Quantcast

5 Good Reasons To Never Diss Another Individual Online

by Paul MacPherson aka paulmacp on April 15, 2010

in Social Media

(166/365) U smell of wee...It’s easy to sit behind a keyboard and insult or diss individuals when engaging in a online debate.  Some seem to think, that it adds value to their side of the argument or opinion when they insult or belittle an individual they are disagreeing with, within the blogosphere (tweet, comment or blog post). Some would say calling out or dissing individuals is an important part of our democratic society (freedom of speech), the right to disagree with one another as individuals or groups of people. The trick is in doing it in a fair, balanced way by describing the facts to back up your claim, and not just be a personal attack.

My personal perspective on calling out individuals in my blog or other social-media contact points

  1. Naming anyone usually doesn’t add that much more value to the conversation. Meaning, the Blog post, tweet or comment, usually works just as well in terms of presenting thoughts and insights without being derogatory to anyone as a person.
  2. Some people diss individuals for personal retribution, to have their issue resolved. I believe those people are using the community at large for personal gain and that’s not why I follow anyone.
  3. I don’t do it because you never know in life who you might wind up working with. I’ve heard many people say, “I wouldn’t want to work with/for that person anyway!”, but people switch jobs… Imagine dicing one individual and then they you find out they head up a company that is your biggest client (or your employers biggest client). You never know if your contract/job might come up for review when that person realizes who you are.
  4. You never know when you’ll need a favor and who that person is connected to. Remember, not everyone feels the way you do about life. Even if you’re not trying to be confrontational or disparaging, the person you are calling out might take it that way. In a world where we’re all connected, it’s hard to know how far/deep your criticism might run and through who it might come back to haunt you (see this post on the 6 degrees of separation and social networking).

But, here’s the biggest reason for not dissing individuals

  1. I believe it keeps people who are on the fence about blogging and social-media from engaging. More often than not, they see this kind of action as very “juvenile”. If we want this channel of communication to be powerful and have merit, it is my belief that we have to raise the level of the conversation to be above bickering, name calling and finger-pointing.

It’s your call. It’s your reputation.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Sarah G…

Related posts:

  1. 10 Reasons Why Having A Blog Matters More Than Ever I have been stating indirectly that the social-media and social-search...

Tagged as: blogging, ethics, eticut, Social Media

Are we connected yet?
  • I believe there tends to be a lot less insulting talk when people use their real name on two fronts. If you use your real name, and the other person is not, why are you arguing with someone who does not exist?

    If both people are using real names, the odds are that one of the two will realize that it makes no sense to insult and will attempt to defuse the rhetoric.
  • I agree with you 100%, people take greater liberties with insults when they hide behind the cloak of anonymity.
  • I think you fifth point could be a post unto itself.

    That said, I also think you left out something: Adding content to the Web is all about adding or creating value. "Dissing" someone is rarely, if ever, valuable and so it just comes across as noise and blathering. The effect is that the person doing the "dissing" comes across looking like an idiot while the diss-ee may end up being sympathized with.

    Good post.
  • I think I may just take your advice and make the fifth point a post unto itself in the very near future. Thanks for the feedback.
  • @DJ and Scott

    I wish I could say my motivation for this post was more altruistic. On one of the social networks I frequent my signal to noise ratio has been leaning to much toward the noise and not enough toward the signal. think I start out having a point, then get lost in the noise I create around it myself. I have no one to blame (diss) but myself. This recent post is an attempt to remind myself, that I should know better, and try and refocus my own efforts to add something positive to the conversation and reduce the noise in my signal to noise ratio.
  • I think you make a very good point. I try very hard to stay positive in my blog. My plan is to only name individuals when I have something complimentary to say, and even then judiciously. I might use the blog to disagree with a public official, but I would aim to do so constructively and remain respectful. Nice post.
  • Good post and topic Paul....not really a topic you see discussed that much online. I recently saw a huge dissing campaign taking place on a blog topic....I was taken back because one of the individuals involved was one of the biggest and recognizable blog authors around. Not really the image you want to leave in people heads. It's one thing to have a discussion, but who want to watch an all out war between two keyboard jockeys!
blog comments powered by Disqus

Previous post:

Next post: