When Things Get Personal, Part Two
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Oct 18, 2011
Last year I wrote a post titled When Things Get Personal On Blogs. That post was about a tete-a-tete I got into with some folks over the topic of Akismet and spam and such. It got a lot more responses than you’ll see if you visit the post because there were a lot of attack comments that came here based on that post that I simple deleted. I knew they were coming, and I knew I was going to delete them. I didn’t need that on my blog, I didn’t trust the people I knew were going to send them (whom I mention in the post), and, as I’ve always said, this is my space, I pay for it, and I get to decide what stays and what goes. Some might call it censorship; personally I don’t care. You behave in someone else’s space or deal with the consequences.
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I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as the last couple of months have been somewhat interesting around here. I’ve had some things going on in my personal life that made me not be as diligent as I should have been. I feel as though I allowed certain behavior to go unchecked around here, and I don’t like myself for that. It’s not behavior that I exhibited either; that’s probably the worst part.
Not that I’ve always been nice here. For the most part I am, but I will go after someone that goes after a friend of mine or someone that’s done something ice for me or others. Loyalty is one of my big things; I think I’ve said that before.
Last September I wrote a different kind of post titled De-Stressing Life By Not Commenting. On that post I indicated that when I felt I couldn’t comment on something without getting into an emotional firefight that I just wasn’t going to do it anymore. As I said, some people strive on attack mode; I don’t. I don’t thrive at all on negativity; never have. I don’t expect everything to be Andy Griffith, but I do expect a certain amount of decorum.
And I expect that here. That’s why I feel so bad that I’ve allowed a few people to be attacked in some fashion here over the past couple of months. And none of it was constructive; it was personal, and that just shouldn’t have been allowed. And none of it was specifically directed to me until last week; that makes what I allowed to happen become even worse, because I should have nipped it in the bud much earlier.
I can guarantee this won’t be a problem in the future. From actually last week, but since I’m writing today I’ll say today, I will not allow any more personal attacks in comments on this blog, or any other blog I write. If I feel the comment is personal, whether it’s towards me or anyone else, it’s gone, plain and simple. If you want to personally attack someone, take it to a newspaper site since they don’t ever seem to want to censor anyone. Behave or be gone; no one wants to deal with that mess.
Why am I doing this? I want to encourage people to comment here, and I want it to be a safe haven. We can disagree with each other, but we’re going to treat each other with respect. I can’t change the world, but I can certainly change things here. I pay for this, and thus my rules. In a weird way I was inspired to finally write this post after reading a post by Marcus Sheridan titled The Lie that is Online Transparency and ‘Being True to Self’, where he talks about people that cuss a lot saying they’re just being true to themselves and how he believes they’re lying to themselves. So do I, and this has always been a no-curse-words zone, since I don’t cuss (and yes, I did just interchange ‘cuss’ and ‘curse’); never have, never will.
So, for those of you that may have found certain posts here with comments that might have put you off, please know that I apologize for that and know that you will never have to worry again. For those of you who had to deal with a personal attack in the last couple of months, that being John, Ken and Chris, I’m sorry I didn’t step in earlier. I’m not putting up with it against me; I’m certainly not ever going to put up with it against anyone else again.
That is, unless it’s nice; if someone makes a love connection make sure to invite me to the wedding, as I love wedding cake. 
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell
What Message Are You Trying To Project?
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Aug 13, 2010
A strange thing happened to my wife and I last Saturday.
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Some Saturday mornings, we decide to go to what’s known as the Regional Market of Central New York. People from all over central New York sell all sorts of things there like fruits and vegetables, candies and cakes, candles and perfumes, fish, clothes, foods, etc. My wife goes almost every Saturday. I’m kind of a part time guy; I invariably have a good time (when it’s warm weather), but you have to go early if you want to be close to everything, otherwise you could have a long walk coming.
This Saturday was going along like any other. I was saying hello to babies, being my naturally friendly self, while my wife was looking at produce that she and a friend were going to share later. This particular week there happened to be a Christian group booth in the middle of one of the display areas, and as we got there I got distracted by some honey roasted cashews on a table to my right. I’m not sure what my wife was doing, as she was slightly behind me, but I heard the man ask her if she would take a flyer he wanted to give her. She politely said no, and his response was “are you ready to die?”
Because I knew she wasn’t in danger I didn’t turn around, but kind of out loud I said “I’m thinking that’s not the best sales pitch I’ve ever heard.” The women in front of me heard it and laughed, and one of them turned around and gave me a high five. I accepted it, but I was thinking “what the heck was that all about?”
In the next display area we came to, a man was smiling and holding out his flyers. This time I said no thanks and walked on, but my wife decided to take his flyer. On the front was what you see in the image: Muslims for Peace. Later on, while sitting in the car while my wife went into a new hair salon to ask some questions, I pulled the flyer out and read through it, and found it somewhat illuminating.
No, I’m not about to go out and become a Muslim. However, I have to say that the two messages my wife and I got literally within minutes of each other were drastically striking and contrary. If my only experience ever with both Christianity and Islam had been these two men, you know which way my support would have gone. The way information was presented was way different, and even though I understand the message the Christian man wanted to convey to my wife, in a public forum with lots of other people around and one chance to make a good impression, he uttered a statement that could have been taken as a threat, but was definitely taken as one of strange intolerance for someone else’s position, all from deciding she didn’t want a flyer.
Lately here I’ve been talking about influence and social media marketing, but in the past on my other blog I’ve talked about consequences and perception. Giving people a reason to dislike you more because you said something wrong rather than stating an opinion someone else may or may not like is almost never worth it if you really care about getting business, making friends, etc. I’ve talked a lot about how social media can be your friend, but sometimes it can also hurt your online and offline business if your timing is bad and your words not quite correct. Of course, as I’ve always said, if you’re ready to deal with the consequences you can say anything you want.
Of course, I have no religion or faith, so I’m not going to be changing to anything any time soon. Still, if I were at Hogwarts I’d probably have given 50 points to some house and taken 50 points away from another. I wonder who ended up scoring better on the day once my wife and I left last Saturday.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Sunday Question – Should We Reward Egregiously Bad Behavior?
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 25, 2010
Two weeks ago I was having a brief yet interesting conversation with someone on Twitter. He asked if people enjoyed Mel Gibson movies less these days because of some of the bad behavior that’s been attributed to him. I said I can’t get myself to watch anything with him in it; the other guy believed people should separate the private person from the works that person has done.
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This post is based on that conversation. It’s a hard topic to think about because we all not only have different thoughts on it, but it depends on what we perceive as “egregious” at the time.
For instance, there were a lot of people who turned against Michael Jackson during his trial, though I wasn’t one of them. Many people had already decided his guilt because they didn’t like his personal behavior otherwise. I don’t think you judge the quality of someone’s work because you don’t like their personal behavior. After all, Robert Downey, Jr has been to jail and rehab, what, 20 times (okay, exaggerating a bit), but he’s on top of the world, puts out great stuff, and, well, he’s just the most likable guy. No harm to anyone but himself.
Then we have Mel Gibson. I’ve tried to go out of my way not to hear any of these tapes that supposedly have him calling his ex-girlfriend all sorts of names and saying a lot of intolerant and racist things, but unless you turn off your TV or radio it’s going to get through, and I did eventually hear one thing; man, it sounds like him. He sounds drunk as well, and based on his past behavior with the police, it seems to be a pattern. The difference here, at least to me, is that he’s projected himself to be this super-Christian, even building his own church, has 9 kids and projected himself as the ultimate family man. Talented or not, I feel like I was sucked in only to be let down.
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Of course he’s not the only one. I’m sure y’all remember Jeffrey Jones from many movies including Ferris Bueller, Amadeus & Beetlejuice, who’s now a convicted sex offender. Then there’s R Kelly, who luckily got off from his underage sex trial and immediately prompted this response from a radio DJ (and who can blame him; it was R Kelly’s house, and the guy in the video ‘in his house’ urinated on a little girl who may or may not have been 18; he also married Alliyah when she was 15, so there’s a pattern. But I digress…). And, whether or not you believe OJ did it, does that demean his being a super talented athlete, which also goes for Lawrence Taylor, Ty Cobb, and Pete Rose? Politicians get forgiven by the masses many times over (Robert Byrd and, being fair, I have to include Nelson Mandela here).
This isn’t a new subject, but the way. Richard Wagner wrote some incredible music, and I’m almost ashamed to say that I love a lot of it. That’s because he was an avowed bigot in his hatred of Jewish people, and never tried to hide it either. Even today, there are symphonies that won’t play any of his music because of it. And while we’re on it, are we ever going to forgive Chris Brown for beating up Rihanna? Does he deserve it, being a kid of sorts when he did it?
In this day of sex tapes and, because of 24/7 media slips of the tongue, how much should we tolerate and support and forgive? Does it matter whether it’s a violation of a person harming themselves or someone else? What say you? Are there people you’ve kind of forgiven or people you won’t forgive?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Is It Easy To Comment On Your Blog?
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jun 29, 2008
I just left a post on another blog. The blog required me to register first, then it sent me a password so I could fully register and add any pertinent information I wished to. It’s a WordPress blog, so I’m familiar with it.
Thing is, the blog has been in existence for almost 18 months, and there’s never been a comment. I would pretty much figure it’s because the blog owner makes one have to register first. I usually don’t register for blogs, but in this case I made an exception. I don’t usually like doing it for three reasons. One, it takes time away from my commenting; when I want to comment, I want to comment now, while I’m thinking about it. Two, it gives the blog owner a feeling that they can start sending me all sorts of email that I don’t want or need; I’ll visit the blog and possibly read or buy stuff when I want to. And three, you can’t unregister; I tried on this one blog and finally just fudged an email address, because the writer was inundating me needlessly with updates, then updates on the updates; enough already.
There are other blogs I’ve left messages on, only to receive an email asking me to click on it to prove that it’s me. It’s easy enough to do, but it leaves me wondering if I want to continue dealing with it long term; I’d rather you just read the comment and determine if you want it on your site or not. A couple of times my entry has never shown up on one of those sites anyway, which left me feeling like I wasted my time. And, if I feel like I’m wasting my time, you’re probably not going to get any love back in the form of links or even being added to the blogroll some day.
I never had it set up that people needed to register for my site (though some do anyway), but I realized fairly early on that I was going to have to add something to stop as much spam as was coming through. I first loaded Botcheck, which took care of a lot of stuff but not nearly enough. I then loaded Bad Behavior, but the same was occurring. Finally I added Askimet, which is supreme, and it catches virtually everything. On my business blog, I added a plugin that makes people put in a randomly generated number. I haven’t had to go that far with this one, as Askimet seems to be doing a great job on its own.
The main idea of your blog is to encourage others to comment; at least that’s usually the intention. You share your ideas, and you hope others will either validate your thoughts or offer something new. If you’re just writing for yourself, then that’s something entirely different; enjoy that. Some folks don’t have comments open at all; their choice. But if you’re going to do it, make it easy.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell
Black People Who Have Embarrassed Black America, Part Two
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Dec 26, 2007
I just finished reading this blog entry from a guy who calls himself HoustonNY titled Black People Who Have Embarrassed Black America, and I have to say he pretty much got it right on the head, though I will always defend Michael Jackson to the end; long history there.
However, he’s a relatively young man (okay, born in the 70′s, but still,…), and I think there’s more that has to be added to this list. Oh yeah, for those that don’t know it, I’m black myself, and I’ve been embarrassed by a lot of things that I keep to myself. But, well, it’s time; so,…
Isiah Thomas, for saying that it’s okay for black men to call black women the “B” word, but not for white people to call them that.
Kayne West, for being a punk because he thinks more about himself than others think about him.
Nas, for being immature to believe that naming his next album the “N” word is a good thing.
Ward Connerly, for thinking that the only way to make things balanced in the world is to make it harder for black people; how much can one man hate his own race (oh yeah, I keep forgetting about Clarence Thomas).
Onterrio Smith, for bringing the term “whizzinator” into the American lexicon.
Naomi Campbell and Foxy Brown, for not remembering that their rappers, nothing special, and that they don’t have the right to hit others and think they can get away with it. At least Li’l Kim was an adult about it all.
Bill Cosby, not for the message that he’s putting out now, but for how he’s doing it.
DMX, who can’t seem to understand that he not only can’t own any guns, but can’t take them with him to airports.
Troi Torain, the NYC DJ who said he wanted to kill another man’s wife and sexually molest his 4 year old while on the air, and the people who are bringing him back on the air.
Lawrence Phillips, a football player with lots of talent but no understanding that one can’t go around beating up women.
O.J. Simpson, who used up his Get Out Of Jail Card and still found his way back in; I guess he likes the food.
Marion Jones, for making us all believe you were just so much more talented than everyone else, smiling all the way to all those endorsements, then slamming us all on the back end. People want to slam Barry Bonds for alleged steroids use, but even if he did it, it wasn’t illegal in his sport; it was in yours.
The Playa’s Ball; I mean, an awards show for pimps?
Marcus Wesson, who killed 9 of his own family members, some of them born because of incest he caused.
Colin Ferguson, who shot 32 people on a train in New Jersey, saying he didn’t want to kill any of them while in New York in tribute to the black mayor at the time, David Dinkins
I think that’s enough; I’m depressing myself. Thanks HoustonNY!
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
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