bloggers. It makes sense. Reviews appeal to consumers in general, not just those who have their own blog. So there may not be a blog to comment on in the first place. When you look at the giveaway participants, many have flowed over from sweepstakes communities and the same logic applies.

It makes sense, follows its own sort of logic but it sure would be nice if a blog were a blog and the same rules applied always.

I Forget

This week’s theme for WeBlogIt on Daydreamz is habits.. and it’s one that I didn’t want to write about in an obvious way and I thought of a really good topic and proceeded to forget about it. And that is my bad habit and because of it, I am writing an obvious post.

You see, I frequently think of things I want to write about. Things that are interesting or humourous or through provoking. I frequently think of these things at a time when I am unable to write them down, such as before bed or while I am working on something else (like my articles). I do it for blog posts, forums posts and emails. In fact, as I am typing this, I am reminded of a layout idea that I had–quite a detailed one at that!

So i’m drawing that on paper as I write this here blog.

The problem is, I don’t have a memo system. Sometimes I think I need a voice recorder, like Cruella DeVille in the 101 Dalmations cartoon that Toon Disney used to air. Something simple and quick because sometimes it just doesn’t pay to turn on a light, turn on a computer, search for a pen and paper and write it all down.

Those are flimsy excuses, I know. Still, I make no memo and sometimes these awesome ideas slip into the abyss–lost forever. Usually, I remember them. Not usually in a timely manner. This is what happened during the pets week theme of WeBlogIt. I love my pets and you know how important that are to me, yet I didn’t write about them. And I kind of lost the drive to do so after I forgot, then remembered again, and the week passed by. I get kind of bummed when I forget stuff and even if I remember again, it’s not the same.

So, this shall suffice as my habits post. Forgetting is a bad habit but so, too, is being lame when I remember. I should just post anyway, right?