Blog, blog, high school, high school… we all seem to agree that there are a lot of things about the blogging community that tend to run parallel with the social hierarchy of high schools. I noted some things about that in an earlier post, but something struck me today about bullying in the blogosphere…

In real high school? Bullying could be a big problem. A serious problem that could lead to violence and even self-inflicted harm on the part of the victim. It was often met with a code of silence around the victims and helplessness from the staff who either couldn’t do something until there was a “real” problem, or brushed it off as kids being kids. Even friends and parents would say “just ignore him/her.” Often, no one would stand up for you. There were even rules in place that worked against a victim who tried to defend him/herself from a physical attack.

So bullies got away with it. They picked on people and made personal verbal attacks, which usually hurt more than any shove up against the lockers and demand for lunch money.

And sometimes there was no lunch money to give them. Sometimes you couldn’t just get up out of your desk and walk away. Sometimes you couldn’t just ignore it, so you suffered in silence and felt very, very alone.

This is where we, as a blogging community, diverge from high school.

We all write our own way and express our own opinions, and as bloggers we hold our freedom of speech and press near and dear. But we have standards in our communities, and those include respect for people and feelings as well as for opinions.

There was some buzz today about one blogger who allegedly (and I only say this because the posts are gone so I couldn’t check) posted a personal attack on another blogger, regarding the quality of her blog and its worthiness of an award she recently received. This was done in a public forum.

Other members of the blogging community came to this young woman’s defense. Whether she needed them or not, people made it clear to her – and to the person who was offending her – that she was not alone. Similar scenarios play out across the blog world every single day and prove over and over again that we stick to our principles and we have got each other’s backs against bullies and trolls.

Of course we return to free speech and our rights to express opinions. But in a public forum, especially a community forum, if you cross the line into personal attacks, do not be surprised when you start to hear from people you’ve never met or even heard of, calling you out for your treatment of another community member.

YOU will feel just how much words can hurt.

If you genuinely meant no harm and just really screwed up your wording on something and it ended up looking offensive, just make your apology and explanation. Everyone gets heated once in awhile and writes something that just comes out wrong. That’s okay. I’ve accidentally offended people through careless wording before. When genuine apologies are made and accepted, and we move on.

But you don’t accidentally tell someone their writing is pointless or that they do not deserve to be recognized for their work. And you especially do not do that on that person’s own blog or the public forum of a community to which that person belongs.

Although these things continue to happen and probably always will, I just wanted to put it out there that this is an area in which the 20-Something Bloggers community can really shine. The only people who should not be welcome (in MY opinion only) are those who make personal attacks on others, and good riddance to them if they are driven off by people who are trying to defend not only a person, but the integrity of a community.

Groups of friends and lunch tables, I see that parallel. And I think it’s a natural one. But in this aspect, it’s not high school. Bullies don’t get away with it here.

We will take care of our own.

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(Huh. Maybe we’re actually more like a gang? Can we wear green? The 20SB website has a lot of green…)

All the lunch-table chatter about 20SB reminded me last night – I graduated from high school in 1999. I should have had a reunion by now.

WTF?! Who didn’t invite me to my own freaking  high school reunion?

I scrounged around Facebook this morning and realized that plans had never materialized for the reunion, so the class president is going to make us oh-so-cutting-edge and have an 11 year reunion for us sometime in 2010. We are SO the wave of the future.

Then, inevitably, I got back to thinking about lunch tables.

Ten and a half years ago, I was going to a pretty good-sized high school. There were about 450 people in my graduating class, and seriously – you never ate alone unless you chose to. Everyone had a lunch table. There were groups in that school, TONS of groups because there were so many of us. Everyone couldn’t be everywhere and do everything, so our natural alignments were driven by our priorities.

I was kind of middle-of-the-road, socially. I was in band and theater and so that’s where I had most of my friends. The “popular” girls were nice to me in class but we didn’t hang out or anything. They were the ones on homecoming court, student council, cheerleading, dance team, all that. But you know – those things were their priorities. I wanted to play piano. They wanted to flip about and scream really loudly at sporting events. I wanted to write a play. They wanted to play on the state-champion softball team.

A lot of those girls were truly nice people, and they didn’t dislike me – we just had our sights set on different things. I had my friends and they had theirs. Theirs ended up on homecoming court because their priority was to get them there. My friends were elected theater club and band officers and made choices on plays and performances.

I used to really want to be the tiger mascot that hopped around with the cheerleaders. I could have done it. I was energetic and you didn’t have to do a backflip in the silly costume. I was afraid that trying out would mean I wanted to be like them – and I didn’t, I really just thought it would be fun. I was at all the games with the band anyway, so why not? But I didn’t get it – not because I lost in tryouts, but because I didn’t try out at all. I didn’t make it enough of a priority to get over my fear of rejection.

I said as much to one of the nice cheerleaders who had honors English with me senior year and she said “Oh, you should have done it! You’d have been great! The girl they picked wasn’t that good, you should have at least tried out.”

Um. Oops. *mwaah mwaah mwaaaaaaah….*

It didn’t break my heart to think I had missed out on being friends with the popular girls, but it was a lesson in getting off my ass and at least trying a little harder for things I say I want.

I never sat at their lunch table. I sat with my music and theater friends. And together with a number of the cheerleaders, the dancers, and the sports stars, I got into National Honor Society, scooped up scholarships, graduated in the top 10% of my class, and went on with life somewhere else.

With 9,000 people in a community like 20SB, we can’t all be friends with everybody. We just don’t have the time. But the ones who are most visible in the community, our dancers and cheerleaders and sports stars, may shine the brightest because their priorities are those of the 20SB community. Online presence. Great communication. Reaching out and building bonds. Striving to be better writers, vloggers, techies.

When these things become your priorities in life, you can make your way to the top in a community like this.

Me? I’m not at the top. If I realigned my priorities I probably could be. I used to put more time into my blog, I used to be more visible and active in the blogging community both online and off. But as I’ve evaluated my life, I have determined that maybe I needed to step away from the glowing screen a little more. It works for me this way. This is my balance. I have blog friends who I adore, blogs by writers I don’t know but I still read, and a little bitty stake in a 20SB and Guidespot. I could do more. And I will, if I can make it fit in the balance I need in my life.

One of the popular cheerleaders quit the squad her senior year. She could have gotten a cheer scholarship. “It wasn’t for me,” she shrugged, and went on to run track instead.

Evaluate yourself. Think about why you write what you write, and where blogging fits in the priorities in your life. Are you committed to becoming a better writer? Are you committed to spending a lot of time developing communities and planning activities with people you may have never met? If you’re not – IT’S OKAY. For some people, that kind of life works and works awesomely. For you it may not. And if that means you don’t get an award, just realize – THAT’S OKAY TOO.

Are you committed to these things, committed to getting to the top and yet still feeling overlooked? This can take awhile. You don’t learn backflips and roundoffs with a full twist overnight. You must keep on.

You still have your lunch table. People still like you for who you are. And if they vote in someone else for homecoming queen, that doesn’t mean they like you any less. It’s just that they thought that in terms of real-time committment to excellence in the blogging world, they thought that someone else deserved it more.

My class homecoming queen was smart, pretty, fun, sweet, an athlete, a class council member, and active in her church. She was a busy girl who was committed to being awesome and to my knowledge never said a mean -spirited thing to anyone who hadn’t tried to grab her boobs or ass in the hall. Because she was involved in everything, everyone knew her and everyone was aware of all of her good qualities.

When you are visible, you are nominated. When you are visible and you demonstrate awesome, you win. Period. Everyone voted for Kristen, she won, and she deserved it.

Pour yourself a glass of flat champagne, put on your bent party hat, and think about this before you get mad or defensive about an award, a nomination or a lack thereof.

A lot of lovely bloggers have re-posted this for Brandy over the last few days. I’ve kept it till now so it’ll get into your reader for yet another day. She’s a wonderful blogger and one of my long-time favorites, but more than that, Brandy is a wonderful human being. And she needs something from the blogosphere right now.

It’s not an ASPCA commercial, don’t worry. It won’t cost you $19 per month to help this girl in the simplest of ways. She and her boyfriend and their families are just asking your prayers, good vibes, and strength right now during a really difficult time.

Just take a quick look at her post and have a little think about it, then point your love toward Canada.

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My name is brandy. And I have a blog.

And a plea.

I use my blog to showcase the crazy I meet everyday, share the stories of the kids I teach and document my love for tequila, dairy products and the abdominal muscles of Ryan Reynolds. Rarely do I talk about personal issues on my blog- as personal as the dude that I adore (who I actually met through my blog- single ladies, let that be a very good reason to blog, the possibility of meeting someone as wonderful as my man), but I need your help. And it involves my dude.

He’s a guy who made math comics for my class, so they would love learning about addition. He’s the kinda guy who sends my friends gift cards when they are having hard times, who remembers every story I ever told him, who was the first person I celebrated with when I got a teaching job. He’s the guy who sent flowers to me at school- dozens of my favourite pink roses just because he loves me. He’s a guy who has spent a year patiently explaining (and re-explaining) everything there is to know about football during the important games when silence is preferred. He’s made me word puzzles and comics and stayed up late playing Scrabble with me (even though I beat him almost every time). He’s listened to me cry about school and family and jobs. He is everything I never knew I needed and everything I always knew I wanted.

The holidays have hit us hard. He’s recently been told he may have something called multiple myeloma- an incurable cancer, that gives a person an average of five years of continued life. Though this news has came as a shock, he continues to be exactly who has always been- spending his time worrying about me, rather than worrying about himself. He’s the most selfless individual I know- (he stayed late on Christmas Eve to work, so his co-workers could leave early) and a post like this would never be something that he would promote or encourage but when I’m overwhelmed and feeling helpless, the blogging community has always given me tremendous support and comfort, two things I desperately need at this time.

As I write this, the future is uncertain and we aren’t sure what’s happening. He’ll need to see an oncologist soon, to verify what’s going on in his body. My hope is that everyone who reads this think positive thoughts and if you are a person who prays, could you add him to your list? (You can refer to him as ‘brandy’s hot awesome dude’). If you don’t pray, please keep him in your heart.This cancer is only a possibility and I believe that the prayers and positive thoughts of people can make sure it never becomes a reality.

I want to give a big thank you to the blog owner who scraped their original blog plans and graciously put this up. My goal is to get as many people as possible to see and read this post. If you are reading this and want to help, copy and paste my plea into your blog or send a link through twitter, so more people can keep him in their thoughts. I would be so very grateful (even more grateful than I am to my friend who first showed me the picture of Ryan Reynolds on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. If you haven’t seen it, google it. You. Are. Welcome).

I realize this all sounds dramatic, a Lifetime movie in the making- but this is life. Right now. And I’m throwing away any hint of ego and am humbly asking for you to pray or think kind thoughts. If you are able to pass this on, thank you and if you know anything regarding MM- please email me (my email is on my blog). This isn’t a call for sympathy or a plea for pity. It’s just one girl hoping you can think positive thoughts for the person she adores. If my current heartache provides you with anything, let it be with the reminder that life is short, love is unbending and no one knows what could happen next. Maybe it is silly, but I really do believe that positive thoughts can make a huge difference. Thank you for reading this and if you haven’t already? Please tell someone you love them today.

I did.

Last weekend, Jenny The Reckless Chef came over to bring me squash soup and gingerbread to comfort my poor sick self, and on a whim she grabbed a frozen cobbler at the store. We don’t usually bake from a box, but it seemed like a nice, quick treat.

Disclaimer: I’d never used the oven in my new apartment.

I turned the knob to set the temperature to 400 degrees, then went to turn the knob to set the oven to “bake.”

The knob was blank. BLANK. All of the words on it had worn off.

Jenny and I pondered for a bit what order the settings might be in – off, bake, broil, clean? I turned it to the first setting and in a few minutes, the oven was nice and hot. Figuring that I’d gotten it right, I put the thawed cobbler in and set the timer for 40 minutes. We went into the living room to enjoy squash soup and watch crappy reality TV.

About 15 minutes later:

“Is that SMOKE in my kitchen?”

We rushed in there and the kitchen was in fact full of smoke* billowing from the oven. I opened the oven door.

The top of the cobbler was ON FIRE.

“Grab a camera!” Jenny screeched.**

Yeah, never mind that there was an open flame in my gas oven. This was for posterity.

It. Smelled. DISGUSTING. Even after we opened windows and fanned the smoke outside,*** the whole house was reeking of burnt pastry. We decided that we must have set the oven to “broil” instead of “bake,” so the top heating element at 400 degrees on a piece of pastry was to blame. I’d always had an oven where the broiler was a separate drawer on the bottom, so the idea of broiling something inside the oven did not even occur to me.

The charred top of the cobbler was pretty much solid, but Jenny stuck a fork down into the bottom of the pan to see if any of the berries could be salvaged.

“These are awful,” she said, wrinkling her nose but not missing a beat. “OMG, we have to Twitter this right now!”

Fail can be funny.

_____________________

* And NEITHER of my smoke alarms went off, which you can imagine made me oh-so-happy and safe-feeling, right?

** She’s not called the Reckless Chef for nothing. Her blog is full of pictures of things she’s burned, melted, and broken.

*** The smoke alarms never did go off. I will be speaking to my landlord. For that – and a new oven knob.

• I had a great time. Exhausting, but great.
• I’m sorry someone’s baby got elbowed by a swag-grabber, but I got shoved by an unattended toddler and no one made a fuss about his swag-grabbing mom that wasn’t paying attention to him. Call me callous, but it cuts both ways, ladies.
• The swag was good because it’s USEFUL. Was it excessive? Beats me, I’ve never been to BlogHer (or any big conference) before. At healthcare events I just got a bunch of useless pens and notepads. Are these companies buying my love? Perhaps – but they’ve bought my business with stickers (Picnik, I heart you already) and samples (those Gatorade powder packets for your waterbottle? Adore! Already bought some.). Oh well. As a LobbyCon-er, I didn’t get to go to the breakout sessions so I had some time to kill to chat with vendors at the Expo.
• I met many lovely ladies at the conference and at the parties, some of whom I have read, some of whom I’d not read and not heard of, some of whom have probably (read: likely) never heard of me. But if I met you at BlogHer, I think you’re great. I didn’t meet a single person there who I wouldn’t like to have a drink with again.

That last point – is that what everyone is referring to about cliques forming in the blogging community?

It’s been brought up in many posts – indeed, on BlogHer’s own website – I’m trying to sort that out in my head and not having much luck, so I do want to solicit opinions here. I think that anytime you put half a dozen girls down in a room, you’re going to start forming groups. Not maliciously, but everyone knows we gravitate to certain people for one reason or another. And when there are thousands? There you go. I met people and stayed in a smallish group because I was having a good time with those girls and quite frankly, I’m a little intimidated about approaching new people without old friends around. And now we all have some shared experiences and some inside jokes that we will spout about on our blogs because it makes us happy to remember them. And it makes us happy to make plans to meet up with friends again because we have bonded.

Does that make me clique-ish?

I like to meet and include new people and be included in others’ lives. I don’t think many of the people I know are deliberate about excluding people from their activities – but it HAPPENS, and often without intent. Everybody can’t be everywhere at once, so we can’t all share the same experiences and the same jokes where you-had-to-be-there. So why are people up in arms about people being happy about their new friends and writing about it on their blogs or Twitter?

Am I naive in thinking that no one really means for this community to shut people out?

Am I off-kilter for thinking that sometimes we are the ones who make ourselves feel excluded, not the other way around?

I don’t love the fact that I didn’t get to go to Vegas, or the fact that no one said “Hey, come to Vegas with us!” for that matter. Does that mean my blog friends don’t like me? Hardly. It is what it is, I guess. And people had a great time, awesome for them, and I can be happy that people I like had fun.

An analogy:

When a cell grows big enough, it splits and forms specialized cells. That’s the way life forms evolve and become advanced. And all of the specialized cells can work together to make a functioning life form that can have an impact on the world. When different types of cells attack one another, the result can be a cancer that destroys everything those cells built.

Are we the ones keeping our community from making the impact we want it to make?

What do you think?