On blogging

I take severe issue with the tone of this piece by the NYT on blogging at work.

Look, boys and girls. You don't have an a priori right to blog, and it's painfully naive and infuriatingly arrogant of you to believe you do. Companies and organizations have PR people for a reason, and that reason is that public perception has a huge, huge effect on business, not to mention any legal liabilities you might incur. Airing a company's dirty laundry, while perhaps entertaining and cathartic for you and even good for potential consumers, is ostensibly _not_ in the company's interest. So why the fuck do you expect them to go along with it happily? No one is so valuable to a company so as to overshadow its legal and public relations efforts. _No one_. And while you might try to argue that, well, transparency in a company's operations is beneficial to society so, therefore, we should protect "dish" bloggers socially, legally, etc., all that will happen is that companies will much more carefully screen who they hire so as to make sure they get positive bloggers.

And guess what? That means suddenly everyone is evaluated in terms of their PR ability, because suddenly every employee is potentially a press contact. Trust me...you don't want that. You will suddenly find yourself _very_ carefully scrutinized. That would be a corporate world that curtailed privacy and personal freedom in a way you can't even imagine.

Point being, you would be doing more damage than good. So shut up, you arrogant, self-centered pricks. The next person who says something like, "It's like, 'This is who I am. Consequences are what they are. I'll go work for someone who doesn't have a problem with it.' " gets tarred, feathered, and set on fire. And then submerged in lemon juice. Then set on fire again, just because.

Which brings me to another thing, one that I don't remember whether I have mentioned before: it peeves me how bloody narcissistic and back-stabbing most blogging is. For me, it's quintessentially assholic to say something about somebody else in a blog that you wouldn't say to their face. In fact, it's even worse than talking about them behind their back because, instead of your comments being limited to a select few people, they are being broadcast across the entire internet for anyone and everyone to see. It's shitty. Moreover, a lot of blogging really is just journalling. And if you want to journal, keep a journal. There's no reason for it to be public. What kind of self-centered asshole thinks that the world wants to read about your feelings about your wardrobe? Or your breakfast?

What about this blog? Well, I hold out the hope that it is, in fact, amusing and entertaining and not at the expense of others or by means simply of gossip. Y'all seem to keep reading it. But probably that's more due to boredom than the quality of the posts here. :)

Oh, and as for the people who were surprised when their employers got upset with their blogging about internal company matters, well, frankly, how retarded are you? What kind of oblivious fucktard doesn't consider that? After all, it's no different than telling all of your friends a secret somebody shared with you in confidence.

"Oh, you didn't want me to tell everyone at work that it burns when you pee?? Well, shit, why didn't you tell me that?"