What are the rules on blogging about people that you know?

September 27, 2015 1:41 PM

I have a blog. I write mostly about my work and things that pertain to my work (rather than it being a personal blog). However, since the work that I do is socio-political, my blog does deal with personal issues that use real life examples (but I tend not to focus on my own personal life in the blog). However, there are situations in which examples of things from my life are very pertinent to the issues I write about, and I believe that my writing would benefit from being able to personalize the issue.

My question is twofold: how do you deal with writing about people that you know personally? I don't intend to "warn" people that I will be talking about interactions that we've had on the blog, but is this something I should be doing? I don't use people's names or any identifying characteristics. I focus more on content, but if we had a conversation in which someone said something that subsequently write about, they're going to know that I'm talking about them.

Secondly, in the case that there is fallout from something that I've written, how should I deal with this? I do not use any ad hominem attacks, but if you've said something problematic (e.g. "we shouldn't let immigrants into our country") I will write about it and unapologetically discuss why this is problematic from the angle that my work pertains to. Frankly, I don't care if someone is upset with me over writing about them saying something like this, but I'm wondering if there are other consequences that I'm failing to consider.

posted by Enchanting Grasshopper to Human Relations (10 answers total)

I think it depends a lot on whether these conversations are in some sort of public forum/it's publicly available knowledge, or if the individuals you're speaking with have an understanding that your conversations are private. I think this is especially true if whatever conversations are happening during work hours, on the company's time/dollar. I would be pretty weirded out if something I said off the cuff during a business lunch with a colleague showed up on a blog, even unattributed, and honestly I think it's pretty clearly unprofessional to do this. If I were, say, giving a public speech and the moderator wanted to write up a blog post after, that would be fine and normal.

If you want to write about immigration reform, why is there the need to specifically call out colleagues? There are a LOT of political figures out there saying this stuff, why not frame is as a general debate out there or speak to a public figure like Trump? I don't think it really needs to be framed as "my client, who I'm not going to name here, said something really offensive about immigrants; let me say on my blog why he's wrong." Like, if you think the person is wrong, say so in the moment! And if you want to blog about immigration, blog about immigration. The two don't need to intersect UNLESS you're trying to do some expose about how "people at Firm X are really racist" or "Public Figure Y made shocking comments" - in which case, go for it if you want, but don't expect to keep your job. It honestly seems like a strange/unprofessional frame to go on about these coworkers/clients who you're not going to name but you want to publicly criticize on a public blog. Address the issues publicly; address the individuals privately, unless commenting on some event that was clearly public to begin with.
posted by rainbowbrite at 2:00 PM on September 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Just to clarify, I am not talking about conversations with colleagues or clients.
posted by Enchanting Grasshopper at 2:08 PM on September 27, 2015

I think this has a lot of potential to cause drama, especially if you're mainly going to be discussing other people in a negative way. "My friend so-and-so has a theory about this, which is..." seems fine, although I probably would ask so-and-so first, in case so-and-so was planning to write something about her theory. "Someone in my book group opposes immigration and is a big honking bigot because of it, and here's why," I think, is just likely to make everyone else in the book group choose a side, and before you know it you won't be able to have a book group anymore. And if it's not a book group but your job or an organization that is important to you, then the stakes are a lot higher.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:09 PM on September 27, 2015

I'd agree that doing this systematically is rude at best. It also seems passive aggressive if, rather than responding directly, you're writing about them on your blog, where the people you're talking about can't even respond.

And I'd add that your stories may not be as anonymized as you believe they are. Particularly if you're not anonymous and if your stories are outrage-bait, if any of your stories about people end up getting traction, someone may put forth the effort to identify them and sic various internet mobs on them based on your account.

If you want to criticize specific political positions, you should be able to find already-public examples to refer to, and possibly make very vague references to having heard x opinions expressed or something.
posted by ernielundquist at 2:10 PM on September 27, 2015 [3 favorites]

Best answer: There are no clear rules that work consistently in my experience. I feel like I've felt subtle, negative impacts even when limiting my commentary to exactly the kinds of publicly available information discussed in some answers above, but short of outright losing your job or being directly confronted about some online commentary you've made, it can be hard to gauge just how much of the more subtle kinds of fallout you're getting. These are all very gray areas. Sometimes even if you follow what seem to be common sense rules and keep personally identifiable information and specifics out, you can still end up making someone in a position to make your life less pleasant angry. People read a lot into online commentary that isn't really there, too, sometimes. Blogging about anything controversial inherently comes with all sorts of social and career risk, so if you do it, be prepared for knives to come out occasionally. If you really believe what you're doing is important enough, you might do it anyway. But I don't think it's possible to anticipate in advance what others are going to consider fair play or not. People just aren't always rational or fair-minded enough for that. If you strike a nerve somehow, it doesn't really matter if you took every precaution to be fair and responsible.
posted by saulgoodman at 2:18 PM on September 27, 2015

Best answer: I'd say there are two ways to deal with this.

1) Forge ahead, boldly and fearlessly, damn the consequences, with the understanding that there could potentially be significant negative repercussions in your personal and professional life,

or

2) Find a way to veil the personal interactions as they are portrayed on your blog, i.e., "I recently heard someone say / read someone write / thought about this sentiment that seems to be out there in the world, and here's my thoughts on that..."
posted by erst at 2:40 PM on September 27, 2015 [6 favorites]

Best answer: you could take erst's suggestion a step further and construct a fictional environment, within the blog. invent a small number of characters - alice, bob, etc - and then write about the things that you heard people say, using their voices.

maybe that sounds dumb, but i think it could work well with some effort to pad it out. you're edging towards what novelists do - creating fictional composites of various people and then arranging them to expose a particular issue.

but, in all honesty, i'd go with "yesterday i was talking to someone who said...", or "the other day i heard ...". the only (written) rules i can think of are slander / libel, and as long as people cannot be identified you're fine with that (ianal). for unwritten rules, as long as you avoid clients / colleagues / friends with thin skin that you want to keep, i don't see an issue.
posted by andrewcooke at 2:55 PM on September 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I think a good rule of thumb is, don't write anything that you wouldn't want every single person in the world to see, including the person you're writing about. If you follow that rule, dealing with any fallout shouldn't be much of a problem.
posted by chickenmagazine at 5:12 PM on September 27, 2015 [8 favorites]

I posted quite often to my blog for about ten years, and found that posting Real Life interactions and conversations could get me in trouble rather easily. I've received some frantic phone calls: "Take that post down pronto!", etc. I eventually learned to be more discreet.
posted by Agave at 12:44 AM on September 28, 2015

Please do seriously consider whether your blog posts referencing private individuals are really as anonymous as you think and whether a third party's disagreement could drive them to identify and harass/stalk/threaten those individuals. The internet's outrage is a terrible and terrifying thing to be on the receiving end of and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. There is more at stake here than just *your* reputation, health and happiness.
posted by eloeth-starr at 12:52 AM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]