I REALLY ENJOYED DOING "COMMENTS (0)" | 2006-01-09
A couple of commenters have seconded my insistence that we state what we think flatly and without apology.
But when you do that, someone is going to take it personally, and I think I speak for a lot of readers when I say that I am SICK of htat.
"Comments (0)" was one of the Bob's Blogs I copied and put on Stormfront.
I introduced it by saying "If you are thin-skinned, Bob's Blog is not the place for you."
Just for fun I e-mailed it to one of my doctors who enjoys ironic humor.
His reply was very depressing. He said he had just done a paper and other things so he couldn't get to my blog. He thought my e-mail was attacking HIM for not keeping up with the blog.
In other words, instead of enjoying the humor, he took it as a personal criticism. I was completely blind-sided.
It never even occurred to me that I was talking about HIM.
When I put the article on Stormfront and sent it to him, I was bragging. I was saying, "This is the sort of readers who fit into Bob's Blog. Look at how I give them hell and they laugh at it."
When people take things personally it makes me "tired all over." Someone who does that seems to think that Bob is SUBTLE. Bob is saying something about them that he won't just come out and state plainly.
How can anybody read Bob's Blog and think I am the sort of person who HINTS?
Which makes me sort of helpless on that front. When someone says, "What you are REALLY saying is..." I genuinely don't know how to deal with it.
I have to completely switch my thinking and try to understand WHY someone is saying that what the least subtle person around is really expressing an opinion about THEM.
I have spent many confusing hours of effort in my career trying to figure out how they came to their conclusion and finding some diplomatic way of saying that they are mistaken.
As joe says, Bob needs a lot of correcting on the diplomatic front. I need you to watch me when my statements are too blunt or are a direct atttack on someone.
But SUBTLETY? HINTS?
That is the accusation that catches me totally off guard.