HURT FEELINGS HANDBOOK FOR SENSITIVE PEOPLE

via flickr.com

How to get over hurt feelings.

When bloggers go off message during inflammatory times, call it conscience. Like having a conscience.

When we go off message, we lose subscribers, readers. We lose income. Moola.

Over hurt feelings?

I’m no Muhammad Ali, but if speaking up makes a difference, do it. If you can’t say, “Take me to jail now,” for what you believe, then you don’t believe hard enough.

Can you trust a brand, a person, a blogger, if they hide behind their message when they could have said something?

Whether a crime, event, or party, if you’re fired up, get others fired up.

Michael Jordan is famous for his marketing advice when asked why he doesn’t take a side in elections.

“Republicans buy shoes, too.”

Maybe he’s got his people working on a new motto, like, “Muslims buy shoes, too?”

He’ll find some gains and losses with that one, some hurt feelings.

As a small count blogger, some might say no account, it’s hard to imaging why a reader would subscribe to boomerpdx for anything but the posts and a chance to read some fair and balanced writing on topics important to a wide audience.

Probably too wide. Probably not fair and balanced enough, either.

Both are good reasons for subscribers to comment before unsubbing. It’s not like you’ll lose that new eBook you downloaded for subscribing in the first place, or that discount on future BOOMERPDX UNIVERSITY classes.

Why not leave a note on the way out the door? Something like, “It’s been real, it’s been fun. But, it hasn’t been real fun.”

That won’t hurt feelings.

Engaging in the social media process is by definition engagement only if you engage in the process, like subscribe to a blog and leave comments. I’ll drop an inside note here, I’ve joined blogs about blogging and the same people from each perspective blog leave comments on each others blog.

This isn’t that kind of blog. If you subscribe and leave comments on every post, it isn’t a suck up. Not even close. All you’re doing is opening up to a different audience than you’re used to. I’ll tell you now, I’ve had some pretty illiterate comments posted, but they came from the heart.

So I edited them for capitalization, punctuation, clarification. You don’t want too many words in a row ending with the same sound. It’s awkward construction.

Unsubscribing is one thing, asking to remove any link or trace associated with a person and their business is even more. When that happened I was glad to comply. They were nice enough to ask. Hurt my feelings, just not enough to ask them about the offensive post.

Offensive current events make for offensive commentary, and by definition offensive posts. Any blogger or writer unaffected by the uproar from the Stanford rapist and Orlando shooter, who go about their work with a ‘business as usual’ flair, are hacks.

If you don’t take a moment to post your feelings about a convicted sexual assault guy getting coddled by the courts, and a gay assault weapon guy getting his hands on weapons, you’re not serving your audience.

You won’t be losing your subscribers like me, either.

Memo to readers: Boomerpdx has room for new subscribers. Join me for the latest.