There is an ongoing thread on HackerNews talking about why Blogging is not as popular as it used to and asks why people no longer blog for the hell of it. The post itself is interesting but one of the comments on the page caught my eye and prompted this post:
I to some extent agree. A blog can be an attack surface for someone wishing to doxx you, a point of failure for potential employers, or perhaps an opportunity to open yourself up to criticism for the local equivalent of your knitting community when they’re having a purity spiral.
You could, of course, keep to the driest topics, the most tamed opinions, nothing spicier than an animal cracker, but for some this self-censorship of “your most honest, primitive, real thoughts” (to quote Naked Lunch) is tantamount to a sin, just one step up from lying to your diary.
If you are trying to keep it safe, are you truly communicating what is on your mind, or are you pasteurizing your output, homogenizing it, adding a touch of gamma radiation and a run through the freeze-drier, until the final result is palatable pablum, certainly inoffensive and low-residue, but ultimately unworth either consumption or production?
Blogging seems to have shifted on the risk/reward scale and people have responded as such. A pity.
I see that a lot of people agree with this idea that the only way people can blog without being ‘cancelled’ or being called out is to post bland ‘non-controversial’ posts instead of “your most honest, primitive, real thoughts”. In my experience most of the people who are complaining that they can’t write what they want without getting called out or getting into trouble are folks who want to post racist/misogynist/mean posts with impunity and are upset that they are being called out on their posts and are facing the consequence of their actions. In the past week I remember reading about 2 people who got fired because they posted racist crap on the web and got called out for it. These are some of the examples people quote when talking about not being able to post what they think.
Over the past 19 years, I have posted on a lot of topics that can be deemed controversial such as my thoughts on Vaccination, gender equality, race, misogyny etc etc and so far not much splash back has occurred. I have gotten a few folks you have reached out and yelled at me for stuff I posted that they didn’t like but overall that has been rare. (I do have the advantage of being a guy and not someone who is famous so I have managed to avoid the troll farms/targeted harassment campaigns).
I am not saying that I am not careful about what I post online especially when I am being sarcastic or being a smartass, as John Scalzi famously said “Failure mode of Clever is Asshole”, so I try to ensure I stay in the clever part of the equation :). I do run some of my posts past Jani when I think I need a second opinion on how they can be interpreted but that doesn’t mean that I censure what I say. I just ensure that posts come across as clear as possible while remaining non-inflammatory/rude/non-obnoxious. There have been times when I failed in this and there will be times I will fail in the future as well. I just need to ensure that I own up to any mistakes or issues caused by my posts, apologize and ensure that they are not repeated.
What some people call cancel culture, is basically people having to deal with the consequences of their actions and they don’t like that much…
– Suramya