Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

Edit note: I know some folks are going to say I’m miss­ing the point or I’m redefin­ing the term.

I’m writ­ing this because I feel like it has to be said. Blog­ger trans­parency is mostly bull squeeze.

Fel­low blog­gers, you may feel open and trans­par­ent but you can’t escape who you are — a per­son. And that means you’re a com­pli­cated mess of con­tra­dic­tions, illog­i­cal instincts, and sub-conscious emotions.

Sure, we all put on our blogs where we work, who are clients are, and that we’ve got Ama­zon affil­i­ate links here or there. That’s all dandy. But it’s all pretty damn obvi­ous that you work at places that have clients and if you link a book or review a cam­era, you might wanna make 50 cents.

What I’m writ­ing about now are prej­u­dices that we all have that are not so obvi­ous. The stuff we can’t escape because of who we are and how we’ve lived our lives. How we were raised, the eco­nomic con­di­tions we face, our fam­i­lies, race and reli­gion. Or even the things other peo­ple have done to us. These things shape our per­spec­tive on life and the world around us. That also shape how we think.

Some­times this is neg­a­tive. What hap­pens to us makes us nar­row minded, inflex­i­ble in our think­ing and intol­er­ant of other’s per­spec­tives. Just try read­ing a polit­i­cal blog or two.

But some­times it’s great. It cre­ates the edge we have that makes what we write more inter­est­ing than a fact-only piece writ­ten by the AP. And it fills a blog’s con­tent with pas­sion, insights and maybe a few curse words. Let’s face it, if you weren’t dif­fer­ent than me, with your own biases and pecu­liar­i­ties, I prob­a­bly wouldn’t be all that inter­ested in what you had to say.

This gooey stuff is what makes peo­ple who they are. But is it really none of any­one else’s busi­ness? On a pro­fes­sional blog? And should every blog post with “I was born to a South Car­olina share crop­per and robbed a con­ve­nience store when I was 14″? Or “I had a daddy who was an alco­holic but I was a cheer­leader and cap­tain of the debate team”? It’s per­sonal, but it’s also the stuff that could informs the way some­one writes and the opin­ions they have — which is what blog­ging is all about.

And what about pol­i­tics, reli­gion, par­ent­ing and social affec­ta­tions. Does stuff belong in the work­place? Opin­ions dif­fer on this, so it dif­fers on whether it belongs on and appears on one’s blog.

To be trans­par­ent and truly under­stand one’s motives, is this stuff is impor­tant? I think it is on many issues. And do you really think peo­ple would dis­cuss issues as freely if they were com­pletely and totally open about their pasts and their bur­dens? I doubt it. And that’s why I’m OK with opaque.

I’m not say­ing basic dis­clo­sure shouldn’t be defacto — I should know if you’re speak­ing about your client. I’m just get­ting a lit­tle sick of peo­ple telling me how trans­par­ent and unbi­ased they are and how I can trust every­thing they say to be fact because they let me know who they take money from. You know what? I should be able to trust you that you’re telling the truth. And adver­tis­ers gen­er­ally get sued when they say some­thing that isn’t true or inten­tion­ally mis­lead­ing. So get over it already.

What do you think?

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This entry was posted Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 6:14 pm and is filed under social media. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.