Blogger Insights (#4) Blogging Manners

Okay, this post has been brewing for quite some time. Maybe it's a bit more of a rant than it is a blogger insight, but it's still worth mentioning in-my-opinion.

Manners and Courteousness...

Please. Thank you. You're welcome. Excuse me.
You know, general decent behavior when conversing with another person.

**Good manners are an important thing to learn. Acting appropriate in a way that's socially acceptable and respectful, display respect, care, and consideration for others. Excellent manners can help you to have better relationships with people you know, and those you will meet. If you want to have good manners, then you have to learn basic etiquette, which includes being polite and holding doors for people. Good manners convey respect to those you interact with, and also commands respect from those you interact with**
(Sourced from: http://www.wikihow.com/Have-Good-Manners)

Having worked as an author's assistant, providing tour services and doing this blogging thing for more than five years now, I have built up quite the contact list. So naturally when I have an event to promote and garner interest for, I'm going to email those contacts.

A percentage of my contacts have been made after I have signed up to participate in another bloggers tour event and some email addresses have been forwarded to me by authors who have booked tours to ensure their supporters join; other contacts have been made after requesting for more hosts, bloggers and friends. But at the end of the day, all of the email addresses in my contacts list have been found honestly and in good faith.

As a courtesy, whenever I send out event invites, I always include a statement at the bottom of the email...

**if you feel you have received this email in error, please let us know and we will remove you - sorry for any inconvenience**

This has worked well in removing from my mailing list those people who have no interest in joining and/or do not blog; and people have generally been polite in asking to be removed, until recently...

Over the course of the previous few weeks, I've had a number of email replies that have been very rude, arrogant, and in some cases threatening.

Who would have thought an unwanted email would cause some people to threaten bodily harm, swear at me, and threaten to report me for theft. It has also been made worse by the fact that some of these bad tempered emails have come from people I have been emailing for years, are fellow bloggers, and in some cases, from bloggers I have worked with on many occasions in the past.

When did it become appropriate to speak to and/or email a person, whether you know them casually or not, in such a vile and disgusting manner - seriously, wtf?!

I have been lost for words at the level of douchieness that this kind of response... no scratch that - I had plenty of responsive swear words and angst, which has obviously led to this post!

I would never speak to or email someone in the way in which I have been in the past few weeks, it just doesn't sit well with me. I wasn't raised to be so disrespectful and rude.

But I'm guessing that neither were the people that acted this way towards me - has the internet done this to us? Has social media done us a dis-service, making us unsociable and arrogant in our interactions with others?

I know I don't have the answers, except to say... stop and take a breath. Think before you hit send. How would you feel receiving the email you're about to. Just say 'please remove me'. That's it, simple, quick and effective.

And FYI, those crazy rude and abusive people that sent me those nasty emails... they've been added to my blacklist, I won't be emailing them again.

Funnily enough, I'm still on some of their mailing lists to join their tours - ha, not gonna happen!