(Hi, folks! For the time being, some, most, or all of the fol­low­ing links will still revert back to the orig­i­nal Writ­ing About Writ­ing web­page over on Blog­ger. This is not a mis­take. It just takes a long time to move thou­sands of arti­cles. Thank you for your patience as we nav­i­gate this tran­si­tion.)

Facebook Commenting Policy

Well.…it final­ly hap­pened.

My “can’t even” about the com­ments on my Face­book page went from fig­u­ra­tive to lit­er­al.

At over a well over a MILLION fol­low­ers, gen­tle reminders have stopped work­ing, admin-ing com­ments has become vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble, del­i­cate­ly explain­ing is a waste of my time, and my patience for unac­cept­able behav­ior is exhaust­ed. Too many peo­ple order­ing a dou­ble help­ing of sav­age with­out even a side order of chill. The laws of large num­bers are start­ing to ensure that even if thou­sands upon thou­sands of peo­ple under­stand the spir­it in which some­thing is pre­sent­ed, some­one will be hav­ing a bad day or not read care­ful­ly or think they under­stand a phrase that they don’t, or read in max­i­mal­ly bad faith.…or even just be a troll in my dun­geon.

Thus, the time has come for an offi­cial com­ment­ing pol­i­cy so that folks won’t be mak­ing their best I‑just-ripped-this-guy’s-hel­met-off-and-it-turned-out-to-be-Robert-The-Bruce-Mel-Gib­son-as-William-Wal­lace-dur­ing-the-bat­tle-of-Falkirk betrayed faces when I ban their ass­es.

Here’s the TL;DR part for those of you who don’t want to have to read very much:

This isn’t 4chan. You don’t get to say what­ev­er you want because of “free speech.” It’s my space. Think of it more like you are in my house and I am putting on a show for you. If you are abu­sive or con­temp­tu­ous, com­port your­self in such a way that any human being with feel­ings whose hos­pi­tal­i­ty you were under would­n’t invite you to come back, if you use big­ot­ed slurs, if you are dis­mis­sive or deri­sive about posts that would be com­mon­ly labeled as “social jus­tice,” promise to (or threat­en to) flounce from the page, “dare” me to ban you, or post spam links to either your own writ­ing or a com­mer­cial site, or do slimy hit­ting on peo­ple in the com­ments, you may be banned with­out warn­ing.

Now here’s the nuance if you want to under­stand it a lit­tle bet­ter:

Itty bit­ty point- If risqué lan­guage will make you blush, buck­le up or do a tuck and roll dive out the pas­sen­ger side. This shit’s not going to fuck­ing stop and I’ll fuck­ing ignore the fuck­ing com­ments and PM’s demand­ing it fuck­ing does. Gol­ly.

Itty bit­ty tee­ny tiny point - If you block an admin, you’re out. If you make some nasty com­ment on your way out, I will cheer­ful­ly delete it. Dis­cuss it like an adult, or leave like an adult. Your tantrum gets you noth­ing. I will make sure your “con­tri­bu­tion” is erased.

Smol point- If you slam the door on your way out, it’ll lock behind you. And if you dare me to kick you out, I always, always ALWAYS will. If you’re jok­ing around (“Blokt!”), please make sure I know it.

I care about you and I care about you achiev­ing your goals. What am I if not a sup­port­ive, but occa­sion­al­ly firm cheer­leader? If you flounce, I’ll help you stick to it because I know that’s what you would want. If you tell me you’re going to flounce, but keep reply­ing, I’ll help you find the door. If you threat­en to flounce in a spec­ta­cle, I’ll make the deci­sion much, much eas­i­er for you. I’m here for you, pal. Plus that’s just rude.

Tiny point- No, I’m not going to stop post­ing links to my blog. Ever. At least once a day (some­times two or three, just to annoy the haters). That’s the rea­son this page is here–to try to drum up a few hits and build an audi­ence. (It’s only kind of worth the effort, but it’s bet­ter than noth­ing.) You don’t ever have to vis­it the blog if you want to just enjoy the puns and the inspi­ra­tion memes and what­ev­er I find about writ­ing that tick­les my brain, but the snot­ty emails and whiny tears telling me that my page would be “so great if you just stopped all that self pro­mo­tion” will be used to fuel my Gen­e­sis device.

Rea­son­ably mod­er­ate sized point– I’m up to fifty or so PM’s a day. (Deplorably, none are mil­lion dol­lar con­tracts! I mean why did I even want to be a writer again?) Most are spam or ask­ing me for some kind of free edit­ing or beta read­ing or to share their own page some­thing. So I don’t even reply to the major­i­ty of them. My freelance/tutoring rate is $75USD/hr and TRUST ME that you don’t want me doing copy edit­ing (though I’m pret­ty good at content/developmental end). If your solic­i­ta­tion for help does not include some indi­ca­tion that you plan to pay me or do me a com­pa­ra­ble ser­vice, I will sim­ply ignore it. (I get way way way too many of those every day.)

Check out my Face­book FAQ, and you’ll prob­a­bly find the answer to your ques­tion. At least you’ll find the answer to 95% of the PM’s I get.

Also if you PM me, please keep in mind that I’m just a human being. I lis­ten to the Tron: Lega­cy Sound­track, watch MCU and Star Wars with my fam­i­ly, play Fall­out 4 and cuss when I stum­ble into an Alpha Death­claw at 12th lev­el, love Robert Asprin books despite myself, I nev­er trust myself that some­one’s flirt­ing with me even if I notice, and try to write every day. I’m self con­scious about parts of me that don’t con­form to con­ven­tion­al attrac­tive­ness stan­dards, I cry when large swaths of my friends excuse tor­ture so long as it is done to the “right sort of peo­ple,” and have a real­ly, real­ly bad next-day if I eat too much piz­za. Mes­sages demand­ing I do X imme­di­ate­ly or take down Y post because you did­n’t like it or “HOW COULD YOU…” will be cheer­ful­ly ignored. Add in some school­yard shit talk to this kind of bull­shit, and I will give you the Strong Bad treat­ment.

Kind of slight­ly large point- As of this writ­ing, I can­not (and in many cas­es will not) read the com­ments on this page.

There are OVER a mil­lion of you and one of me. (Well…sort of two. But usu­al­ly it’s only one of us at a time; my assis­tant only jumps in when I’m unable to.) I can­not POSSIBLY keep up with all the com­ments even if main­tain­ing FB were my only job (it’s not). Fur­ther­more, what was once a play­ful com­mu­ni­ty with the occa­sion­al legit jerk­wad eas­i­ly dealt with has become more and more like the bot­tom half of the inter­net (and all that that implies). I actu­al­ly avoid the com­ments unless I sus­pect it’s a post which will attract big­ots and I need to do my ban­ning thing. When a mil­lion peo­ple are see­ing some­thing, the law of large num­bers sug­gests that some­one, some­where read it wrong, is upset about some­thing else, needs lunch and a nap, wants to pick a fight, or just gen­er­al­ly is going to be a com­plete anal seep­age drip­ping ass­hole about it. I know it’s a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly tiny amount, but the num­ber of peo­ple con­fus­ing shit­post­ing with clever makes me weep. I know you just came here to attack and now you’re feel­ing such a good time, but I like parad­ing through peo­ple’s rain. Seri­ous­ly though, enough peo­ple are real­ly, real­ly mean that it hurts my soul. It’s hon­est­ly not good for my men­tal health to even try to read them all.

Which means three things prag­mat­i­cal­ly:

ONE: if some­one is being a com­plete ass in the com­ments, send me a link through PM, and I’ll decide what to do. (Ban them. Warn them. Rick­roll them. What­ev­er.) But I miss 90+% of what’s going on in the com­ments, so don’t count on me to step in if you haven’t noti­fied me–I prob­a­bly don’t even know it’s hap­pen­ing. Please send me a link so I know WHERE the prob­lem is hap­pen­ing. I post sev­er­al posts a day and some­times the com­ments go on for a week or more, so I’ll need help find­ing where to go.

TWO: I won’t even see, and cer­tain­ly won’t reply to a lot of com­ments. I just can’t. It hurts me in my ten­der fee-fees to try. I know some of you def­i­nite­ly are address­ing the page admin with your com­ments, but you’ll have to send me a PM if it’s in some way urgent.

I’ve ignore a lot of com­ments late­ly that either miss the point or clear­ly were made by some­one who did­n’t read the entire piece they were respond­ing to. It’s not per­son­al; it’s just a time thing. Read what you’re respond­ing to if you want me to take a com­ment seri­ous­ly.

*Pro­tip: demand­ing to know the answer to a ques­tion that is lit­er­al­ly answered in the first para­graph of the post is gen­er­al­ly a pret­ty good hint that you did­n’t do the read­ing.

Over the years, I have learned that (espe­cial­ly on the Inter­net) if you point out that some­one clear­ly has­n’t read some­thing, they are more like­ly to attack than take the sug­ges­tion with some humil­i­ty. 

Also, if you real­ly want me to reply, send a PM. Just remem­ber that whole “human” thing if you tread that path or I will make 35-year-old pop cul­ture ref­er­ences at you by quot­ing The Last Cru­sade.

THREE: I don’t have time to gen­tly warn every­one. (“Now now. There’s a human being with feel­ings on the oth­er end of your apoplec­tic abuse. Let’s be kind and gen­tle big­ots.”) I’m assum­ing you already know how to be a decent per­son and that the inter­net some­times helps you to….uh….forget. If I see bad faith behav­ior, I’ll just start swing­ing the ol’ Ban Hammer™Mjölnir [I call it M.J. cause we’re THAT close.] You should know bet­ter than to behave that way (and you WOULD know bet­ter in any space that was­n’t online). My warn­ings are reserved for folks who maybe did­n’t know they were on thin ice.

And they get exact­ly ONE.

Large point- This is my page. It’s free con­tent for you deliv­ered straight to your com­put­er on an aver­age of 12 times a day (depend­ing on the FB algo­rithm). This free con­tent you enjoy takes me some­where between 30 min­utes to 90 min­utes a day of unpaid labor. I’m going to post what­ev­er the fuck I want. I’m going to post what I find fas­ci­nat­ing. What I find inter­est­ing. What I find fun­ny. What I find engag­ing.

And I’m going to post my blog. Even though it’s some­times a very thin con­nec­tion to writ­ing, delves into socio/political issues, or talks about my per­son­al life. Not every sec­tion of it is about writ­ing, but if I can find the SLIGHTEST bit of con­nec­tive tis­sue, it’s going here.

I wel­come sug­ges­tions. I wel­come dia­logue. I wel­come dis­course. I wel­come con­cerns. I wel­come crit­i­cism. (As I said above, you will like­ly have to PM me to get my atten­tion since there are so many of you, but I still wel­come this stuff.) I will be espe­cial­ly recep­tive to the con­cerns that some­thing I’ve post­ed has inad­ver­tent­ly engaged in some sort of insti­tu­tion­al harm.

How­ev­er, if you com­ment (or PM for that mat­ter) as if you are enti­tled to have MY page be what­ev­er you want in the same way you might scream at the Spokane McDon­alds night shift man­ag­er because there isn’t lob­ster ther­mi­dor on the menu, I can promise you that the con­ver­sa­tion will go one of two ways: If you’re just being boor­ish and demand­ing with­out regard for the fact that I’m not a robot in a skin suit sent from Khy­ron Beta Prime to please your every whim, I’ll ignore while singing old Star­ship songs. (“And we can BUIIIIIIIIIILD this dream togeth­er…”) If you’re being abu­sive, I’ll ban you. There are OVER A MILLION of you. Even if I had an inter­est in keep­ing every­one hap­py, I could­n’t. 

And, shh­h­h­hh,  I don’t actu­al­ly have any inter­est in keep­ing all of you hap­py. Some of you sta­tus quo defend­ers who I very much want to dis­turb. To say noth­ing of big­ots. 

So I’ll be true to myself, and if that both­ers you SO. FUCKING. MUCH. that you can’t give the ol’ scroll wheel fin­ger a quick work­out, then you get to talk to me like I’m a sen­si­tive artist and shit. Because I am a del­i­cate cre­ative fuck­ing flower, god­damnit! FUCK!

Add to an above demand a threat to flounce if I keep doing what you don’t like, and I will just assume that I should show you the door to save myself future bor­ing con­ver­sa­tions.

If, on the oth­er hand, you’re just going to feel jilt­ed if this page isn’t exact­ly what you want to see all the time, you should feel absolute­ly free to spend the next decade and a half post­ing 10–15 pieces of con­tent every day about once an hour to build up your own audi­ence, and then you can make that page what­ev­er you want. 

No promis­es that I won’t stop by and com­plain though. Just for the sym­met­ri­cal beau­ty of it all. Love a good chi­as­mus…..

This goes just as well if I post a joke you don’t “like.” I care (deeply) if I’ve inad­ver­tent­ly dehu­man­ized a group of peo­ple. I don’t care that some did­n’t get the joke or did­n’t find it fun­ny or it made fun of Chris­tian­i­ty or some­thing. If you don’t stop to look up what a phrase meant before assum­ing bad faith, that’s not my prob­lem. And try­ing to guilt me by telling me there are chil­dren or sec­ond lan­guage learn­ers who might take it seri­ous­ly won’t real­ly get much trac­tion either since chil­dren should­n’t be here and I’m not billing myself as an edu­ca­tion­al site. Learn­ing to nav­i­gate a world in which some writ­ten rhetoric involves satire, irony, or sar­casm is part of the cost of busi­ness in Eng­lish, and my job on this site isn’t to act as those fil­ters for oth­ers.

Again, if some­thing both­ers you that much, drop me a PM and let’s chat. But remem­ber the “catch.” If you want to get a mes­sage back: you have to treat me like a human with feel­ings. Last I checked, the cyber­net­ic brain over­lay had yet to take.

Beyond Hel­la Huge Point (about social jus­tice)- 

Every god­damned time I post an arti­cle or meme or any­thing that deigns to inter­sect with how writ­ing and writ­ers affect social issues,

…or an inter­pre­ta­tion of a work of art or enter­tain­ment that chal­lenges the sta­tus quo, how lan­guage reflects soci­etal prej­u­dice,

…or how white­washed, sex­ist, and anti-LGBT pub­lish­ing is,

.…or the nar­ra­tives through which we define our world that could use scruti­ny,

….or lit­er­al­ly any­thing about a sin­gu­lar they

a new gag­gle of jerk­wads end up being shown the door, like, EN MASSE.

Or hell, even just post a lit­tle Con­tent Notice on some­thing they think isn’t a problem–so much so that it must be mocked.

It’s not that they dis­agree. Dis­agree­ment I can han­dle. The com­ments all over this page are filled with disagreement–we’re def­i­nite­ly no echo cham­ber. The prob­lem is they either decide to react in the most dis­mis­sive and deri­sive way pos­si­ble (“This is SJW crap!” “Ableism? That’s insane­ly [r‑word] you [c‑word].”) in which case this page is not for them, and I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly want to have to deal with that sort of shit in post after post…OR they out­right lose their com­po­sure and abu­sive­ly attack oth­er mem­bers or me for tak­ing the time and ener­gy to attempt to explain the frame of an issue or share a per­son­al per­spec­tive on a top­ic.

If what essen­tial­ly amounts to free tutor­ing about how lan­guage affects peo­ple who aren’t exact­ly like you is going to be shat on because you want­ed to “win” an argu­ment, have the last word, con­de­scend to the sug­ges­tion that the world is unequal and our print media might play a part in that, or treat peo­ple like crap for shar­ing an opin­ion that chal­lenges the sta­tus quo, Writ­ing About Writ­ing is sim­ply not for you.

There is a one-to-one echo that exists with­in this reac­tion that I am pret­ty sen­si­tive to (mild CN for abuse dynam­ics): abusers gas light­ing their vic­tims. Instead of tak­ing a moment to con­sid­er why some­one is upset, that they are accu­rate­ly able to assess their own men­tal state, that they can be trust­ed to relay when they are feel­ing hurt, or that their life expe­ri­ence of mar­gin­al­iza­tion may be some­thing worth lis­ten­ing to, often they are told they are being dra­mat­ic or ridicu­lous and dis­missed out­right. Their feel­ings and even their actu­al expe­ri­ences are inval­i­dat­ed. We see this in a per­son­al rela­tion­ship and it rais­es our hack­les (hope­ful­ly), but when a group in social pow­er (like men) do it to a group they have social pow­er over (like women or gen­der vari­ant folks) on a mas­sive scale, it is con­sid­ered per­fect­ly nor­mal behav­ior. And it can even cause the peo­ple who are con­stant­ly being dis­missed and derid­ed to ques­tion their own per­cep­tions of real­i­ty.

(I think abuse and oppres­sion have a num­ber of shock­ing par­al­lels, but maybe a post for anoth­er time.)

Let me be blunt about this. (Ya know…cause I’ve been sweet­ly danc­ing around the point until now.)

Y’all are fuck­ing writ­ers, and this is a page about fuck­ing writ­ing. You fuck­ing ought to know bet­ter than any­one that words car­ry tremen­dous fuck­ing power…possibly even to invoke fuck­ing harm. Nobody ever silent­ly went to war or com­mit­ted geno­cide with­out fuck­ing words fuel­ing them first. No one ever artic­u­lat­ed a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for racism or sex­ism that caused peo­ple actu­al PHYSICAL HARM with­out using fuck­ing words to do so.

And nobody ever said “let’s fuck­ing com­mit human atroc­i­ties because we’re just that evil” either. They always always ALWAYS fuck­ing ratio­nal­ized it away as nec­es­sary for their own protection.…and they did so using fuck­ing words. “Just” words.

So if you sit on your couch every Novem­ber 5th watch­ing a dude in a Guy Fawkes mask blovi­ate between the fight scenes that, “Words offer the means to mean­ing,” and then starts a rev­o­lu­tion because the “truth and per­spec­tives” of his words are bul­let­proof, and then you imag­ine your­self lead­ing said glo­ri­ous rev­o­lu­tion with your own mar­tial arts skill and throw­ing stilet­tos, yet you then turn right around and roll your eyes at “those damned Social Jus­tice War­riors” being all “over­sen­si­tive” to  some slur you did­n’t mean “that way,” you are DROWNING in the irony of social pow­er dynam­ics and your own dou­ble stan­dards.

I’m not going to have a con­ver­sa­tion every sin­gle time I bring up an issue of social equal­i­ty with folks whose main con­ceit seems to be: “writ­ers should be able to write what­ev­er they want.” You already CAN write what­ev­er you want you fuck­ing jack­hole. You can write your sausage fest sto­ry with no peo­ple of col­or and one woman who con­stant­ly needs res­cu­ing, and ignore every bit of advice out there about how to make deep and inter­est­ing char­ac­ters. You can write a man­i­festo direct­ly against trans folks and BIPOC—just look at the Repub­li­can par­ty. Lit­er­al­ly no one will ever stop you. And if you’re in a sit­u­a­tion where you can’t write what­ev­er you want (polit­i­cal­ly or social­ly), it’s cer­tain­ly not uphold­ing the sta­tus quo that is what you’re not “allowed” to write. Fur­ther writ­ers often do write what­ev­er they want no mat­ter how harm­ful or objec­tion­able. There’s a bil­lion­aire out there who writes trans­pho­bic crap every day. Rarely are their careers even impact­ed and occa­sion­al­ly that’s what launch­es them. If these writ­ers stay off the pages that crit­i­cize them, they don’t even have to have their fee-fees hurt. So if you’re going to react with hyper­bole and loss of com­po­sure to any­one ask­ing you to con­sid­er how and what you write.…on a blog about writ­ing, Writ­ing About Writ­ing is def­i­nite­ly, DEFINITELY not for you.

But CENSORSHIP, Chris! But FREEZE PEACH!

“Do you know what I hear Dan­ny? Noth­ing. No foot­steps up the stairs, no hov­er­craft out­side the win­dow, no click­ey­ty-click of the lit­tle spi­ders. Do you know why I can’t hear those things Dan­ny? Because right now, no one is stop­ping you from say­ing what­ev­er you want. I’m not a gov­ern­ment agent. This page isn’t a pub­lic park. You have con­flat­ed free­dom of speech with enti­tle­ment of medium.….Danny.”

If you’ve mis­tak­en a gov­ern­men­tal­ly pro­tect­ed free­dom with the absence of con­se­quence, feel free to study up on both again. (But for ten bonus points, see if you can iden­ti­fy the irony in try­ing to silence crit­i­cism by invok­ing your “free speech” ad nau­se­um.) And your lit­tle guilt trip, com­plete with a high school sopho­more’s com­pre­hen­sion of the word “Orwellian,” is not going to pre­vent me from mod­er­at­ing com­ments in my own space. This isn’t even a social jus­tice activism page. I’m going pret­ty easy on you com­par­a­tive­ly. I don’t expect you to be ful­ly inter­sec­tion­al (or even to know what “ful­ly inter­sec­tion­al” means). But the cliche that “You are awful and hate free speech if you block or ban peo­ple” is regur­gi­tat­ed most­ly by the same enti­tled dill­holes who don’t like it when peo­ple have boundaries.…at all.…ever.…about any­thing. I have like eigh­teen jobs and NONE of them are lis­ten­ing to you blovi­ate about why peo­ple should­n’t be allowed to define their own real­i­ties and tell their own nar­ra­tives.

If you want to drop some hate­ful com­men­tary, share my arti­cle in your own space with com­men­tary. Oth­er­wise be ready to be shown the door.

Frankly, I’d rather have a small­er fol­low­ing where those who nor­mal­ly run scream­ing from the com­ments sec­tions on most of the inter­net feel com­fort­able par­tic­i­pat­ing in the con­ver­sa­tion, than a large fol­low­ing where the Sta­tus Quo Defend­ers speak over and run roughshod over any­one who has the temer­i­ty to sug­gest that maybe arts and human­i­ties do some­thing wacky like affect social per­cep­tions, that rep­re­sen­ta­tion mat­ters, and that once in a while we might ought to think about such things. The whole damned world will let the peo­ple in pow­er decide what is ridicu­lous to care about (spoil­er: it’s always going to be any­thing that chal­lenges their pow­er in any way). Here I want an actu­al­ly diverse con­ver­sa­tion, not just more and loud­er and more hos­tile dis­mis­sive­ness rein­forc­ing the sta­tus quo and active­ly silenc­ing such voic­es.

I care about how to ques­tion whether nar­ra­tives are rein­forc­ing insti­tu­tion­al harm. I care about how much of the writ­ing that exists (even wild­ly pop­u­lar writ­ing) often rein­forces harm­ful sta­tus quos like racism, sex­ism, het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty, trans­pho­bia, and more–things are ingrained in many of our nar­ra­tive tropes or through our lack of or type of rep­re­sen­ta­tion.  If you want me to be vapid about the impact of writ­ing and stick to lin­guis­tic pre­scrip­tivism that makes fun of legit­i­mate Eng­lish dialects (often in a vague­ly racist and def­i­nite­ly clas­sist way) or those who strug­gle to get the right homonym, drops the same dozen arti­cles (and their knock offs) over and over on how to pub­lish your novel/find an agent/write a query let­ter, and nev­er real­ly asks you to think hard thoughts about how pow­er­ful writ­ing is in cre­at­ing the sto­ries shape our cul­ture, Writ­ing About Writ­ing is pos­i­tive­ly absolute­ly unequiv­o­cal­ly not for you.

“Because maybe.…JUST MAYBE, arts and human­i­ties affect social per­cep­tions and that’s worth exam­in­ing once in a while…”

If we can’t at least con­sid­er and think about these things, we’re just telling the same sto­ries over and over again, not real­ly explor­ing new ones.

In case that lit­tle Rantsa­lot moment was too gen­tle or eso­teric: If your reply is noth­ing more than “This is PC bull­shit!” or “This is crap. You’re the real sex­ist!” or “Shut the fuck up with this pan­der­ing crap!” (or any of the thou­sands of vari­a­tions on this theme that is intend­ed to silence through dis­missal that I’ve heard over the years) and cer­tain­ly if you use big­ot­ed slurs or dou­ble down on your “right” to be sex­ist, misog­y­nis­tic, racist, trans­pho­bic, homo­pho­bic, ableist, or fat­pho­bic after you’ve been asked to stop, I will use my gen­tle admin tools to explain to you my objec­tions.

Don’t wor­ry. The oth­er 1.23 mil­lion of us will car­ry on with­out you.

You don’t have to agree with me. You DO have to play nice in my play­ground.

*Once upon a time when I was get­ting such com­ments once a month, before I had can­cer, before there were kids in the pic­ture, and before I took on anoth­er job to make ends meet, I had the time to warn and explain the prob­lem gen­tly with each per­son in an exhaust­ing chore­o­graphed dance (that lead to a ban­ning or a flounce 99% of the time any­way); how­ev­er, I do not have the time or ener­gy to con­tin­ue to do this. I will sim­ply pro­tect this com­mu­ni­ty from harm and/or that sta­tus quo defend­er bull­shit.

ADDITIONAL INFO

The Just Not Worth It Clause: 
You are in my space. (You are not enti­tled to be here.) You are gen­er­al­ly wel­come as long as you refrain from a few choice behav­iors (see above). How­ev­er, I am under no oblig­a­tion to extend infi­nite­ly my hos­pi­tal­i­ty to those who are con­stant sources of neg­a­tive ener­gy and make my work unpleas­ant so long as you tech­ni­cal­ly don’t break the rules. It might take a while for me to rec­og­nize your name, longer still to watch you for a while, and even longer to decide what to do, but if you are con­stant­ly argu­men­ta­tive, unpleas­ant, bel­li­cose, con­de­scend­ing, and gen­er­al­ly neg­a­tive, I will even­tu­al­ly show you the door. Because this is my space, and it’s just not worth it to me to have to put up with that on post after post. 

And if you’re firm­ly and often rep­re­sent­ing your­self as unwill­ing to under­stand issues such as sys­temic inequal­i­ty, the scripts of oppres­sion, the dif­fer­ence between big­otry and point­ing enti­tle­ment cul­ture, or things like that, I may even­tu­al­ly decide that my space is not for you.

Guest posts:
I’ll leave up any­thing (even if I don’t ful­ly under­stand it) unless it is to a com­mer­cial site or it is self-pro­mo­tion. The for­mer will be removed and the poster banned. The lat­ter will be removed (and if it keeps hap­pen­ing the poster will be banned). If you want to pro­mote some­thing on my page, mes­sage me. Whether or not I say yes will depend on how much it has to do with writ­ing. Basi­cal­ly I’m not going to let peo­ple spam my read­ers.

Pedantry:
Knock your­self out, (lord knows I could use the help) but keep in mind the oth­er rules before you decide that what your gram­mar fix needs is to be slathered in the gravy of bump­tious supe­ri­or­i­ty. I’ll fix it if I can. The more obnox­ious and con­de­scend­ing you get about it, though, the more I’m going to look at that “ban” but­ton like Sylvester looks at Tweety. And if you are being clas­sist and racist by mock­ing a legit­i­mate dialect of Eng­lish or a sec­ond lan­guage learn­er or some­thing, Tweet­y’s chances are look­ing worse than if Emma Web­ster isn’t there with a broom (that’s “Granny,” not the sceno­graph­ic British artist).

Links in com­ments:
If they’re not absolute­ly rel­e­vant to the top­ic or are clear­ly self pro­mo­tion­al, I’ll erase the com­ment. If it keeps hap­pen­ing I’ll swing The Ban Hammer™Also, just so you know, I kind of hate peo­ple who respond to my writ­ing about a top­ic with some­one else’s writ­ing about the same top­ic. Like I know it’s pet­ty, but I’m here to pro­mote my OWN shit, not some­one else’s. 

Bot Com­ment­ing:
The engage­ment is appre­ci­at­ed, but the gener­ic reply-to-any­thing com­ment will even­tu­al­ly get you banned.

Trolling Com­ments to Hit on Folks:
I ban any­one who trolls the com­ments hit­ting on femme pre­sent­ing folks. No ques­tions. No appeals. You will be shown the door. This is not the space for that and I want those folks to feel safe com­ment­ing here, not as if doing so is going to open them up to being oozed.  

(And just to antic­i­pate a pos­si­ble social script designed to pro­tect and defend this sort of behav­ior, if you can’t tell the dif­fer­ence between gen­uine­ly strik­ing up a con­ver­sa­tion that MIGHT end up in a “Hey would you be okay with a friend request?” and the behav­ior I’m talk­ing about [usu­al­ly appear­ance based, usu­al­ly IMMEDIATELY focused on a friend request, almost always cut and past­ed to mul­ti­ple peo­ple], then you should­n’t be doing either.)

Post Attri­bu­tion:
I get macros from all over the inter­spherewe­bo­verse. Pin­ter­est. Oth­er pages. Friends share things they find with me. Old posts. Even Tum­blr. The inter­net is like that with peo­ple post­ing and repost­ing. Orig­i­nal attri­bu­tion can be incred­i­bly hard to find after things have been through mul­ti­ple lay­ers of repost­ing (even with things like reverse search images, which even if they always worked [they don’t] add enough annoy­ance and time sink to an already thank­less labor of love to make it not worth it). Plus many artists are hap­py to see their work pro­lif­er­at­ed just so long as it has their water­mark on it.

As a con­tent cre­ator myself though, I know how much it sucks to watch some­thing you made go viral for some­one else with­out so much as a link or even attri­bu­tion. If I’ve post­ed some­thing that belongs to you or some­one you know or have post­ed a web­com­ic with a water­mark that you can’t bear to see not linked with a URL, let me know and I’ll edit the post.

Or if it’s yours and you want me to just take it down, repost with attri­bu­tion, or what­ev­er to han­dle the sit­u­a­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there are some peo­ple will try to claim cred­it for some­thing they did­n’t make, even edit­ing out an exist­ing water­mark, so I’ll be look­ing for some small indi­ca­tion of actu­al source-age. (Usu­al­ly that’s a triv­ial mat­ter for a con­tent cre­ator of link­ing the orig­i­nal post.)

I am hap­py to do this. But please remem­ber a cou­ple of things: First, you need to mes­sage me (rather than just com­ment) if you def­i­nite­ly want me to see it because I don’t reli­ably engage with com­ments (see above).

Sec­ond, be kind. There are basi­cal­ly a mil­lion of you and one of me and I am putting up 15 posts a day, so what seems like a triv­ial effort to you on a sin­gle post may not be to me, espe­cial­ly over time. If you want to be the attri­bu­tion police rather than just a friend­ly “Hey I found a source on that post for you!” feel free to go run your own page and find out what a headache it can be.

Respond­ing to Posts (Espe­cial­ly Answer­ing Mail­box Ques­tions) With­out Read­ing the Arti­cle:
Lis­ten.…

This one gets like four and a half stars.

I am a flawed, frail human being.

One of my human fail­ings is that even though I under­stand the FB algo­rithm and how engage­ment helps, it real­ly annoys me when I post some­thing I spent an hour (or two or three or five or EIGHT or MORE) writ­ing, and peo­ple jump into the com­ments to take it upon them­selves to read answer the ques­tion CLEARLY with­out hav­ing read the arti­cle. It just irri­tates the fuck out of me.

It’s like read­ing your own shit at anoth­er author’s Q&A. It’s like using your “ques­tion” at a con­ven­tion to talk for “more of a com­ment real­ly.” I’m glad you found the ques­tion provoca­tive (I real­ly am!), but JOIN the con­ver­sa­tion. Don’t start a new one of your own in MY com­ments. Some­times these replies don’t even real­ize they’re sug­gest­ing exact­ly the same thing I did or have used one or two of the same exam­ples. It’s great that we’re all on the same page, but how rude! It’s like those car­toons where some­one sug­gests some­thing and then anoth­er char­ac­ter says the same thing. In the world of com­ments at the end of posts, you usu­al­ly at least see peo­ple who have engaged with the arti­cle (some­times they clear­ly did­n’t get past a cer­tain point before com­ment­ing, did­n’t under­stand a part, or were read­ing in bad faith, but you gen­er­al­ly don’t get replies that dis­re­gard the source mate­r­i­al whole cloth. Social media means an awful lot of peo­ple jump in to tell you what they think of the title and/or pre­view text. Knock your­self out (I guess), but be ready for your admin to hide or delete your com­ment.

You need to start your own blog for this shit
If you want to reply to some­thing, enjoy. If you want to dis­agree with me, have fun. (Just remem­ber all the oth­er rules.) How­ev­er, if you want to write some shit that is seri­ous­ly longer than the post you’re reply­ing to, go find your own plat­form. And if it’s just some “take down” shit (espe­cial­ly of the “I‑did­n’t-man­age-to-fin­ish-read­ing-this” vari­ety), I’m prob­a­bly just going to hide it. It’s an admin pow­er that pages have. You and your friends will be able to see it and give each oth­er high fives, but no one else will. Suck it.

Argu­ing with “You should be writ­ing” macros:
Uh…whatever cooks your chur­ro, boss. You do you.

How­ev­er, let me add a cou­ple of things: as I dig through the depths of the inter­net for and/or cre­ate such memes that aren’t a pro­fu­sion of sparkling hot white guys, keep the big­ot­ed slurs out of your polemics if you don’t want to get banned. You can yell at macros remind­ing you to write (or what­ev­er) like old man yelling at cloud if that’s your jam, but big­otry is no more accept­able as a reply to a You Should Be Writ­ing macro than any­where else in this space.

Sec­ond, I have a fold­er full of peo­ple thank­ing me. Lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds, maybe thou­sands of mes­sages basi­cal­ly say­ing that the dai­ly reminders were won­der­ful for their moti­va­tion. I’m not going to stop because your com­plaints get more and more hyper­bol­ic, but I will even­tu­al­ly assume that my page is not for you.

Argu­ing with oth­er macros or posts:
If you have a sig­nif­i­cant ide­o­log­i­cal prob­lem with a quote or an idea or post, I first invite you to sit with it and think about what insight it might offer. Not every­thing is about you. It might not be say­ing what you think it is. Have you read it in the best faith or are you run­ning it through an ide­o­log­i­cal lens and assum­ing that I’m say­ing some­thing maybe I’m not? I post things reg­u­lar­ly that are mutu­al­ly exclu­sive because some­times they’re for begin­ners, some­times for vet­er­ans, some­times for peo­ple who are pre­scrip­tive about lan­guage, some­times about peo­ple who think they don’t actu­al­ly need to learn gram­mar, some­times for cock­sure folks who won’t suf­fer an edi­tor, and some­times for those who need a lit­tle pick me up to their con­fi­dence. Some things are for peo­ple who want to be cap­i­tal W writ­ers and need to stop mak­ing excus­es. Some are for peo­ple with exec­u­tive dys­func­tion who need to be kinder to them­selves about what they can and can’t do. If you can glean a point, a con­ceit, or a the­sis that might be valu­able to some writer SOMEWHERE, maybe it isn’t quite so impor­tant that you kick in the doors, knock over a vase, and make sure every­one upstairs can hear you scream­ing that you don’t absolute­ly love it. 

Far be it from me to sug­gest that a sin­gle 280 char­ac­ter tweet is going to con­tain all the nuance or that a pre­scrip­tive tum­blr post has advice that you won’t be able to imag­ine an excep­tion to, but if you can find some­thing inter­est­ing, use­ful, or edi­fy­ing to your writ­ing, that’s prob­a­bly why I post­ed it.

Okay, you’ve had a deep breath or three and you still don’t like it? It’s okay to let peo­ple know you’re doing the oppo­site of endors­ing the mes­sage or that you see a glar­ing gap in con­text, bring the nuance! I wel­come it. How­ev­er, read­ing cling­ing to a worst faith read, assum­ing that any advice is panacea and that you are enti­tled to tear into it, the poster, any­one who agrees, or ME using the most hos­tile and hyper­bol­ic lan­guage you can come up with because “that’s how the inter­net works” will not go well for you. Not here. Save that shit for Red­dit.

I post­ed a thing you REALLY dis­agree with:
I post things I don’t even agree with myself. (Not harm­ful things, but stuff about craft or process.) Not every writer is going to agree on every way to be a writer–beyond read­ing and writ­ing a lot. Go ahead and dis­agree, but if you get into that “How ever could you POST shit like this?” ter­ri­to­ry, it might be a short con­ver­sa­tion.

Poll Nom­i­na­tions:
If you don’t go to the blog web­page and make your nom­i­na­tion a com­ment, it won’t end up on the poll. If you don’t go to the blog web­page and make your nom­i­na­tion a com­ment, it won’t end up on the poll.IF YOU DON’T GO TO THE BLOG WEBPAGE AND MAKE YOUR NOMINATION A COMMENT, IT WON’T END UP ON THE POLL!

J.A.Q.ing off:
You might think I can’t tell the dif­fer­ence between ask­ing ques­tions and “just ask­ing ques­tions” about some­thing but it’s actu­al­ly breath­tak­ing­ly easy. (Par­tic­u­lar­ly when com­bined with “It’s real­ly obvi­ous that you haven’t actu­al­ly read that.”) So under­stand that after thir­ty years of being online and 15 years of teach­ing, I know the dif­fer­ence between a sin­cere ques­tion and bait when I see it.

You’re so Clever:
One of the dou­ble edged swords of a com­mu­ni­ty this large is that there is often a “race” to be the first to make a clever quip with almost every post. No prob­lem when they’re fun­ny, but some­times peo­ple mis­take clever and mean. If the tim­ber of these quips seems always to be dis­cour­ag­ing or elit­ist (or some oth­er vari­ant of shit­ty), you may even­tu­al­ly find MJ thirsts to revoke your com­ment­ing priv­i­leges.

Shit­ty com­ments:
One of my admin pow­ers as a page run­ner is to hide a com­ment so that only the per­son who made it and their friends can see it. I use this lib­er­al­ly when peo­ple are just being gen­er­al jerk­wads. You can cry your maudlin tears about free speech or what­ev­er, but I make no bones about mod­er­at­ing the com­ments in my own space. If you don’t have the deco­rum to treat your unpaid host with a tiny bit of decen­cy, he does­n’t have to suf­fer giv­ing you a plat­form by proxy.

I only ban peo­ple if they’re being big­ots or extreme­ly harm­ful. (It’s always par­tic­u­lar­ly fun­ny to watch peo­ple who say “Watch, now we’ll get banned because we dis­agreed,” go right on com­ment­ing about how I cen­sor them.) If you imag­ine that you are seat­ed around a table with every­one you’re talk­ing sip­ping a tasty bev­er­age of your choice and being watched by a group of stu­dents tak­ing a class on how to dis­cuss issues like adults, you will prob­a­bly do just fine.

Please also see my Face­book FAQ if you have more ques­tions.

Ques­tions? Com­ments? Want a future arti­cle to go into more detail? Mail me through our con­tact form. Just be sure to pick the right top­ic from the drop down menu, and check the archives—particularly the F.A.Q.—to see if your ques­tion has been asked before.

If you’re enjoy­ing this blog, and would like to see more arti­cles like this one, the writer is a guy with rent and insur­ance to pay who would love to spend more time writ­ing. Please con­sid­er con­tribut­ing to my Patre­on. As lit­tle as $3/month (less-than-a-lat­te a month) will get you in on backchan­nel con­ver­sa­tions, patron-only polls, and my spe­cial ear when I ask for advice about future projects or blog changes.

Or if a one-time dona­tion (or some type of non-mon­e­tary dona­tion) is more your speed, I have a Tip Jar with all the ways to help.