Reality Check

Okay. I don't know what was said or written to make everybody all pissy this week. To be frank with you, I usually avoid the personality conflict drama that goes on here; I'm a lot more interested in talking about, y'know, important stuff. So I have no idea what's gone down this week, and I have no idea why everyone's gotten all defensive, or why some people have been rumored to be leaving the site, or why everyone seems to be sniping at one another like teenagers on MySpace.

But I DO know that it better stop RIGHT NOW.

I think we need to keep a few things in mind as we move forward here on PNN:

1. This is not a message board.

Guys, this is a blog site. A blog site hosts many different blogs— some personal, some professional— and creates a loosely bound community of different people with different interests. Dialogue is one aspect of a blog site, but it is not the ONLY aspect.

My mother frequents some silly message board site called "Moms Who Think," and she's always talking about the drama that ensues there. One person gets pissy, and all of a sudden it's like they're all back in high school— name-calling and accusations and gossip and rumors. This is the natural state of message boards; they're intended for people to hold anonymous conversations, and having petty dialogue with someone you've never met can get real ugly, real fast.

But, uh, that's not really how this whole PNN thing is supposed to work. See, on a blog, the author writes a post, and then the reader takes time to read the post, to reflect upon it, and then (perhaps, if he or she finds some of the content particularly laudable or offensive) to write a respectful, insightful, and USEFUL comment below. The way it does NOT work is for a person to come on, half-heartedly skim the post, and then write some hip, disaffected bullshit about the author. If you don't want to participate by engaging the issue at hand in the post, then DON'T. You have the power to walk away. You have the power to click on a different website.

This is not a place for personal attacks, and it is ALSO not a place for childish antics. This is a blog site. If you would LIKE to find a silly, mean-spirited message board on which to mock others, here's the site for you.

2. This is not highschool.

I was under the impression that the vast majority of us on PNN are adults. We are no longer in highschool— ergo, we are no longer permitted to act in the way teenagers act.

This means we are prohibited from doing the following: name-calling, gossiping about other people, posting nasty things about particular people, engaging in "popularity contests" or making others feel left out or ignored, acting or behaving petulantly, making comments anonymously in order to be absolved from the responsibility of justifying those comments, and otherwise belittling or putting others down for no other reason that it makes the belittler feel good about him/herself.

3. This is not an exclusive website.

Anyone who wants to sign up for PNN can do so. Anyone who wants to write for PNN can do so. Anyone who wants to leave PNN can do so. There are no restrictions (other than, I believe, the usual age guidelines regarding the privacy rights of minors).

I would also like us to keep in mind the way PNN was ORIGINALLY set up. I've been writing for PNN since April of 2008; I first became a paid feature writer on May or June of that month. Therefore, I've been with PNN for more than a year now, and I remember how PNN was originally set up.

PNN was not "the global water cooler for women" then. That tagline came much, much later. PNN was a blog site about telling one's story; the name "Personal News Network" implies, after all, a sort of broad cross-section of society, a gathering place where people from all different backgrounds could share their stories and discover the stories of others. This is why I joined PNN, at first— because I loved the idea that people in all different parts of the world were writing and communicating together.

I have been skeptical of the the move from "Personal News Network" to "PNN: the global water cooler for women" for a multitude of reasons, most significantly because I think the phrase "water cooler" implies a certain fluffiness that was not an original component of the site. When standing around the water cooler at work, I might discuss important issues (politics, religion, marriage) or unimportant ones (who won America's Next Top Model, the chick in accounting who brought in a wicked cute puppy last week, the number of phone calls we've been getting in the office that day), but no matter what I talk about, it's surface chatter, designed to pass the few minutes of my break time but not intended to move beyond those minutes.

When we write on PNN, I would hope that we attempt to comport ourselves in a respectful manner that does not in any way minimize the importance of the topics we're discussing. Sometimes we talk about elections, and sometime we talk about babies; sometimes we vent about our jobs, and sometimes we vent about sexism. But I think we should treat each poster's topic the way we would treat a post on a major, syndicated blog— not only with respect, but with a certain attention to audience. When you comment on a post, everyone who reads the blog, not just the original poster, can access your comment. I feel like some of us have forgotten this.

I've also become unsure about the "water cooler for women" change because I think some of us use it as an excuse to shunt out the men who come here looking for new perspectives. I think it's important to remember that when this site started, there were an equal number of men and women writing here; when the site's tagline changed, however, the men began to disappear, and I really HAVE missed their perspective on things. I'm also discouraged that it's so hard to convince my male friends to read my blog, or to start their own blogs on PNN; it seems unfair to claim to be open to all perspectives and then to blatantly discourage half the planet from participating. I don't mind the focus on women— but I think that men might have some perspectives on women and women's issues that they should be able to share. After all, it's clear from our blogs that we women have plenty of things to say about men, right?

I only know that I would be hurt and offended if I felt I had something valuable to say on a men's-themed site, and I was told to go away because I'm a woman. Obviously, women have a certain authority on issues that deal with them exclusively, but I don't think you have to be a woman to discuss friendships, boyfriends, girlfriends, politics, books, or any of the vast number of topics we exhaust in even a day.

This is really my main point, in summary: we seem to be forgetting why we came here, and what PNN has meant for us, and why other people may have come to the site. And I think we need to sort of get back to basics, in a way— to remind ourselves why we first started writing in this excellent place. Perhaps we should all go back and look at some of our original posts and remember what we said then.

I looked at some of my first posts just now. I wrote so much about weddings and relationships back then! And with the big election coming up, I wrote much more about serious political topics, and got a lot of serious comments in return. Some of the comment-leavers are long gone— like Lori, an uber-conservative lady who left before many of you had ever even heard of PNN. Others have remained to this day— chitown, and cereals (now known as welshgrl), and many more.

For the first time ever, I'm disabling comments on a post— not because I don't want to hear from you (you can send me a message if you want), but because I fear that I'll just provide yet another space for people to hash this thing out. I don't want to perpetuate the whole brouhaha, so I'm going to ask that you not use my other posts for comments relating to this one. I did not write this post in order to provoke either praise or controversy, so I don't want to court either by starting yet another comment-based argument.

I just felt that maybe we've all gotten a little bent out of shape, and that it might be high time to get a grip and remember what drew us all here in the first place.