Bloggy Question 54: This Conversation Is NOT Bloggable

Can’t I Talk to Bloggers Anymore?

For those who come looking for a short, thoughtful read, a blogging life discussion, or a way to gradually ease back into the week. I offer this bloggy life question. . . .

You travel a lot and occasionally meet up with a blogger in the city where you are. The conversation and the company are always worth what little it might take to get across town to get together.

Last night was an event. This time you met not one, but three bloggers you read. Dinner was at a beautiful restaurant. Everyone sure hit it off. The conversation went from mutual blogging friends to ideas about what folks might do to improve their blogging style.

As always, pictures were taken and blogger hugs given. It seemed a perfect evening complete with the champagne toast at the end. You wrote up your experience and uploaded two photographs. Then you did some work and went to sleep before an early client meeting.

You didn’t get a chance to read the blogs of the folks you dined with until after 5pm the next day. The first was a great reminder of the fun, as was the second. The third, however, was a critique of the entire dinner. That blogger trashed the restaurant, the service, the food, you and your other new-found blogger friends. Exact quotes, taken out of context, had been and used in the blog post. The quotes were word-for-word accurate, but as they stood they sounded mean and petty, not they way they were said or intended.

The blogger who wrote the critique says that the event was fun and funny. But the remarks he makes are snarky — fully at your expense and that of the other two at dinner. You’ve never seen this sort of behavior before . . . from him or from anyone.

The post has been up for 8 hours and there are no comments.

You check your own post. Some cold “thank yous” are there — from folks not mentioned in your post, but mentioned in the quotes taken out of context in the other blogger’s recap.

How do you respond?

–ME “Liz” Strauss