So a couple of recent incidents have gotten me pondering the nature of the public web. I don't really go out of my way to be mean to people, but I am not always the nicest when I respond to public entries. While a recent incident is fresher, I'm going to use the to-do with Josh a few months ago as an example. He publicly posted a request for reasons why people hadn't come to his DJ night at the Mercury. I responded, in a somewhat mocking but truthful manner. He didn't take it well, and I am now no longer on his friends list. I use this as an example merely to illustrate the type of incident, not to request backing from people as to whether I was right or wrong.
I don't like eggshells. I don't like walking on them or avoiding them or whatever. I'll often step on people's toes and hurt feelings simply because I don't like taking a huge amount of effort to find the least intrusive way of saying something.
I put myself out there every day. There's not much about me that I am not willing to write about in this journal, which I have chosen to make mostly public. Sometimes I am surprised by the lack of people who don't hold back in response. I expect that I'll get both positive and negative responses. In my case, I'm not easily bothered by people's opinions of me generally. In fact, I wish more people let me have it with both barrels. My greatest learning experience ever was when a man I respected greatly cut me off from speaking in a group and very publicly corrected me.
In fact, I don't mind that people have taken offense on occasion. I don't mean that as I don't care what they think.
I mean that if someone feels the need to get pissy about my pissyness, so to speak, they should do so, and I'll still listen. The pissyness is just one more aspect of communication.
I do wonder though, do people really expect to be public with their lives, and get only perfect validation and empathy? Or to have people they don't know refrain from commenting on a public place? Seems kind of short-sighted to me, in a number of respects. One for just missing the nature of the medium. Second because validation and empathy are only a very narrow band in the spectrum and good information comes in many different ways.
And are people keeping the gloves on with me? And why? People holding back with me offends me almost as much as letting loose seems to offend others. I'm missing a ton of perspective if peopel indeed are doing this with me.
FYI, if you do want to let loose and are scared that I'll retaliate, I don't have LJ set to log IPs. Post anonymously if you want. Feel free to respond with a reasoned reponse, or just chew my ass anonymously. Or whatever, it's all good in this case.