We cannot do everything by ourselves. So we pick some job for ourselves, and leave other jobs to others. What we do will serve others, and we obtain what others provide through a purchase or an exchange. A business transaction is made.
This is the age-old value-exchange model of economy.
In this model, everyone is a producer of something. Everyone's got something to provide, or a trade. And people's net worth is determined by the sum of the tangibles (material possessions and money) and the intangibles (knowledge, trust, credit, fame, contribution, history, etc).
In the world of information and ideas, a similar exchange system used to exist. People knew who the authority was, asked his opinion, and his opinion was valued. People also knew that information and ideas alone are cheap, and they need to be backed up by the actions of the authority figure. People knew their business, and speaking about someone else's business was not tasteful, so they kept to themselves and went unheard.
Scholarly writing still keeps this respect for the source. When someone writes a thesis, he needs to cite original references, or at least a review article so that the reader can trace back to the source of the idea. In the world of ideas, "who said it," or the idea source, actually has importance to give the thesis more weight and credibility.
Nowadays, anyone can speak about anything. Comments are made and opinions are expressed freely by anyone, qualified or unqualified, especially on the internet.
On the internet, there are many, often anonymous, people who speak up for something. Most News articles and blogs come with a "comment" section where anyone can write as a net citizen. Some comments are thoughtful and made after getting the point of the article or the blog. Other comments are not; some comments are made probably without even reading the article.
I call these people who make the poor, second-class comments online the Second Class Net Citizens (SCNC).
I do not ask why the SCNCs exist. Probably they have their reasons, and like Dr. Phil said in "Life strategies," "they do it because it works for them." Their product, the poor comments, can be categorized: naive and ignorant, a different or biased viewpoint, speaking with misunderstanding or mis-comprehension, a passion to open their mouth, hate and malice against the writer, etc. Their comments can burn a blog or twitter account with sufficient numbers.
I wanted to see how the writers of news and blogs deal with the SCNCs. Most news sites leave the SCNC comments as they are, unless the community decides to collapse the comments. Perhaps they (i.e. major news networks) can afford it because of their size. Next I read several smaller blogs where some SCNCs gather and leave comments.
[In case you are wondering, I do not have the SCNC issue. My blog does not have a comment section, because I do not have time to respond to each comment; I take serious comment via email only].
The most common response was to "ignore," if not delete the comment or report the comments by SCNCs (in this case I cannot see them). The second most frequent was making a brief comment focusing on the positive. Most blog writers do not get involved in a heated argument with a SCNC.
The lesson from the other bloggers' responses? You can't fix a SCNC. They are unaware of the fact that they need to build or earn trust to be heard and taken seriously.
If you want to be heard and taken seriously, you have to do two things; have a name for yourself, and be good enough at something to earn credibility and trust. Only when you do these can your words be listened to and your comments become valuable. And it may not be limited to the thing you are good at. With a halo effect, you may exercise influence in a broader subject, although many who are good at something tend to be modest. That is the way to go.
***************************************************
Last night we briefly showed up to the late night dance in Oklahoma Dance Rush (ODR). ODR is a part of national competition circuit for country-western/Ballroom/Swing dance. Beth Emerson and Mike Shoemake direct the event. The event location was moved to a fancy hotel, the Embassy Suite in Norman, OK, a few years ago. It was a good party.
