My children and I have an ongoing discussion about being a tattle-tale. They are good kids and for the most part they play nicely together. However like all children they have their moments when they just lose it and begin to fight.
Their mother and I try to let them work it out. We don’t insert ourselves unless it is clear that they cannot resolve the issue.
Of course like most children they often engage in their own preemptive strike. Here are a couple of their favorites.
“Dad! Esther hit me!”
“Daddy, Jon took my toy!”
In case you are wondering, what I hear sounds more like the adults in the Peanuts shows. “Wah wah wah wah.”
This has led to the grand conversation of trying to teach them not to be tattle-tales. It is not such a simple thing, because at the same time I am working hard to help them understand when it is not ok to keep secrets.
That leads me to my next hypothetical issue. If you know that there was an immoral, unethical, loser scum bag low-life hanging out with you in the blogosphere what would you do.
Would you point them out. Would you try and place a scarlet letter upon them. Or would you just ignore them.
What if they exhibited the same sense of denial and self-awareness as OJ. What if they paraded around pretending to be something that they are not.
Should you award them with the reward that they so truly deserve. Should you sail on over on a cyberspace boat and smack them. Or would that be too juvenile.
I wonder.
Ezzie,
I hear what you are saying. Private email won’t work, although I truly wish that it would.
Gooch,
I knew it. 😉
Bagel,
True.
Chosha,
They have hurt many and will continue to do so. The real question is whether my words would make a positive impact.
As to the blogger, it would depend who they were trying to trick or hurt and how successful they were at it.
mmm I suppose it depends on the context, their intent and you intent.
I pointed out a scumbag that pretended to advocate peace but was really just a vehicle to bash Jews.
Its a tough decision, sometimes you risk belittling yourself to their level.
Aaron
Ok, Jack, I’ll confess before you have to out me: My first name isn’t really “The”
I’d say try and ignore them. Sometimes, this becomes impossible, and you are basically forced to say something, but generally, you can ignore them and others know as well as you do that the blogger has serious issues.
You can also try emailing them privately. I had an issue with one blogger making claims about what I would say, and – after ignoring it for a while – finally spoke up before returning to ignoring them. When it happened again a month or so later, I contacted them via e-mail, had quite a discussion, and wrote them off. You don’t need to waste your time with fools…