Kerry Allen

Story time!

Once upon a time, there was this guy. (We’ll call him… Guy.)

Guy was an artist of some acclaim, but not being the arrogant sort, he strongly felt his success had just as much to do with the people who embraced his art as with the art itself. Without the support of those people (we’ll call them… Fans), he’d be stuck behind a desk somewhere instead of making a living doing what he loved, and he appreciated them for sparing him from a fate worse than death (we’ll call that… a Day Job).

Guy made himself accessible to his Fans, hung out with them in real life, had his own MMORPG tribe of asskickingness, set up this wicked awesome online community, and handed out his actual email address to everybody and their dog. Guy got something out of it (ego stroking and the human interaction otherwise lacking in what is pretty much a solitary pursuit), the Fans got something out of it (feeling like they’re Guy’s buddies and the first crack at the best schwag), and everybody had a blast.

Then the crazy people (we’ll call them… Crazy People) started coming out the woodwork, spewing nastiness and taking advantage of Guy’s hospitality. Pretty soon, the only people having a blast were the Crazy People because dodging their BS was consuming increasing amounts of Guy’s time and emotional energy, leaving him less to share with his Fans.

Guy reconsidered being so accessible. Email addresses got changed.  Things got shut down.

(Were other things started by invitation only to keep Crazy People out? Hmm, I really can’t say, but neener neener, nyah nyah, and EPIC BURN L0S3RS.)

Now, I don’t blame Guy for stepping back because, seriously, no hyperbole involved in the “crazy” designation. Crazy People really did sound like they needed to restart their meds before incoherent rants evolved into dangerous actions.

But my anger that a couple of Crazy People are allowed to get away with corrupting an otherwise happily thriving community outstrips by a long shot my understanding for Guy’s situation. I’m sick of all this trying to appease a handful of Crazy People (who can never be appeased) at the expense of everyone else.

Being accessible does not obligate you to take abuse from people. They send you nasty email, you block their email address. They infect your forum, you delete their account and block their IP address so they can’t sign right back up. They leave abusive comments on your blog, again, you block their IP address. Getting a new email address may be a snap, but to get through an IP block, they have to physically relocate in order to hassle you. I’m a firm believer in making Crazy People work. They obviously have nothing better to do with their lives and need to be kept busy somehow.

“Wah! You’re censoring my freedom of speech!” Au contraire. You can say anything you want. However, nobody has to provide you with a soapbox and an audience. If getting your own is too much work for you, STFU.

My point is, you should not let the Crazy People of the world dictate your behavior and stifle your voice and make you jump through hoops in some hopeless attempt to keep everybody happy all the time. What right do they have to control you to that extent—or any extent, for that matter?

Have some faith that “your people” are adult enough to look at whatever you have to say on your blog and decide “Hmm, not her most interesting material today, but I’ll check back later this week” or “I disagree with that, and I will either leave a comment explaining why and engage in civilized dialogue on the subject or come back when the subject has passed because I’d rather not get into a big kerfuffle about it.”

Anyone perpetually dissatisfied with your offerings is free to not return, the Crazy People can be dealt with accordingly, and then everyone that’s left will be happy and content, and fluffy bunnies with sunshine coming out their butts will frolic merrily throughout the interwebz!

So my plea to everyone is this: Please, OWN your little corner of the web. If we let the Crazy People take over the whole thing, we’ll have to resort to hanging out with flesh-and-blood people in noisy, germy, put-on-makeup places during assigned hours of operation, which would suck in so many ways, someone would have to invent a new method for like-minded folks around the world to connect with one another at any hour from the comfort of their own homes…
Oh, right.

Which brings us right back to staking out your claim and defending it without obsessing about being always entertaining, always informative, always promotional, always thought-provoking, always inoffensive, or always anything else. You won’t be, you can’t be, and anyone who expects you to be has impossible-to-achieve expectations and will surely live a life plagued by one disappointment after another.

Unless your schtick is reporting on things that have nothing to do with you, people come to your blog to connect with YOU. If you consistently deliver YOU, whatever that may be, it makes it a lot easier for your readership to determine itself than if you’re just pretending to be whatever you think people want.

Whatever you think they want, it’s already out there, and if they really wanted it, they’d be over there, not hanging out at your place.

You’re the only one who can provide regular doses of YOU. Do that. Without fear.

That is all.