All of You, Stop It, Right NOW!

I would like to take a moment here to register my extreme pissed-offedness at a class of people who are rapidly joining ex-husbands and spammers in my "Hell's Too Good For 'Em" club:

...the people who are causing some of my favorite bloggers to stop blogging, change identities, move their blogs, or moderate their writing. I'm going to call these disruptive snerts "BlogFuckers".

In the past couple of months:

Firefly's blog got read by her ex, and she stopped blogging for a while, though she's back now and I'm glad she didn't let the asshelmet stop her.

YogaGrl has some real-life jerk making her self-conscious enough to "hold back".

Christine almost shut her blog down for good, thanks to some idiot(s) commenting on HER blog. She came back too, but she had to turn off anonymous comments.

Last week WorkingNob pretty much deactivated his blog, and the blog written by his girlfriend Incndnz and the blog the two of them co-wrote have been completely de-listed, thanks to some jackasses at his job who "stumbled" on Nob's blog and--RATHER than be honest about it--waited for the inevitable day when he mentioned one of them in a post.

And today I went to read Hyde's blog and found a change-of-address, e-mail-me-for-access notice. Dunno what happened there, but I can halfway guess.

I understand that blogs, like all else in this world, are transient, ephemeral things. And I respect the reasons that cause people to quit blogging: outside time constraints, maybe, or boredom with the medium, or any of the other billion things that might suddenly be more interesting or urgent. Sometimes people get too busy living life to write about it anymore--that's great for them!!!

What I can't understand are the people who feel the need to take it upon themselves to curtail another person's expression. I've read all the articles about "blogs can bite"--that was largely the reason I chose to use a pseudonym--but all these people blogged anonymously as well. I've been very careful not to reveal the existence of a blog to anyone who might then take it upon themselves to go looking for it (I told the Brit I had one, and if HE finds it I'm taking it as a sign) or to provide concrete, identifiable details that could reveal my identity to anyone I know who might find it. But I consider this MY space; I say what I want to say here, and sometimes I push the envelope a little. I have written things that I would prefer not to have the subject read (everything about my non-Brit ex-coworkers, for example, and most of the stuff about my family) but if they DID read those things, if they DID get offended by the things I'd written, I have to say I'd frame it as their problem, not so much mine. Not that I wouldn't feel bad for having offended them--I don't want to offend anyone I know personally, though I'm perfectly happy to piss off total strangers--but here's the thing:

If I were reading a blog and suddenly began to suspect that it belonged to someone I knew in real life, I would probably be tempted to read further to see if I was mentioned. That's human nature, I think (although I may just be an incurable narcissist). But if this person was writing under a pseudonym, I think I would also stop myself long enough to wonder if they WANTED me to read it. (After all--if they're not writing under their real name, and they never mentioned it to me directly, maybe it's not something they want to share.) And if, while reading this hypothetical blog, I chose not to err on the side of privacy and I continued reading, and discovered that I was mentioned negatively...I'd be pissed, sure, but I think I'd realize that -I- was in the wrong here, not the writer. (It would be different if the writer was a close friend--I'd wonder then why they hadn't talked to me directly, instead of talking badly about me in a blog. Friends are different from co-workers, casual acquaintances, etc.)

I've said this to more than one of my friends, and it holds true in this situation as well: If you don't want to know the answer, it's best not to ask the question. If you find identifiers of someone you know in a blog you haven't specifically been invited to read, you can stop reading. If you don't stop, you--not the writer!--become responsible for your reactions to what you read.

People who do keep reading, IMHO, forfeit their right to react to what they read--or at least, their right to react to it in a way that compromises the writer's willingness or ability to express their opinions. Picking a fight with them, or creating a "hater" blog, or leaving rude or threatening anonymous comments (these assholes almost ALWAYS hide behind "anonymous", don't they?), or telling details of the writer's real life which they haven't shared on the blog, or expressing their displeasure on their blog in ANY way--well, that right there is the definition of a BlogFucker.

And if you ask me, Hell's too good for 'em.