I’ve been trying hard not to comment about the ridiculous Skankgate business.  But today my resolve was broken by the final straw.

Here’s the background as I understand it.  Some anonymous blogger calls some model a skank (among many other things), the alleged skank considers suing said anonymous blogger and subpoenas Google (who hosted said blogger’s blog for free) for said blogger’s particulars.  Google notifies said anonymous blogger of the subpoena to allow said anonymous blogger to challenge the subpoena, which said anonymous blogger does and fails.  Under court order, Google provides said anonymous blogger’s name to the alleged skank.

Then, rather than defend the alleged skank’s claim, either under some truth as a defense theory, by playing the much misunderstood First Amendment card or otherwise, the no-longer anonymous blogger decides to sue Google for $15 million.

Are you kidding me?

Read carefully.  It’s not the person who was called a skank who’s suing Google.  It’s the person who said it, somehow claiming that Google should have ignored the subpoena in the name of preserving that person’s ability to say seemingly anything behind a self-granted cloak of anonymity.  It’s like the schoolyard bully suing a teacher for pulling him off a weakling.  In other words, it’s backwards.  And illogical.

Some seem to be confusing anonymity with immunity.  Some might say this suit is some combination of offense as a good defense, a bad aim and a money grab.

My issue is not the truth or untruth of what was said.  Who cares- there are laws to deal with that.  My issue is with someone who wants to make all sorts of allegations about someone else, but is unwilling to stand up and say “yeah, I said it.”  And it’s not like this situation involved a single skank reference amid scads of other content and opinion.  According to a  report at Wired, the no-longer anonymous blogger:

published only five posts, all devoted to attacking [the alleged skank], a 37-year-old who has reportedly modeled for Australian Vogue, Georgio Armani and Versace. In the posts, [the alleged skank] was called a “psychotic, lying, whoring . . . skank” and an “old hag,” and was depicted as a desperate “fortysomething” who was past her prime.

As far as I’m concerned, if you don’t want to take credit for it, then don’t cross any legal lines when you crap all over someone.  I have the same respect for anonymous bloggers who attack people as I do for the those who write on bathroom walls.  That sort of thing makes Twitter seem like the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Robert X. Cringely notes in a PCWorld article that “if anonymous speech on the Internet is no longer anonymous, some people will simply stop speaking.” To which I and the rest of the sane world say “so freaking what?”  The mathematical value of some anonymous, tossed-up Blogger blog or some scathing anonymous blog comment is very close to zero.

And, again, no one is saying you can’t be anonymous- the hair trigger First Amendment police tend to get confused about this.  Even the generally reliable Techdirt seems to be misinterpreting the right of free speech as an absolute right to be anonymous, which it is not (though Techdirt did come down on the side of logic with respect to the suit against Google).  If you want to write anonymously, no one can or should stop you, and the very legitimate protection of anonymous speech requires scrutiny before removing the cloak of anonymity.  But if you defame someone, you can’t simply hide behind your self-granted anonymity.  To argue otherwise is to turn the law- and common sense- on its head.

Privacy expert  Dan Solove says:

The Internet shouldn’t mean that people have unbridled freedom to do things they wouldn’t do before without repercussions. We have an unprecedented power to broadcast something to the entire world. Never before in history have you had the power to do this without the aid of the mainstream media.

An interesting footnote.  Upon learning of the no-longer anonymous blogger’s identity, the alleged skank says, “I just dialed her up. I said no more lawyers, it’s OK. I forgive you.”

I say if you want to talk trash about people, cowboy up and say it to their face.

Empathetic – showing empathy or ready comprehension of others’ states.
– The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

I’ve been thinking some about perspective as it relates to blogging and the blogosphere, in the wake of my Guy Kawasaki post and the resulting discussion in the comments.

One of the things that sometimes discourages me about the blogosphere is the way bloggers talk at, and not to, each other.  It sometimes seems like a room full of people talking to themselves in louder and louder voices.  Once in a while a few of them randomly happen to be talking about the same thing and what appears to be a conversation transpires.  Before long, however, the wave of faux conversation recedes back into the ocean of intrapersonal communication.

It’s an inefficient process, at best.  Driven, at least in part, by the egocentric perspective of thousands of generally remote and often anonymous bloggers.  In this case, when I say egocentric I am using the “viewed or perceived from one’s own mind as a center” definition, and not necessarily the “caring only about oneself” definition.

Upon reflection, I have been as guilty of this as (almost) anyone.  I blog because I like to write, and because I want to participate in conversations about topics that interest me.  It’s easy to assume that others share – or should share- my purposes.  When I try unsuccessfully to engage others in conversation, it’s easy to assume that my failure results from their unfairness, or the fact that I am on the outside of the mythical gate.  To get too caught up in that is to undertake the fool’s errand of trying to change those you don’t know, you can’t reach, and who don’t want to be changed.  And who as Hugh MacLeod points out in a comment here, may not need to change.

This epiphany occurred to me as I drove under a bridge on the way home from work the other day and saw a lone man on the bridge holding up a one-word sign that said “Impeach.”  In wondering what he really hoped to achieve by standing out there with that sign, I began to wonder what I hoped to achieve by holding up a post that says “Talk to Me” while the Scobles, Rubels, Wilsons, etc. hurry by on their way home.

Later that same day, I saw a post by Om Malik about some items he hoped to buy at some point.  I started thinking about Om.  Not in an egocentric “I wish he linked here more” way, but just about him as a person.  I thought about how many of his posts I have read and enjoyed over the years.  I thought about the fact that blogging is his job, and about how stressful jobs can be.  I thought about the fact that I have never once clicked on an online ad on any blog.  Then I bought him a CD at Amazon and had it shipped it to him semi-anonymously.  Just because I felt the need to show my appreciation.  Just because it felt right and good.

It felt even better when I saw that it brightened his day.  Whatever Om got out of it, I promise you I got more.

Today, I saw this post by Ayelet over at Blonde 2.0.  She talks about the borders between our personal and private lives, and the beauty of presenting ourselves to the world- as we are, without the need to treat our online presence as some sort of living billboard.  In other words, to be people.  And to treat each other as people.  Not avatars, and not as some dehumanized screen name.  I like everything she said in that post, but this passage really summed it up for me:

[D]on’t be afraid to show the world who you are. Not just the you during office hours, but the whole you. If a company doesn’t want to hire you based on that, you’re probably better off without them.

Amen.

My favorite blogs are the ones who show the entire person.  Blogs like Rob Barron‘s, that have made me cry at times and smile at other times.  Like OmegaMom‘s, which makes me wish that her daughter and Delaney could be friends.  Like John Watson, who finds philosophy in conversations with his kids.  Lynnster, whose musical education closely mirrors mine.  The list goes on and on- and it will.

People from my work life have discovered my blog.  I knew it would happen when I started doing it.  It’s always a little scary to put yourself out there.  But as Ayelet says, we are who we are, and there is freedom and efficiency in just letting down your guard and trusting yourself.  Who we really are is the best resume of all.  Other than a few well-meaning jokes about my little online journal, I have never once had a negative reaction to my blog.  And I have had more than a few people tell me that it makes them more comfortable to see who I am away from work.

We can’t change the blogosphere, and we can’t make others embrace our blogging philosophy.  What we can do is try to see things from other points of view.

That’s what I’m going to do.

Rather than try to recreate the world, how about just apply the real world rules of common sense and courtesy to the blogosphere.  Everyone interacts with other people all day every day in the real world, and we don’t need Tim O’Reilly to rewrite the Golden Rule for us.

If someone is an asshole, do not empower them- ignore them.  As a general rule, you cannot rehabilitate assholes.  You can only disempower them, thereby taking away the incentive to become one.

This new code of conduct business seems to me to be more about an influence grab than it is about trying to make some self-important egghead sing kumbaya.  Not to mention the fact that since it is utterly unenforceable, the only ones who will truly embrace it are those who would be nice anyway.

Seth pretty much nailed it.  So did Mike Arrington (who I feel compelled to note has been known to club others wildly on his blog).

I’m not sure where this new movement is headed, but I don’t think it’s going to instantly make the blogosphere a kinder, gentler place for most of us.

Just act like you would in the real world and things will work themselves out.  We don’t need to recreate the wheel every time someone has a flat tire.

One of my longtime themes has been that some bloggers have an exaggerated view of the role and power of the blogosphere.  When you’re the 40 pound lemur in the little cage at the end of the primate hut, you sometimes start thinking you’re the 900 lb. gorilla.

Shelley Powers has a great post today about impulse control, or the lack of it, in the blogosphere.

I don’t know anything about Dave Winer’s latest legal battle, but I do know that if thinks calling out a judge on the internet is going to help his case, he is sadly mistaken.  Don’t get me wrong, if some company ripped me off for a few hundred bucks, I’d post about it the way Dave did when he got tangled up with Travelocity.  But when the stakes get really high, the marginal utility of bashing someone on a blog decreases.  Hire one of those planes to fly around the courthouse trailing a sign calling out the judge and see how that works out for you.

I don’t know anything about the Maine blogger brouhaha either, but this quote from Shelley’s post is spot on:

Where there are passionate sides to an argument, truth usually lies somewhere between-both repelled and attracted to the play of emotions.  That, however, doesn’t stop webloggers, who follow the scent of fresh blood in the blogosea, moving impulsively, en masse, in support of the weblogger-in-need of the week, rarely letting a little thing like truth interfere in our righteous cause.

We have seen this happen over and over in the blogosphere- the same way it happens in office spats and neighborhood disputes.  Clans line up according to clan relationships.  Clan relationships are developed to get or retain a clan advantage.  Only in coffee bars and neighborhoods, the clans have to face either other.  The blogosphere can be anonymous.  Like driving, blogging can release the inner asshole.

Stated another way, blogging can cause a complete loss of impulse control.

And even if teens of bloggers unite in opposition to a larger, richer and more powerful opponent, the alliance is doomed to failure if the effort takes time or prolonged effort.  Why?  Because bloggers generally have the attention span of a gnat and, as Shelley says:

[Only] the tiniest fraction of webloggers might have some influence in this regard. Most of us don’t, and never will. Of those who do, most use such for their own personal interests, rarely for any greater good.

Even the lady Shelley links to who maintains a site against the Maine blogger says she is writing a book about the “sorry tale.”

Trying to make a buck is deeply ingrained in American culture.  There’s no point in trying to undo what Wall Street, TV shows and Hollywood have built.

But trying to make blogging something bigger, more important and more powerful than it is, does a disservice to those who appreciate blogging for what it is by implying that what it is isn’t good enough.

Impulse control is lost as anonymity increases and as a group of people begin to believe their own bullshit.  It happens in the real world and it happens in the blogosphere.

All we can do is keep reminding the lemurs that there are gorillas out there, even if we can’t see them.

Nick Carr has a fantastic post today on the tension between bloggers and traditional print media.  He discusses in great detail some of problems and perspectives that make it difficult for bloggers and traditional journalists to appreciate and trust each other.

Read his post, and think about what he is saying.  Regardless of which side of the illusory fence you think you’re on, no one can deny the truth of this:

When it comes to conflicts of interest, or other questions of journalistic ethics, the proper attitude that we bloggers should take toward our counterparts in the traditional press is not arrogance but humility.

To do otherwise is to claim a position of superiority that is ludicrous on its face.  Blogs have many advantages over traditional print media.  Let’s not obfuscate them with illusions of grandeur.

If we, as bloggers, want to be taken seriously, then we have to act seriously.  We cannot ignore the standards that “evolved over the years in order to temper the freedoms that could lead, and sometimes did lead, to the abuse of the public trust” just because we have the freedom to post whatever we want whenever we want.

As the traditional press moves online (I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper in years), it will bring those standards along.  At that point, the issue becomes not hard copy verses on-screen, or even now verses tomorrow morning.  It becomes reliable and self-governed verses unreliable and chaotic.

With freedom comes responsibility, and with progress come challenges.

Some way, somehow, bloggers need to develop a code of ethics that legitimizes blogging as a reliable, and conflict free, information medium.

Once that happens, the real-time and distributed nature of blogging will turn what is now perceived by many as a disadvantage into a tremendous advantage.

I hope this happens sooner rather than later.

Tags: blogging, blogs, citizen journalism

Stowe notes that Jason Calacanis didn’t ask him for his opinion on the ridiculous pay per post business and then gives his opinion anyway.  Good for Stowe, as he has a long track record of (mostly) finding the right side of an argument.

Jason didn’t ask me either, but like Stowe, I’m always interested in adding my two cents, and here it is.  All you need to know about this pay per post nonsense.

When someone is engaging you solely in the hopes of making money, then the entire basis for a meaningful exchange of information is nullified.  No one trusts people who are trying to sell them something, and no one should.  There is an irreconcilable conflict of motives.

When you walk into a store, you, in effect, are inviting the people who work there to try to sell you something.

But when your so-called friends try to leverage off of your friendship to sell you tupperware or Mary Kay or whatever, you have not invited that selling opportunity.

When you fire up your email and some dumbass somewhere has sent you spam, you have not invited that selling opportunity.

When a blogger you read posts about something for pay, you have not invited that selling opportunity.  It’s even worse when the payment is not diclosed.

This pay per post business is the worst of both worlds.  It’s using a preexisting relationship to make money off of you, without even telling you.

Even the friend hawking tupperware has to eventually show his hand.  It seems that the pay per post folks can hide their motives- thereby disguising commerce as journalism.

So ask yourself…

So what do you want the blogosphere to be, a place for the open exchange of ideas and information where no one is secretly trying to make money off of you, or an online free-for-all where anonymous people are paid to write bullshit they may or may not believe in exchange for a buck?