Why I am happy to be an unpopular blogger

And no - I'm not fishing for compliments.....

You know what the best part about my little "blogging break" was?  I apparantly missed this quarter's MajorScandal about the events at BlogHer between Dooce and The Bloggess and all of the resulting rants on other blogs.  I still hadn't heard anything about it until Fussy mentioned "drama" on Twitter this morning and since I am avoiding folding laundry don't want to wash the kitchen floor will scream if I have to play another game of Skipbo with Prince #1 & 2 was curious, I found out what happened.  I don't even know if that was what Fussy was talking about...but now I heard about what happened.

And guess what?  This post is not about what happened at BlogHer.  I didn't go, I have no real desire to go (aside from the fact that I could have met Mr. Lady there) and I don't even read Dooce or The Bloggess.

This post IS about the stupid, silly, bullshit stuff that goes on in the blogging world....and that you don't see men doing it, do you? They seem perfectly content to stick to their fantasy sports leagues, gadget forums, and the best poker sites, managing to navigate their own online communities without launching into vicious, scorched-earth personal attacks against each other.

Ladies (all 3 of you who still read this blog), why do we DO these things?  Why are some women still so caught up in the high school bullshit of making ourselves feel better by tearing others down?  The things I read were appalling, and I only read about 10 blog posts.

And it's not just the Dooce/Bloggess dust-up at Blogher...recent history had one Blogger leaving his family to run away with another blogger and then dumped that blogger to go back to his family and the resulting posts were like a Civil War Re-enactment...only in this case it was "sister against sister" and I wanted to shoot my computer just so it would all go away and we could get back to posts about baby shit and not getting laid.

People say that blogging creates a "community".  Perhaps my expectations of that community are just too high, but I would hope that we could all remember that a community, online or not, is made up of people.  Those people have names and feelings, just as you do....and that includes Dooce/Heather and Bloggess/Jenny and whoever else is the subject of the next BigMajorOhMyGodDidYouHearWhatHappenedScandal.

Just because they have 350 times the readers that you or I have (ok - they probably have 35,000 the readers I have) doesn't make it ok to dissect everything they do.  They are Heather and Jenny - not Brittney and Paris.  They had what looks to be a 2-minute verbal spat (please - I don't need the details).....it's not like one killed the other one's dog or they made a sex tape or flashed their GoingCommandoCrotch at anyone.  They may be celebrities in the blogging world, but in the real world they are quite insignificant (and I really do mean that in a GOOD way).

So the next time you feel compelled to take to your keyboard to join the "can you believe that she did that"-fest, please remember one thing:  the person you are tearing down is a person.  She is not a computer screen, she is not a GoogleBot.  From what I have seen, even the more popular bloggers know when others are talking about them.

I try to live my life by NOT saying things that I know will hurt others.  Sometimes I fail...but most of those times it was completely unintentional.

Some people really should try it.