PAOful Blog

Bloggging is now part and parcel of our life. Once it belongs to the internet savvy and the young and trendy but now it seems like anyone can and does blog. For example, an ex-college of mine, Dick Yip, who retired last year started a popular blog (http://redsports.sg ) which highlights the local school sport scene and was able to have 26 000 monthly readers and 77 000 monthly pages views within a year.

There are as many reasons for people to blog as there are reasons for people to communicate. However, the desire to share with the virtual world may have unintended consequences for the blogger and the viewers that read the blog.

My friend’s son, Mark, discovered on the eve of his exam that one of his classmate, whom he has considered to be a close friend of his, has blogged about him. Although his classmate has used an acronym to represent Mark, any one who read the blog would know that the person referred to was him. Her remarks about Mark hurt him very much but luckily Mark was matured enough not to let it last long enough to affect his performance in the examination.

Whenever I write or blog, I will always use this acronym PAO to judge my effort. P stands for purpose or the intension of my writing. Do I want to inspire or motivate my readers? Or to I want to vent my anger or push the blame to someone else? Or maybe I just want to entertain or share an experience with my readers. A stands for the audience who read my blog or writing. These would include those whom I am aware of and those that I am unaware of. Recently I put a starcounter on my blog and was surprise to see the number of unique visitors that visit my blog. Finally O stands for the outcome that I want the audience to have when they read my writing.

I find that many bloggers often forget this aspect when they blog especially when they are angry and want to get an issue off their chest. They just type furiously and let their ideas and emotions run away with them.

When I come across such blogs, Plato’s chariot will come to my mind. Plato an ancient Greek philosopher, use the Chariot Allegory to explain the role of emotion in our life. He describes the Charioteer as driving a chariot pulled by two horses. One horse is white with a long neck and is well bred and well behaved and thus need not require the whip. The other is black with a short neck, badly bred, taxing and require the whip to behave.

According to Plato, the charioteer represents the rational and intellectual aspect of the person. The white horse symbolizes moral impulse or the positive aspect of the passionate nature while the black horse represents the irrational passions or concupiscent nature. The charioteer would have to use the whip constantly to whip the black horse so that the two horses can go where the charioteer wants to go. If the charioteer fails to control this black horse, then most probably the horse will go wherever he wants.

I find that when a blogger blogs when he is angry, the chances of him using words that can hurt his audience will be higher. When he is confronted with what he has blogged, he would claimed that it was not his intension to hurt the person he was blogging or to offend his reader. He might not be aware that the words he uses may have a negative impact or outcome for his audience.

Because the internet is still evolving and the rules for engagement are still being formulated, we may easily forget to use the whip to tame the black horse that sometime runs while in the blogs.

Blogging has been around for over a decade and as more people jump on the bandwagon to blog, I hope that they are aware that a blog is very different from a conversation or even a diary.

With powerful search engine like Goggle, just a few simple click of the mouse will enable anyone to reach any blog he wants. Unlike a diary which is private, a blog is never private even with five different passwords encrypted in a blog. This is because you can never guarantee that your readers will not post what you have written onto their own blog which might then become public domain. Unlike a conversation which is seldom recorded, readers can trace back and infer various meaning to what you have written a few months or even a few years back. Many bloggers are not aware that they leave a paper trail behind when they blog.

I remember that I was afraid of blogging until last year when I decided to goggle my name and was shocked at the number of people whom I do not know expressed their views about what I have written with regard to being an obedient wife in 2005 in the I Say column. Some bloggers were very vocal with regard to what I have shared about being a submissive wife in this modern, post-feminist era. The funny thing was that I sailed through the year 2005 without knowing that this was happening in the blogging world.

Once, I was in my family doctor clinic and I suggested that he goggled his name to see what others were writing about him. Instead, he goggled his daughter’s name and was shocked that she had proclaimed that she was a 23 year old woman when she was only 13 years old.

However, I am glad that most bloggers are responsible and if someone oversteps major social norms and cultural sensitivities, they will be flamed by other bloggers.

Perhaps before we get flamed we should remember to PAO our blog.