Shared Responsibilities

One of the many reasons people come to the blogosphere to read is the raw unfiltered content available, however, this author edited environment is often a two edged sword.

We, as readers, want the authors to be creative and entertaining, serving up information and instruction in the form of cutting edge, witty posts that tickle our fancy so that we can consider ourselves clever by linking to them in our own posts, hoping our readers will think us creative and entertaining for sharing with them. (“I love reading your blog. You always link to the coolest articles.”)

We readers are such a fickle lot. We cry in unison, “You’re so creative. We want more posts like that really cute one that made you famous.” But let that blogger write a couple of money posts, a meme or, God forbid, go to far with a post and see how quickly we leave derogatory comments, offer “constructive criticism” and hit the delete button on the feed reader.


The past several days have seen this scenario played out on what has become one of my favorite blogs. A creative and instructive metaphor post about blogging caught fire around the blogosphere. This was followed up by a creative and instructive metaphor post about blogging that, while not as cute, kept the train rolling. These posts were followed a few days later by a creative and instructive metaphor post about blogging and the crowd booed because she went too far.

“enough of the metaphors already. so u were lucky with the “three little pigs”. that was a creative post and worth reading. but now you’re just being ridiculous. u have gone way toooooo far with this comparing crap. please stop. and right when i thought u were almost kool.”

“…right now while your on a roll just create some drafts. Then create some more serious posts and then sprinkle in the creative metaphor posts as needed.”

The author deftly turned this into another instructive post on blogging and moved on.

I don’t write this post as a defense of Bloggrrl. She doesn’t need it. I’m simply asking if maybe we don’t expect too much sometimes. While feedback is an integral part of the blog environment and expressing your opinion is expected, I think sometimes we should consider our reactions as much as we want the blog authors to consider their posts.

Now, flame away.