My DSL service has finally switched on at my new place! I've been wanting to go on a big rant against my ISP which had been bungling the transfer of my DSL service to my new apartment. It's been particularly annoying because I had a few ideas for posts in this month, and being stuck on dialup - on a fairly busy shared phone line - has made this difficult. I'm postponing my goals for July (testing trackbacks, moderated comments and ads) through to the end of August, because I just haven't been able to do enough blogging in July. I guess that off-line blogging (as discussed in my post here) is possible, but it's not the way that I like to blog. It creates a disconnect between reading and writing. Maybe this could lead to more considered posts, but it also diminishes the spontaneity which is one of the possibilities of blogging. Even worse is that it separates the research from the writing - I now realise that I research as I write, or more accurately, that the processes for these two things are so deeply intertwined now that it's difficult when I try to do these things separately.
But back to the ranting, I was tempted to castigate this company. From time to time, I've had a mind to vent my spleen at a few other companies, banks, retailers etc., but generally I've decided not to. For one thing, there are legal issues. I am concerned about the impact of defamation on freedom of speech, particularly now that I'm living in Australia again. I don't agree with our defamation laws and think that truth alone should always be a defence and that breaches of privacy should be dealt with separately, but that's what the law is right now in NSW - and the law should generally be respected and obeyed even when it is being an Ass.* [I'm resisting the urge to digress into jurisprudence and discuss the limits, if there should be any, of our obedience to unjust and immoral laws]
But matters of law aside, I just don't want to be wasting my energy on these negative issues any more than I need to. If bloggers gradually accumulate positive credibility, I think that every negative post about a company or person has a chance of backfiring, and damaging the blogger as much as her/his target. Maybe it's possible to get away with a few attacks, but after a while, people might start to think, "He's just another ranter/hater/troll" - and the credibility plummets. (Unless of course, one's credibility is based on negativity, in which case the opposite would apply.) This all sounds terribly amoral - of course there are moral arguments that are relevant, but that's opening another can of worms.
Of course I'll still be negative sometimes, especially towards ideas and generalities which I disagree with. I just hope that on this blog at least, I'll make myself pause and take a deep breath before ranting at specific targets.
* 'If the law supposes that,' said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, 'the law is a ass--a idiot.' Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist.
