I Am an Idiot - Online Reputation
I had a wonderful moment the other day when a person cared enough to let me know that someone had classified me as an idiot. I can't thank the person directly as they emailed me anonymously. I'm hoping they see my thanks here. I appreciate that they cared enough to take the time to contact me. Here is the email. TO: nancyw-at-fullcirc.com
Of course I went to look at the link. My blog had been tagged with the label "idiot." I noticed that I was in good company. I knew and respected some of the other "idiots." Hm, maybe being an idiot is good in this strange cyberworld we live in.
SUBJECT: Website Inquiry
VISITOR_NAME: anonymous tipster
VISITOR_EMAIL_ADDRESS:
MESSAGE: Thought you should know that http://del.icio.us/maciej/idiot is actively spreading negative gossip about you and your company -- you can look at the link above. He has published a link to your company under the topic "idiot" which is read by hundreds if not thousands of people. His name is Maciej Ceglowski and he should know better than to behave this way! You should contact mailto:joshua-delicious@burri.to who is the admin of the del.icio.us site to complain about this person's slandering of your company and your professional reputation.
I quickly decided that not only was I not going to complain to the website owner, but that I wasn't worried about it at all. Maciej is free to classify me as an idiot. That's one of the risks of blogging and having some sort of public online identity. So be it.
I thought a bit more an wondered, what made this person think I was an idiot and would he be interested in a dialog about it -- maybe there is something here to learn?
I recounted the story to a few other friends who offered to classify themselves as idiots as well, to keep me company and show solidarity. (I am blessed with wonderful friends.)
Thank you anonymous tipster, for caring enough to write. There will be people who agree with us, appreciate us, and others who will disagree. All I can say is it is simple to slap on a label. It is much harder to really find out if I am an idiot after all.
Welcome to the world of online reputations!
posted by Nancy White at 5:09 PM
3 Comments:
"Idiot" was born as a convenience tag for posting things that I thought were inane, and which I wanted to come back and rant about at some later time. I started using it without thinking for a moment about how it would come across to the people it linked to, and if I had known it would get such public attention, I might have been less sloppy with my taxonomy.
Your own site, for example, doesn't really belong in the same category as a Nova Spivack - it's not the product of complete intellectual failure, it's just boostery and blog-obsessed in a way representative of a class of things that bug me. 'Idiot' was a convenient place to put it under until I had enough material for that category to differentiate into its constituent parts. But of course my private little bookmark collection was also open to public view.
I'm bemused now to find the anonymous tipster accusing me of slander and 'actively spreading' negative gossip. Bookmarking is a pretty passive (or passive-aggressive) way of doing it, and del.icio.us inhabits an interesting grey area that should inspire any number of weblog posts about the nature of online reputation, some of which I hope to read and bookmark under perjorative tags. So keep those eyes peeled, tipster!
Good luck and happy blogging,
Maciej Ceglowski (www.idlewords.com)
Or "idiot" could be a troll's ploy to call attention to a web site.
Maciej, thanks for stopping by to post a comment. I learned a lot, which for me is the bottom line for blogging. If I can't learn something, it isn't worth the time.
You helped me remember how I categorize things on my bookmarks, Furl list, and bloglines RSS reader. I presume some of my category name would not be appreciated by the people represented in the "buckets." But the labels are not constructed for external meaning, they are my internal labels with very different meanings.
On places like de.licio.us - where sharing our buckets is a socially constructed experience - my categories may hold little to no value. Or express very different value than I intended. You are right - tools like de.licio.us offer us a whole other playground for understanding (or messing with?) online identity. You helped me remember that. I am now using public "buckets" in a slightly different frame of mind. Thank you.
As for blog obsession (guilty as charged - that's what this started out as, an experiment on blogging and reporting on it along the way) and boostery (yup, it could be perceived that way): fair game. Totally. (I find it harder for me personally to critique without taking into account the social fabric within which I am operating. Thus I tend to have a softer hand.) Maybe I should be under the "wussy" tag. (written with a smile on my face!)
And for tipster, I still think it is nice to care in the digital world. We all carry different values, which is a good thing. It causes us friction and pain at times, but if you care enough to live your values, it's worth it.
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