Fuck politeness, yo!  This shit’s going to keep.  It.  Real.

Woops, I mean …

There once was a time when I was a blogging amateur, this once is no more.  I am now properly enmeshed into this process of publicly propositioning my weird-crazy for the world to peruse, a blogging professional.  I mean, I have spent an entire three months lazily swimming through blogs that have tickled my fancy swank, written almost 100 posts, and bought a customised template to showcase the relatively bizarre patterns of thought, forming, mutating, collapsing and repeating within the confines of a skull that has, for the most part, caused my physical being chronic, garbled grievance.

And so, now that I have adequately familiarised myself with this cyber-world of verbose abstraction known as blogging, I would like to have my say on …

DEN. DEN. DEN.

Commending Etiquette

Here is my critique on the world of commenting etiquette, as it is commonly known, at least through my perception, here at WordPress.

First and foremost, make sure that your comment is polite and considerate.  An impolite/offensive comment won’t help you to build an audience. 

Fuck that!

What does that even mean?  I’m sure that, at some stage or another, my words have been construed offensively or as being charged with impoliteness, when in reality I meant them as a compliment.  Who decides this?  Intentions do not = reception.  And regardless of this slippery slope that is communication, I reckon, write whatever you want.  You want to tell me to go and fuck myself, be my guest, honey badger don’t give a shit!

Ensure that your comment is related to the post.

Hmm, okay.  I can try and do that.  But my actions, thoughts and writings are usually governed by a fantastical whim, often leading me down tangent lane.  The comments are therefore, both and at once, related to the post, and not at all related to the post.  And again, how loosely or tightly my comments are tied to the post by the blogger’s perception of them is not a feat I’ve any control over.

Oh well.

Don’t explicitly self-promote your blog.  If you’ve set up your blog properly, it will provide a link back to your work; keep your comment about the post, and the post only.

No, that’s bullshit, don’t listen to this piece of advice.

If you want to provide a link to your work in the comments section, by all means do so.  I, for one, encourage it.  You want to know why?

Why Rob?

Well, because it means that I’m able to filter out the people who I probably wouldn’t want to have cyber-conversations with.  Your commenting is in and of itself, at least partially, evidence that you’re trying to build an audience.  I get that already.  If that’s the sole reason you’re commenting, and so you feel disposed to make this apparent, then please do so.  It will indelibly make it known that we probably shouldn’t be cyber-friends.  I’d, in all honesty, appreciate that foresight.

Contain your comment.  Make sure that it’s not that long; if you feel it relates to something you’ve already written on, sum up your thoughts in a couple of sentences and then maybe provide a link to your post to start a discussion.

Umm, what if I like to pee in other people’s houses?  And what if they actually enjoy my wistful streams of urination in their abodes?

And doesn’t this clash with the aforementioned rule of etiquette, don’t shamelessly link back to your own work?

Whatever.

Be sincere when you comment. 

This is an oxy-moron.

How can one sincerely be sincere when one’s doing so because they’ve been told that it is proper to do so?

And further to that; who the fuck is really that sincere anyway?

Maybe the reason that we’re all so insincere is because we’re pressured into being sincere by people who are quite blindly unaware to what true sincerity means, and so claim that one must necessarily be sincere?

I sincerely think so.

Make sure that you read the post in full, and if you’re inclined to disagree in part with what you’ve read, ensure to also offer some positive feedback.  Honey catches more bees than vinegar.

Umm, doesn’t this clash with the guidance, be sincere?

Stop telling me what to do?! It’s fucking confusing.

Just be yourself. 

What if I’m a genuinely insincere, disagreeable, shamelessly self-promoting asshole, who likes to rant on irrelevant topics, loquaciously, in spaces that have been provided by the commenting sections of other bloggers?  What if that’s just who I am?  What do I do then?

Fuck!

Final words:

Social politeness is a load of hooey!

It means nothing.  Manners, proper etiquette and meeting social expectations, in whatever form, is a convoluted concoction contrived by overly sensitive people who adore order and prescient knowledge of what should, in an idealistic world, follow accordingly.

And hey, this is coming from someone who utterly despises confrontation in any form, and who can be wounded for days by the most trivial comment.

Point is, if you don’t like what someone’s commented, then fucking delete it.  It’s very simple.  You have a lot of control over your blog.

Instead of telling others how to behave when in your cyber-house, why not just consider that you have the ability to edit, subvert or simply ignore this behaviour?  But hey, if telling others what to do is your thing, whatever, Trevor.


Humans-are-bloggers.  And blogging is fun.  That’s all.  

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