Caleb talks about how to deal with disagreement and people who meet who you end up loathing. I’ve run into very few people in this medium I genuinely dislike, and I mostly just ignore those people. I don’t get mad, I don’t put them on a blacklist, or otherwise bother. Hell, I didn’t even have a blacklist until this guy came along. I’ve never found it to be productive to harp on a disagreement until it becomes the stereotypical dead horse you just can’t stop flogging.
Sure there’ve been folks I’ve had disagreements with over the years, but that’s par for the course in a medium like this one. Additionally, people will tend to say things on the Internets that they would never say in a real life discussion, and you have to be mindful of that, and not hold it against people if and when you run across them in meatspace. Years ago when I played MMORPGs that was the rule; what happens on the game stays on the game. When you build an audience, you have more people sniping at you, and you get used to that. You have to have thick skin sometimes, and not take it personally. If you stand for something, you will make enemies, but not standing for anything is a worse, in my opinion.
Love the one reply to Caleb’s article, some guy posted this link:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theory
So true…..
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” — Winston Churchill
Nobody agrees on everything. It doesn’t mean you stop associating with them. If it did, you’d end up with nothing and nobody standing beside you.
So we keep it civil. We discuss, we argue, we state our positions and defend it with logic and evidence and facts. And at the end of the day if we still don’t agree, we can still respect each others’ opinions.
And THAT’S one of the major reasons I love this community.