If someone doesn’t agree with me, I will sometimes (usually) respond. I always do so respectfully and tactfully. I don’t believe that calling people names or berating them does anything to further my views or theirs.
Last night, however, I drew a line in the sand. No one can question that line;
especially the person who decided to cross it. I guess I, like a lot of bloggers, had always believed there were certain unwritten rules about blog etiquette. No one really talked about them, but everyone seemed to follow them; with few exceptions. One of those hard and fast rules is, “DON’T MESS WITH THE KIDS!” Sure, you can say the kids are adorable or precious (as they are), you can tell your story, you can give advice if it’s solicited, and you can voice a genuine concern. I find that last one is violated a lot as people who don’t believe in homeschooling bash the socializing skills of the children who do. That’s happened on my own blog, and I didn’t delete those comments. Why? They were not directed square in the face AT my children. Those comments were fairly general &/or it was obvious that the poster was just mad and ranting.
Last night, I had someone post a completely unnecessary…and mean…comment on this post. Of all of my posts to comment, they chose THAT one. Whatever. It became quickly apparent that the post content was really irrelevant to them. They also left a comment on this post which I have not deleted. I think, for some reason, that they were just in the mood to rant. The problem with that?
It doesn’t matter how much you want to rant…you DO NOT RANT DIRECTLY AT A BLOGGER’S CHILD! And on a completely benign, harmless post no less!
Honestly, it floored me. What disturbed me even more was that this person was local. It didn’t take me long to narrow it down to being one of 2 or 3 people. There was no one else it could have been. We suspected based on recent events that perhaps it was probably one of those people. This morning, after looking at things in a fresh light…and seeing this person visit my blog again, I began to realize it wasn’t who we had thought it was. It was worse. It was one of the other people. It wasn’t just someone we knew personally, but someone we still had a relationship with.
My husband was really hurt by this. He wasn’t going to forgive this man until God reminded him that unforgiveness only hurts us. My husband was ready to take action to ensure he’d never have to see this man’s face again…at great expense to our family.
Me? I was shocked. I couldn’t understand how or why this person said what they did. Perhaps they were trying to make a harmless comment. It wasn’t threatening. Still, it was just plain MEAN! And who does that to a 6yr old? Plus, the comment was so wildly inaccurate it’s somewhat humorous.
Like I said in one of my comments, I have absolutely no problems if you post again. However, I will NOT tolerate comments like that about my children; no matter how harmless you may intend them to be.
I probably won’t stop using CAPS to emphasize points. That’s just me. That’s how I write. I’m a passionate person in real life, and when I write. It just comes out. If you aren’t happy with that, then read another blog. If you can deal with it, then I’d welcome you to continue reading.
Because you know who you are just as much as we do, you also know that your relationship with my husband will continue. It will likely never be what it was before. By admitting who you are (even though we already know) and apologizing you will go a long way towards helping to restore that relationship. You have been forgiven, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still apologize if you’d like. I know from experience that just because someone has forgiven another person doesn’t mean that person they’ve forgiven recognizes they were wrong &/or wants to change.
If you’d like to never speak about this again, that’s fine as well. As long as nothing of this manner ever appears on my blog again, then I’ll not speak another word of it. And the pieces? They weren’t hard to put together. Analyzing your blog stats is more than just getting an IP address.
I don’t want someone to get the wrong idea and think I’m stalking my readers. Far from it. If you think that you aren’t being tracked every time you visit a website, you are sorely mistaken. MOST bloggers have trackers on their blogs. Most, like me, usually just use those numbers to see how many have visited their blog and to analyze which blogs are read the most. Those are the 2 features I use daily on my tracker. I have absolutely no need to look at the IP address for anyone visiting my blog unless there is a problem. Plus, I don’t have the time to go into that much detail every day. Still, because of anonymous posters like yourself, that is a necessity. We need to protect ourselves so that if problems persist we CAN go to the appropriate authorities to take action if necessary. I know few bloggers who have ever had to actually utilize their tracker for such a purpose.
In short? Just play nice. You can say pretty much whatever you want about me and I could care less. You can rail all day long about my politics, my beliefs, my thoughts, or my blogs. The worst you’ll get is a lengthy comment response from me; which you may not even read.
If you cuss I will alter your post to delete the cuss words. (Again…haven’t ever had to do that.) If you are hateful about or to my children, your post will be deleted. There’s no excuse for that. NONE!I’m sorry to my other readers for this temporary blog interruption. It’s the first time a blog post has ever rattled me enough to steal some of my time. I probably shouldn’t have let it do that. Now that it’s happened, though, I’ll know better how to handle it should it ever happen again. Honestly, this would have been next to nothing had it been someone we didn’t know. But when it’s someone in your backyard (not literally), then it’s a whole other story.
-Me
No comments:
Post a Comment