Not too long ago, I had a chance to talk to someone about the general topic of the power of the blog to change lives, and it really has me thinking.
I’ve been a Metblogger now for a quite a while. I also have my own blog and a blog about restaurants I contribute to. My general feeling on blogging is that it’s kind of a way to share my thoughts with the world. The thoughts are sometimes poorly formed and poorly conceived, imperfect in a way that reflects me, an imperfect person. And, until that recent conversation, I really didn’t see the difficulty with that.
But there’s a power to the blog, and the blogger, that needs to be understood and, ultimately, respected by the person wielding it. I write about a lot of stuff. Sports, government, restaurants and what-not. Lots of what-not, in fact. And, for some reason, people give me some credence.
These people don’t know me. They don’t have any real reason to trust me. They’ve never sized me up in a personal conversation, or really pressed me hard on where my thoughts come from. That’s bad for them, because if you don’t examine the source that you’re taking these things away from, you may accept ideas that are, on the whole, unacceptable. That’s bad for me, because I end up not fully thinking through what I’m putting out there for public consumption, and I end up sharing thoughts that really don’t merit being shared.
A lot of people call B.S. on me. But not enough of them. And that hurts everyone.
I don’t know what I’m trying to say to you, other than in reading our Metblog posts, consider the source. Don’t take anything we say as authoritative in any way, unless we offer a clear and compelling reason to do so. And even then, question what you read.
For my part, I’m reconsidering what it means to be a blogger, and what thoughts I should (and shouldn’t) share in the process. We bloggers, all of us, need to understand that we aren’t in a vaccuum, and as we throw our words out into the ether, they always land somewhere, sometimes lightly, and sometimes with a thud. For those who’ve been hurt by rocks hurled from my keyboard, I am sorry.
In the end, remember that I, as a blogger, don’t really have any greater authority than you. Take what I say with a grain of salt. And, in exchange, I’ll not to throw anything heavier than one.