No, this doesn't refer to my work or home life. I am incredibly responsible in both. This refers to blogging.
Sometimes I get a comment on a post that says:
You should really be more responsible with your content.
Basically, the person disagrees with something I wrote and feels that it sends the wrong message, and I should be "more responsible" in what I post.
The thing is, this is my personal blog. What I write on it is my personal opinion. Nobody hired me to write this. I'm not getting a salary. I'm not any kind of respected authority figure. And there are only a few thousand readers, which is absolutely tiny in the scheme of the internet.
So really, I think I have the right to say whatever I want on here (short of urging violence) without having to worry about being "responsible."
Not to mention the fact that when someone says that, the post in question is usually something completely benign.
I was going to write a comment telling you to stop complaining about people who complain about your blog ("haters gonna hate" and all that, and I feel like you've been writing a few posts like this lately). Then I realized that the whole point of your post was to express frustration at the people telling you what to write in your blog, because it's your personal blog. You write what you want. Telling you to stop writing about complainers of your writing topics would be... complaining about your writing topics.
ReplyDeleteProceed.
It would certainly be ironic if you had done that.
DeleteAnyone who blogs gets annoyed by a certain number of their comments. It's probably healthier and easier to write a quick blog post complaining about it than to engage in an argument with the commentor. The way weekly whines work is that I schedule them, sometimes weeks or months in advance, so this post was actually a reflection of the onslaught of remarks I got about that in response to my DO Discrimination post.
Like when you blogged about feeding your children McDonalds (you're a doctor for goodness sakes!) or about your weight ("bragging" about being thin sets a bad example for other women!) or when you talked about not enjoying primary care (there are too few primary care doctors already! You're going to discourage people from going into primary care!). Oh wait, that last one was me.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the weight and the McDonalds thing were other examples. I think someone said that I was "irresponsible" to even mention that my weight was on the borderline low end of normal. Really? Like someone is going to hear me mention my weight in an offhand way and develop an eating disorder?
ReplyDeletecarry on, fizzy
ReplyDeletewe get it, it's your blog, but you whine too much
ReplyDeleteWhy on earth would you waste your time reading a blog with a weekly segment called "weekly whine" if it bothers you so much?
Deleteit doesn't bother me. i'm just sayin' you do.
Deletesome people can like it.
some people can be annoyed by it.
it doesn't bother me either way.
From my point of view it is both odd and funny to see people getting mad at your posts. Here you are, sharing a bit of your life and experience with the public and "wham!", someone feels like they should spend their next half an hour or so writing a rant to publicly express their utter disagreement with whatever you did. It is as if whatever they read was assumed as a direct offense AT them.
ReplyDeleteI have honestly no idea whether this is a cultural thing or not, but from where I come from, people don't feel the "need" to step up and speak their mind to someone they don't even know... at least if nobody's being directly confronted. If we like, we follow; if we don't, we stop watching it. If it is as simple as this, why do people fail to get it?
But that's one of the minor downsides about free sharing of information offered by the internet: you are connected with everybody, but not everybody shares your point of view and your own opinion is suddenly under heavy scrutiny by someone who you would never like or trust. It gets worse when they can comment while anonymous.
I like your blog, Fizzy, and I have been following it ever since I was in med school. I may every now and then disagree on some things you post, but I refrain myself from doing a negative comment because I think that goes against the spirit of this blog. I hope you keep doing a good job and never get tired from those nasty internet trolls out there ;)
Well, my argument (in this post) is with people who tell me I must provide "responsible content" in my blog. I have no such responsibility, in my opinion. There's plenty on the internet that's far, far worse than this blog.
DeleteHey Fizzy,
ReplyDeleteI love your blog.
Do not pander to the small minds of the world.
-SCRN
It's like if you went to a restaurant and a patron behind you heard you make the choice of fries over vegetables and then proceeded to berate you for making an unhealthy decision that could influence the minds of nearby eaters.
ReplyDeleteGTFO of my personal booth. And make them curly fries.
Actually, Tree, I have had that happen to me. "You're fat, you shouldn't be eating that!" [Gee, thanks Mr Wizard, nobody ever told me I was fat before. Here's your Nobel Prize in Geniusdom. Now piss off while I eat what I want for one day out of the month, you busybody troll.]
ReplyDelete*cough* Ahem. Sorry.
The thing is, for some reason society has moved to a model where people believe it's perfectly acceptable to tell other people how to live their lives and to judge them for their decisions. Just look at the mass media -- websites and magazines deride people (especially, but not just, women) for not having some ideal of a perfect body [never mind that so many publicity images are airbrushed within an inch of hell], and then we have "reality tv" to try to convince us that the 1% of humanity is how the rest of the universe should live.
FEH.
That's true, I don't respect you at all!
ReplyDeletehaha.