written by Diane Corriette
Blog Success Membership Manager
Professional bloggers and those serious about earning a full time living as a blogger will be faced with one of their biggest challenges that will make or break them. The critic. Alive and well in the blogesphere the critic will have an opinion on everything and anything you write about and they won’t be afraid to share it. What makes the online critic feel even more powerful is the fact that they are of the opinion that they can say anything they like because they are not in front of you.
Rude, obnoxious and full of themselves these brave souls hunt out blog posts that they have a strong opinion on just so they can let the world know what they think about it. They won’t mince their words, they will definitely not care a damn about how their comments leave you feeling and they will feel it is their “God given duty” to say whatever the hell they want to without consequence. Of course there is a huge consequence because their comment gets saved in the world wide web. That comment remains for years in a system that might eventually be their downfall if someone can use it against them. But most of them don’t care because they won’t be climbing far up the social ladder anyway.
When you become successful as a blogger and people see you at events they will have this expectation that you MUST help them because as your reader you “owe them” – your success is down to them.
Is that true? Perhaps to some degree it is because a blog is only as good as the people who read it but does that give anyone the right to demand anything. Not in my opinion it doesn’t!
Case in point is Michael Arrington from Tech Crunch who has been pulled, pushed and even spat at. Michael in his post Some Things Need To Change said
Luckily my tolerance level for verbal abuse has risen proportionately to our growth, so I can handle most of the verbal abuse thrown our way
and he’s not the only a-list blogger who has come under attack. Jason Calacanis on his blog post We Live In Public And The End Of Empathy wrote this
One of the reasons I stopped blogging was because the dozen negative comments under every blog post I wrote started wearing me down. I’d write for an hour and the immediate reward was four people, under 12 different accounts, slamming me. Some were people I had fired, others were mentally unstable folks but, in many cases, they were normal people suffering fromIAS.
And of course it’s not just on blogs, virtual communities are filled with this kind of unaccpetable behavior that could never take place within a business or on the street and yet on the web it’s accepted as par for course.
“At some point, all humanity in an online community is lost, and the goal becomes to inflict as much psychological suffering as possible on another person.” Source Calacanis.com
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not Pollyanna. I don’t believe that everything in the garden has to be rosy all the time. There are millions of us online and every now and again we are going to “fight”. If anyone trys to do anything using my name, that might harm my reputation or anything that I consider “shady” using my name I will call them on it. But it would never be a personal attack. I wouldn’t result to name calling or using profanity but I will make a statement that will ensure they stop doing whatever it is they are doing!
I run a social network with close to 7,000 members and I absolutely refuse to accept personal attacks. If name calling starts I will email the person, I will comment that it is unacceptable or I will just outright delete the post!!! Authoritarian and over the top??? Perhaps, but I know the damage that personal attacks can do and I just won’t allow it. I also believe you can have an intelligent disagreement or debate without resulting to name calling and personal attacks.
The trouble with the written word is it is a one way form of communication. If I write something that you misinterpret then suddenly I am worthy of being attacked. I have had people who reply to a comment I have made without really reading through what I said to understand it. Of course in their head they are right and they are going to make it their business to tell me that I am wrong and they are right so they spend time crafting a less than worthy reply that they post to help themselves feel strong and powerful. They are right and I am wrong and now the whole internet will know!
How macho 
Are there bloggers who talk rubbish? Yes there are. Are there bloggers who add content they have no business writing. Definitely. Is there as much junk out there in the blogesperhic world as there is great content… you bet…. but does that mean that anyone has the right to publicly put down, personally attack or even spit in the face of another human being for it. No it doesn’t.
If you are on the path towards becoming a professional blogger my advice is to build yourself a sunny disposition and some thick skin on the way up because once you reach the top it will definitely come in handy.
Always remember that personal attacks come from a place of unworthiness from the attacker. It is nothing to do with you personally and everything to do with them so whatever they throw at you allow it to bounce off, wish them well and focus on running your business. Not always easy to do but the alternative is feelig hurt, getting angry and frustrated yourself and in extreme cases when it happens often giving up.
And when you give up you have let them win.
Bio
Diane Corriette is Membership Manager of BlogSuccess and as a Personal Growth Coach focuses on the mindset of a blogger. She also writes at Inspirational Guidance her blog that provides personal growth resources and information for women.