"So Which Person Is Siller?" Dept

No doubt, given the sophistication and social polish of the readers of this blog, you have all long since read this particular Miss Manners column.

The gist is that somebody put on their blog -- which blog they think of very much the way I think of mine, namely, as a way to keep a journal and keep in touch with friends -- a few frank comments about a novel they had read recently and disliked. They were then shocked (which is silly) when the novelist, armed with search engines, spare time, and narcissism, hunted up the review and proceeded to flame the blogger for having dared to dislike his novel -- which, to my mind, is an order of magnitude sillier.

At any rate, the person writing to Miss Manners was upset about this and wanted to know whether one should one's blog as something public, like letters published in a newspaper. Um...this is really a hard question?

Myself, though, if the same thing were to happen to me, I would just think it was genuinely hilarious. In fact it has happened to me: I posted a visual Aggie joke in which a picture made an Aggie store proprietor appear to be stupid, and the next thing I know a highly defensive comment from the proprietor shows up explaining seriously that he wasn't being stupid. To me, the picture was pretty funny, but the thought of the guy scrambling all over the internet trying to explain that he wasn't really stupid -- now that was hi-frickin'-larious.

And I've been on the other side: somebody once took some shots at me (actually at a stereotype for which I was a convenient stand-in) in a blog conversation with his buddies on a blog almost as obscure as mine, and one of my friends saw it and was enraged. Fortunately I happened to find out that my friend was about to release a nuclear-strength flame onto that blog just before she sent it, and I talked her into letting me respond myself with much more moderation than she intended to wield on my behalf (bless her admirably loyal heart, which by the way I very deeply appreciate). And the blog owner was like, "Oops, I've done again...forgot that people can actually see what I say about them when I put it on the blog."

So, two pieces of advice:

1. Whatever snarky thing you post in a blog, assume that your target will read it eventually.

2. If somebody writes something snarky about you in a blog, remember that if you go to their blog to comment on it, nine times out of ten you will make yourself look infinitely more stupid than they could make you look without your help.