Tag Archives: LinkedIn

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Blog spurs tension among strangers

As much as l enjoy — even love — writing this blog, it produces at least one uncomfortable side effect.

I distribute High Plains Blogger’s contents along several social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, to name three. It’s the Facebook distribution that results in something that gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Blog supporters and critics read my entries. They respond to statements that come from the blog. Then someone else will respond to the individual who is commenting on the contents of the blog.

It doesn’t matter who starts the exchange. It can come from someone on either side. When it commences, though, it occasionally gets personal.

It’s an intriguing aspect of this community “discussion.” Strangers who have never looked each other in the eye presume to know the other person’s motives. For that matter, I have total strangers who read this blog regularly who presume to know my own motivations and they respond with some sort of faux knowledge. But … that’s OK with me. I let it slide.

When individuals start yammering at each other in response to High Plains Blogger, I find myself feeling badly when someone ascribes nefariousness to someone else’s point of view. Or, they accuse someone of ignorance.

I don’t intend to dissuade commenters from speaking out freely and passionately. It’s an American thing to do. I like that individuals get worked up. However, it does make me a bit queasy when the commenters get personal with their newfound foes over each other’s comments.

None of this will deter me from using this blog to speak out. It’s what I do these days now that I no longer am a working stiff.

I’ll just have to suck it up when readers of this blog — be they friend or foe — decide to go after those on the other side of the gaping political divide.

Stay tuned. Keep reading. And by all means, feel free to offer your own perspective. It’s a great country, yes?

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Total strangers become foes, even enemies

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One of the downsides — and there aren’t many of them — of writing a blog is that I might be guilty of turning total strangers into enemies.

I post these musings on my High Plains Blogger website. I then transmit them via several social media outlets: Twitter, Facebook, Google and LinkedIn. My aim, of course, it to maximize exposure for this blog with the hope of getting those with whom I’m connected on all those sites to share these messages with their friends and social media acquaintances.

That’s straightforward enough, don’t you think?

But then something happens. My friends/”friends” on Facebook start tangling with each other. They read what is circulated on that social medium and respond to it. Then someone else reads the response and responds to that; it’s quite often — if not mostly — a negative response. That draws a rebuttal, which then attracts another reply.

On and on it goes, too often to no good end.

I do not like getting ensnared in this back-and-forth. I prefer to stay — if you’ll pardon the high-minded tone — “above the fray.”

I put the stuff out there, having stated my piece. Then I let others have at it.

Now, if someone asks me a direct question that requires a direct answer, I’m inclined to answer it. But I don’t always respond. I also might respond to an insult, which I do get occasionally.

The upshot of this is that while I (more or less) regret the hard feelings that erupt on occasion from those who respond to my blog spewage, I won’t back off from sending this stuff out there.

It provides great therapy, even if it comes on occasion with a bit of angst over the anger that boils up.

***

I made what some might consider to be a strange reference in this blog post. I describe my Facebook contacts thusly: friends/”friends.”

I do that to delineate between actual friends and those who I know only through Facebook. I have a number of folks out there who I consider to be — if not friends in the classic sense — friendly acquaintances. Truth be told, my actual friends amount to a tiny fraction of those with whom I have a friendly relationship.

There are others I know only because we’ve connected on social media. Those are the “friends” to whom I refer.

So, there you have it. To my many friends/”friends,” I say: Peace be with you.

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They may be right

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Mencken

Someone once told me years ago that the Bard of Baltimore, Henry Louis Mencken, used to end arguments by telling the other person, “You may be right.”

Then, I suppose, he and his foe would go on to something else.

Well, in this new age of social media, I think I’ve discovered a 21st-century version of that old dodge.

Every now and then — and it’s becoming quite a frequent occurrence these days — I get into these snits with Facebook “friends,” and actual friends with whom I have a relationship on the social medium.

I like using Facebook — along with Twitter, Google and LinkedIn — to share my blog posts. Some folks like getting these musings on Facebook. Others, I reckon, do not, to which I only would say: Don’t read ’em.

But the individuals with whom I argue on Facebook sometimes get pretty relentless in their attacks. They cling stubbornly to the idea that they must have the last word. I don’t mind ceding that honor to these folks. I generally don’t have the time, not to mention the patience or the intestinal fortitude, to keep going back and forth on a topic.

Quite often, we end up talking past each other, with the point of the initial post getting lost when folks take the discussion down some blind alley.

So, when that happens and I grow tired of engaging individuals on endless — and seemingly pointless — discussions, I simply hit the “Like” button on my Facebook news feed.

Look, I know I’m not going to change their minds. They won’t change mine.

What, then, is the point of continuing?

When I get tired of the back-and-forth, I’ll tell my “friend”/friend/foe that I “Like” what they’ve said.

Then I’ll move on.

Mr. Mencken, wherever you are, I hope to have made you proud.

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Blog totals climbing … rapidly

blog

I’ve had fun sharing the good news about the progress of this blog.

It remains a big-time blast to share my world view with those who are good enough to read it. I even appreciate the disagreements that flare on occasion. I know as well as anyone that the world is full of opinions that differ from each other. As much as I would want the world to agree with my view, I know it won’t happen … not ever.

So, I want to share a bit of cheer regarding this blog.

Here it is, only the 12th day of the seventh month of 2015 and the page views logged on High Plains Blogger have surpassed all of 2014.

We’ve got more than five months to go before the year’s end. My sincere hope is that the blog traffic will continue to grow.

I owe this to the impact that social media have on vehicles such as this. Blog posts get shared on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google.

My heartfelt thanks go to those who take the time at least to open the links they see. I hope many of you will take even more time to read what’s in them.

Onward we shall go.

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Blogging is a blast … most of the time

Readers of this blog know — I hope — that I take great joy in expressing opinions on this or that subject.

I consider it a form of recreation, perhaps even therapy. I like sharing it on various social media. I post the blog entries to my Twitter feed, which goes automatically to my Facebook feed. They also post automatically to LinkedIn and Tumblr.

Sometimes, though, the Facebook feed results in some, shall we say, unfortunate reactions among a few of the hundreds of friends and “friends” who read this stuff on that social medium.

Some of my friends/”friends” react to the blog post. Their reaction draws a critical response from someone else on the feed. Then the initial responder respond to the response. Back and forth it goes. Then others enter the fray. Then it becomes a game of insults, a put-down contest, if you please.

Some of it is good-natured. Some of it isn’t. Then it gets out of hand.

I commented earlier today on Texas executing a young woman for the murder of a little boy. I stated my opposition capital punishment. Then the fusillade started among a few folks who had read the blog.

It got a bit crazy.

Sometimes I’m a bit slow on the uptake and sometimes I don’t recognize good humor when it’s hidden behind insults. Perhaps my friends — and these individuals are people I know well — were just kidding among themselves. They really didn’t mean to say all those nasty things to each other, or at least outsiders looking in — such as yours truly — shouldn’t interpret them as mean-spiritedness.

Forgive me, guys. I don’t get it.

I’ll keep spewing this stuff. Others can comment. They’re free to insult each other as long as they don’t use the magic word, which in baseball rhubarb parlance is “you.” By that I don’t want them saying, “You bleeping so-and-so!”

Let’s keep it clean.