I come up with blog post ideas all the time. I’ll start to write them, and sometimes finish them but then I decide not to publish it because then I think, “Well what if this offends certain people?” or “What if I piss them off? No I better not publish it.” Then another thought runs through my head going, “Who cares? It’s my blog, they can deal with it.” I start to feel conflicted because I don’t don’t want to offend people who read my blog, especially friends and family who I care about, but I also don’t want to suppress my thoughts and censor what I write either. So I’ll usually just try to think of another idea, but it’s sometimes hard for me to find neutral topics to post about.
Readers, what should I do? Should I publish these posts anyway or should I be careful of what I write to avoid offending other readers?
My thought is, if you wouldn’t want some of your friends or your boss, or your pastor reading something, than don’t print it. If it is just controversial such as political or religious, go for it as long as you are willing to receive the comments that might come.
Thanks for the advice!
My philosophy as a writer has always been that if you’re getting hate mail/hateful comments, you’re writing something with enough passion to elicit those remarks. I say always write what you have to say, regardless of who will or won’t agree with it.
There’s only been a couple of posts I’ve made to elicit hate mail. I mean, I know I’m not a hateful person. I don’t discriminate against people. I try to stay diplomatic in my opinions. It’s just weird because I often flip flop between suppressing what I want to say and just going screw it and say it anyway, even though it often starts fires.
Think about this: How many people in your life actually censor themselves to spare your feelings? Probably not very many. So why should you have to suppress your thoughts for them?
Like you said, it’s your blog. No one is forced to come here. You aren’t shoving your opinions down people’s throat. This space is yours. They make a decision to come here and if they don’t like something you have to say, then they can just get over it and never come back. Why would you want to cater to people who can’t handle a different perspective anyway. I like blogs that offer a different perspective because it helps me to learn.
That’s true. I think I also fear sounding egotistical like my opinions mean everything, and I understand that’s how a lot of people perceive bloggers who write about what they think on various topics. Most of my life I have always been such a quiet girl, and this is the best way I feel like I can express myself instead of verbally to people I know. That just feels kind of awkward to me, at this point anyway.
Guess what my opinion is:D
Look, I grew up not giving a d’mned what people thought about ME. But I WAS concerned about what people thought about how I treated them. So I have always treated people well. But I found out something along the way, even when you do what people ask you to do, they will accuse you of not having done so. Or worse, they will claim that they never asked you to do such and such.
Something else I learned. I can do something and one group will be offended and another not. Then I can do the exact opposite and the groups will be flipped. Look at my photo, half bald, half long hair. To this day I still get people, asking through people, asking through people, how can I be a professional (tech guy) with hair like that running a professional organization (Cleveland Web Meetup). Some folks simply don’t come to my events because of my hairstyle IN THE PHOTO or delay coming. Others have told me if my hair were short and “IBM” cut, they would not have come.
So trying to model my behavior, or haircuts or opinion or or or or…. to not offend is simply impossible.
The only thing you might consider is not stating something that would get you fired, because like it or not you might have to play that game.
I definitely see where you are coming from. To state an opinion and not offend a single soul is impossible. I have every intention on staying away from saying things that would get me fired or raise an eyebrow to my pageant directors.
For me, I tend to weigh two questions:
1) How important is it that I share my thoughts/ideas/opinions on this topic? (Not just how strongly I hold them, but how much do I actively want to share?)
2) How important is it that I not hurt or offend [insert X people] by sharing these views?
And the balance point is different for every topic.
When I wrote, say, about not feeling I should have acted differently on the night I was raped, I felt very strongly not just that I was right, but also that what I was saying needed to be said. I also made an educated prediction about who I might offend with my thoughts and why. And that time, based on those predictions, I decided I really did not care that much: what I was writing was more important.
On the flip side, there are a lot of people who are close to me who have relationships with food and weight that impact me on an emotional level. I’d like to write about them, but I refrain from doing so because I’m afraid of hurting people who I can picture very personally. In those cases, I would rather leave my thoughts unsaid.
Ultimately, I think it comes down to — You can/should write whatever you want, so long as you’re prepared to accept the consequences. For me, sometimes I am, and sometimes I’m not. Either is fine: what’s more important is thinking things through in advance.
Thank you for your response. This is all helping so much!
I would like to hear how you have decided to handle your posts. I am considering starting a blog and I think I have a lot of entertaining topic/obervations/things to touch upon, but I also don’t want to cast a dark light on anyone I know or care about. I don’t even want to cast a dark light on people I don’t know or don’t care about. My observations would never be mean spirited, but more comic. I realize when someone else is the center of humorous observation they have a hard time wrapping around the poster’s humor. Not sure what to do myself.
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