Tim Flight

Looks like I might need a category for “blog psychology”. Once upon a time, I had a blog, “blog 1″. All of my posts were signed as my nickname and people addressed me in comments as “dear nickname”. Life was good and there were many regulars who posted comments to my bog. I came to respect one reader (I’ll call him “Bob”) who frequently posted thoughtful, friendly comments. I liked Bob.

Then there was another blog, “blog 2″. Here I wasn’t the author, but occasionally posted comments and when I did I posted using my firstname. Lots of people posted comments on this blog so getting to know each commenter wasn’t plausible, especially since it wasn’t one of my own blogs.

One of my comments on blog 2 was responded to with criticism from another commenter, also named Bob. Bob phrased his response in a way I doubt he would have said directly to me. I started to dislike Bob as a knee-jerk reaction to his comments.

Then suddenly, I had a realization…. Bob from blog 1 and Bob from blog 2 was the same Bob.

I have not fully absorbed this realization yet so I’m not 100% sure what I’ll take away from it. Perhaps it is just that first impressions are extremely critical and can set a strong tone. Perhaps it is realizing that just because I find someone on a blog that I dislike, I am only seeing a tiny part of who they are and perhaps they would be a best buddy on another blog…. even if that seems like a stretch at the time.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 9th, 2006 at 12:30 pm and is filed under My Works. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.