Don't be hatin'

So, while I've been gone on my time off, I saw a flareup occur on several blogs. You know the one I'm talking about...it's with that woman who talked about how she wondered how she could ever love an (adopted) child since it didn't come from her body. Anyway, you know which one and I don't have to provide yet another link to it.

Before going further, I get the feeling she's: amused, annoyed, flattered, and bothered by the hate she's been receiving from...uhhh us.

I went to visit her site several times and several times I got to the comments section and I bailed. I kept muttering to myself, "Don't do it, don't do it, remember what you said about leaving nasty notes. Don't do it." So I bailed.

[part of this post started on my biz trip - hence the odd tense]
I'm here doing some lectures to an assorted group of people on a subject matter (which I can't quite bring up - and it would be boring to you anyway). My audience members consist of about:

• 30% of programmers believe we shouldn't do this type of activity(but were ORDERED by their managers to attend my lectures)
  
• 35% of programmers are interested and need someone to influence them
• 35% of programmers have never thought of the subject matter

The people who invited me up to give my talks have said, "Well, we're going to have to be subtle as we reach out to the people who aren't supportive of this activity." I replied, "Ehh, screw those 30%. This is like a religious argument. One or two lectures is not going to turn them around. I say they're a lost cause. What I would like to do is concentrate on the 70% of the people who are NOT a lost cause. I think spending energy on the 30% of those who don't care, well...that takes away focus from the 70% who do care."

How does this tie back to infamous post? (yet another in a continuing line from anyone and everyone). I think I realize that the most negative or counter-arguments that start on a person's comment section of a post really have no real effect on their thinking. In other words, do you really think you can change that poster's mind on the subject matter they posted that offended you? No, not really. Either it gets them mad that you posted that comment on their blog and they start arguing with you to the point where they delete your post/rant. Or, they are smiling because they are the type of people who enjoy arguing about anything (and that particular post snagged you into being interested - and made their site's stats take a leap)

Really, the last type of person annoys me to no end. I call them argument mongers.

In one of her counter-arguments as she's arguing with various "anonymous" posters (that annoys me too), she pointed out that later in her post she brought up her concern (about not being able to love, completely the adopted child) to her adoptive Mom friend. I started wondering about how a few more lines in the right place may have saved a lot of anger.

Eh..point is, I can't bring myself to adopt a child. Not after having one of my own. I can not at this point convince myself that I could love a child that wasn't of me.

I wonder if an additional sentence could have changed this completely around.

Eh..point is, I can't bring myself to adopt a child. Not after having one of my own. I can not at this point convince myself that I could love a child that wasn't of me. That's a flaw I have personally, and I talked to my friend about it.

I think by the time we were reading to the end of her paragraph we were all seeing RED.

As a parent of a premie and a parent of an adopted child, I thought I would more than qualify to "toss down" with her and.......and that's when I asked myself what did I expect to say and do that would really affect the author? Not much. I could write something hurtful about her daughter and then say, "See, see how much it hurts when someone writes something insulting about something dear to you?"

And then I thought of a scene from one of my favorite Steve Martin movies. It's the highway scene from "L.A. Story". In this scene, he and his girlfriend are driving down the highway and they realize it's "driveby season" and they are frantically digging through the glovebox to get their handgun and load it. By doing that, they start fishtailing their car on the highway. That, then becomes the cause of anger with their fellow drivers and those drivers start shooting at their car. Then, this escalates into multiple cars shooting at each other.

When I see a post that has the trappings of gasoline for flame wars, I always say to myself, "Whoa, hang on the crap is gonna fly!" And, it does. And then it degenerates to, "Well, well, you're....you're....a POOPY FACE!"

I wonder if I worry about that when I type my posts? I think I do. One of the more agonizing posts I worked on was SAHM where I had so many disclaimers. Then, I hated myself for the disclaimers, so I wrote a disclaimer on disclaimers. Sheesh! I went back and forth about

• What I wanted to say
• What I wanted not to accidentally imply
• A way to show respect to my readers
• A way to stay true to oneself about personal thoughts and views
• A way not to piss people off
• A balance

It's tough to convey what you mean, honestly without offending people. But I think, sometimes you have to offend people to be YOU.

I think my final thought on that woman was that she doesn't GET it because she hasn't been in our shoes.

Well, screw her.

But, I'm not going to try to convert her. I pity her.

Next!