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Better Left Unsaid

I have an interest in blogs. Perhaps it was the school assignment last year that we completed to get a sense of what this blog phenomenon - and customer dialogue in general - had to do with companies. I thought at the time that blogs would be more than a passing fad but less than a public groundswell that they seem to have become with the growth of fashionably coined "social networking sites" of personal recollections, comments, and naughty (and not-so-naughty) photos. Now, I have my own blog, which has been hidden from public view or dormant (depending on the time period in question) over the last three years. Back in the public domain, this is the place for jotting down some thoughts and sharing them with the world. If, of course, the world finds enough curiosity to read on...

Enter the masses into media, such as social networking is wont to do. This raises an issue - does the common man and woman have the decency and discretion on what they write in these cyber pages? For most of the rest of the media world, there are standards and censorship and mores that are generally respected (albeit some followed more closely than others). Head out to MySpace or whoever else the "cool kids" are using (Bebo, Facebook, Xanga, Livejournal, Orkut, etc.), and you will find all kinds of comments, inside jokes, bold statments, and personal remarks. Some of it is not "fit to print", although it is all there for the world to see in cyberland.

My interest in blogs brings along this random comment - perhaps some could benefit from remembering what the media types have known for decades. Which is that some things are better left unsaid.

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