Riling people up
I don't know what it is but I think I like riling people up. I don't try to be controversial for the sake of being controversial. I just like knowing whether or not people agree with me on things, and if they don't, I for some reason have to try to convince them that they're wrong. But it does makes me feel better about it when people do agree.
I've been noticing this about myself recently since I've been blogging a ton at work. Of course, at work, you stick to work topics, outside of work, you stick to outside topics (although like this post, talking about stuff that happens at work but not related to company secrets or the like is perfectly acceptable...unless whomever you're talking about ends up reading your outside blog and gets all cranky because he/she's made out to look like a complete idiot or asshole, then well, if they end up firing you over it, so be it...if that's how the world works, you only get to work or hire people whom you are butt-buddies with and you don't care about smart or hard-working, then whatever. That's really what the ACLU is for anyway...).
Anyways, I recently spewed out something "semi-controversial" on my work blog. Semi-controversial only because I tried to bring up questions that I know everyone's thinking but are afraid to ask because, well, you don't bite the hand that feeds. But I bit. And I know it pissed some people off, because at least one guy asked if an adult wrote that and said that if his five year-old kid ranted like that, he'd be in timeout. Maybe the guy thought that other people would openly agree with him and form a lynch mob and hold a campaign to get me out of the company because I expressed my opinion about something. I wanted to tell the guy that maybe (according to Nanny 911 and those other Nanny shows) his five year-old was trying to communicate through his rant and he just needs to be heard, instead of being sent to timeout. Yeah, I know...as a kid, I would never have ranted enough to get sent to the "bad" corner because I knew better than to talk back. But I'm not a kid anymore, am I? I used to be shy, I never spoke up, but now it's different for some reason. I wanted to just say now that I really don't care what people think, but I think that's really what makes me blog about stuff, because I want to know what other people think.
Maybe I'm pushing some limits at work with my controversial posts, but I guess I don't really care. I know a lot of people feel the same way about things but fear for their jobs and don't want to speak up. And maybe it's a dumb way to speak up about it through such a passive mechanism as blogs, but so what? If people read it, they read it. If they don't, they don't. I don't write stuff so people will love me and want me to surrogate-mother their babies. But I also don't write stuff so people will hate me and get me fired. What they do is their own business. (By the way...I think people getting fired over blogs is the stupidest, pettiest thing I've heard about the internet, unless the person seriously blogged about company secrets or confidential stuff. So what if you don't like someone you work with? It's nothing new.)
