Blogging Responsibly

"Your Right To Swing Your Arm Ends Where My Nose Begins"

I wanted to comment on a blog post I have read today but the commenting has been closed so I'd just say here what I otherwise wanted to comment on that blog post. I'm not gonna name names and you'd know why if you read on. :P

It was supposed to be a Facebook popularity contest. The kind wherein the picture that will get the most "likes" will win. However, this post isn't about the contest. This is about one of the contestants of that said contest. Well, she's not even a contestant. She's the mother of one of the contestants.

To cut it short, the mother who happened to be a teacher made an assignment out of this whole thing. She asked her students to like the Facebook page of the said contest and specified the picture to "like." She  detailed as to when the assignment's due. She added that the activity will serve as the students hands-on activity and will be graded.

 It gets uglier because the assignment was intended for grade 3 students to do for their computer class. Say what. Hmmmn. Computer class and Facebook? In all fairness, there's quite the connection.

One of the teacher's students asked her sister to make a Facebook account for him. The sister was amazed because her brother has asked him to do this once before but she did not agree because she thought her brother was too young for stuffs like that. After finding out why her brother was asking her to make a Facebook account, she went mad and took her anger on her blog.

The sister explained one by one all of the wrong things about the assignment. She said that her brother is too young to be on Facebook and should not be mandated to do something just for the personal interests of his teacher. She pointed out that such kind of assignment has nothing to do with academics and therefore should not be graded. 

I can totally see where she's coming from. In fact, I am taking her side. If I were her, I'd definitely go ballistic. What was the teacher thinking? Was she even thinking? Her action was wrong on so many levels. I won't even bother to elaborate. 

My problem is that I think the sister might have overreacted. She was so mad that she even posted screenshots of the said Facebook page, revealing the name of the teacher as well as her daughter's. That was TOO MUCH for me.

Now here comes the ugliest part of it all. Soon the post started to get comments. Comment count is 500 something already. Most of the comments attacked the teacher. There were people  who defended the teacher's action saying that she's a mother first and naturally, she'd do whatever for her daughter. There were trolls who posted remarks that did not add value to the conversation. Well, this is a given. :P

Of course, there were also people who attacked the sister for revealing the names of the teacher and her daughter. To which the supporters of the sister replied that it's her blog so she can do whatever she wants and the names were posted publicly on Facebook anyway so there had been no privacy violations whatsoever.

Obviously there had been violations. I know the sister has all the right in the world to get mad and blog about it but I believe the sister should not have dropped names. Again, I'm too lazy to elaborate. I'm actually reacting on some of the comments that said it's her blog so she can do whatever  she wants.

My blog is barely a week old. It's not my first time to have a blog but it is my first attempt to really take blogging seriously. I am a very emotional person and when I get mad with a person in the future, there's a big chance that I might blog about it here.

Here, I could curse that person and all. I could attack him below the belt because guess what? IT IS MY DAMN BLOG. However, there's no way I'm going to reveal the identity of the person, unless I'm mad with a celebrity or a politician.

I'm such a coward person in reality. LOL. What I can say here, I'd probably cannot say in person. What if the person  finds out and confronts me? I suck at confrontations. Really. Secondly, I think it's just not right. It is unfair.

We all have rights but those rights end where the rights of others begin. It all comes down to one thing and that is RESPECT.  Rights come with responsibilities and we have no right to claim our rights if we are not willing to claim the responsibilities attached to them, right? :P

What I'm trying to say, in relation to blogging, is that bloggers should be responsible with what they blog about. While they can blog about anything, they need to make sure that they are not crossing their boundaries. In instances wherein they put a certain person - a private citizen to be exact - in a bad light, they should refrain from giving names or at least if they insist, let their subjects know so they can defend themselves. Fair enough, right? :P