So yesterday marked the end of my "Building My Blogroll" posts. When I originally started them it was just a way to explain why I was adding these particular people to my blogroll even though I didn't know them personally and they were only a few of the many blogs I read. As I got further into it though I started to feel more like the exercise was important for me to acknowledge those who had (without knowing it) encouraged me to start this and had contributed greatly to the way I'm going about it.
Overall I'd say the experience was an enjoyable one.
That said, while I am still remain glad I did it I have to admit to getting a little uncomfortable as I began to realize that the people I was posting about would almost certainly see the posts I was making. This discomfort led me to what I think is an interesting observation in regards to the negativity that is prevalent in the blogosphere and I wanted to share it.
It seems to me that the "everyone hears everything" mentality (a.k.a. the Internet + Google) of the Internet actually encourages negativity from those who participate in it.
Follow me here, in real life it is almost always considered smarmy to excessively compliment someone to their face. There are rare exceptions (events in which that person is being honored for example) but for the most part it really just isn't done. Compliments are certainly given but usually in private by either giving the person a pat on the back or by speaking well of them to others.
At the same time the real world considers it brave to publicly confront someone when you disagree with them and cowardly to bad mouth them behind their back.
Where this becomes interesting is when you get into a situation where every bit of communication is not only public but delivered to all via Google. Now you've made it impossible to compliment someone privately while also making it impossible to confront someone in any way that isn't public. Because of this you end up encouraging much of the negativity seen on the Internet because people's first reaction is to be drawn to what normally has a positive connotation in public (e.g. confrontation) while avoiding what normally gets a negative connotation (e.g. public praise)
Its interesting to me that this doesn't get discussed more with all the "new media" talk surrounding things like blogs. A different code of behavior is needed for a world in which everything you say about a person is guaranteed to get back to them. It seems to me that bloggers in particular need to make more of an effort to be positive about their colleagues for the very reason that the medium lends itself to negativity.
Every form of media in some way compensates for the weaknesses of their chosen distribution method, why should bloggers be any different?