It's a fine line

I have stumbled upon something very strange. One of the features of this blog is that I can see statistics relating to the traffic that comes to the site – I can see which countries people are in when they read it, which web browser they are using etc. I can also see what website referred them to my blog. Last night I was having a quick squiz at these stats and noticed a referral from another blog about Burma. So I clicked on it and had a read. It was the first post of some guy who is going to be working with Burmese people infected with HIV/AIDS. A pretty great thing to be doing, and not so strange at all. The strange part came as I got further down in the post – he was reviewing other blogs on Burma, and mine was one of them.

Now, I have received a lot of constructive criticism on my writing in my time – innumerable essays at university, a dissertation, a thesis, and reports at work, conference papers, and academic papers up for publication and so on, but I have always known this criticism was coming. It was very unusual indeed to be reading an in-depth, critical review of my writing by a complete stranger, of which I had no previous warning. And to be honest, his criticisms weren’t really that constructive, they were mostly just criticisms. I’m ok with criticism; obviously, just like every other person in the world, I prefer complements, but I think that being able to take criticisms is a positive personality trait. 

So anyway, this guy tried to deconstruct my entire blog, it’s very weird. Take, for example, this quote from him:

One can tell from her reading that she is young and not an experienced writer. Although, I do not think that her blog is trying to be artificially scholarly in the slightest. Rather, I believe she is writing for herself and friends, only to inform them of her travels. She is living in Thailand/Burma and is only trying to tell her story, making her blog reasonably informal.

Weird right? He goes on to credit my choice of titles:

Although the blog skews towards the informal side, she does try to use some formal aspects in order to engage people with the serious topics she is depicting...Firstly, her blog titles are fairly formal and well thought out. They do not necessarily tell you much about what is going to be depicted in the posts, but rather seem to have metaphorical value.

But then he admits that he’s not really sure what the blog post entitled “Pumped by your heart to the tips ofyour arms and your legs” is trying to say, metaphorically speaking. Of this, I am quietly smug, as this is actually a line from an excellent song by my favourite band. The song is the title track, with the whole album being about HIV, so for me, and those of you that know the song, this title is very fitting for a discussion on the disease. 

He then critiques this post, saying things like:

The hyphen shows that she is trying to be dramatic, theatrical, and trying to exaggerate her point.

...[she is] describing very important information and the daunting topic of HIV, however she seems to do so very informally. The first paragraph felt very casual...She uses the language “lots” and “wee-bit.” These words specifically sound very informal and colloquial.

I’m fine with all of this “critique”, it’s no big deal, I write the way I write, whatever. But there is a fine line between constructive critisim and just being a jerk. Where this guy starts to get to me, is here:

This is obviously informal and trying to be humorous, yet none of the topics she depicts are comical, causing some discrepancy...Although her blog is going to be similar to mine, I maintain that a formal voice should be used for the topics explored through these countries. Talking about HIV, orphans, lack of education, and a controlling government are all topics that should be talked about in a formal voice.

From this, I am inferring that he thinks I am being disrespectful of the people I am writing about, because I am not writing about them as though I am writing an academic article on the subject. That really annoys me. For this random stranger to assume that I have no respect for the people I am surrounded by on a daily basis. Jeeze. I don’t know about that. He sounds like an arrogant jerk to me. But then again, for me to be judging him on what he says in a random blog post would be to stoop to his level.

All this got me thinking, why do I write this blog? Who is it for? Well, primarily, it is for myself. For me to have a record of my time over here, to be reflected upon sometime in the future. Next, it’s for you, my readers who, for the most part, are my pretty good friends and family. And finally, it’s for the people of Burma – if I can help even one of you understand what it’s like for these people, where they come from and the hardships they have to face, I will be happy. 

As for the way I write, I write the way I think, and the way that I would have a conversation with you. Using big fancy words and getting all academic on this isn’t the way I want to write here, if I were to write this that way, I’d just feel like I was being a pretentious dickhead. But then again, the last thing I want is to be disrespectful to anyone, ever. So if you think that the way I write this is inappropriately informal considering some of the issues that I write about, I’d love to know. If you agree with this guy, and think I should be writing this as though it is an academic piece of writing, then please, let me know.

The last thing I want to mention is that, I have to see the lighter side of the things that go on here. If I wrote every post about the reality of daily life, this would be an incredibly depressing blog. But would you rather that I dwell on the 4-5 people that die here per week, or the 7 babies that are born here on average per day? Or should I tell you about the person that was shot in the head outside my house last year (before I lived here, obviously), or should I instead tell you about all the puppies that are born on my street? What about the TB and e-coli that live in the bodily fluids that gets all over my feet at work each day? Would you rather that every post is about something depressing, and that I can’t change? Or would you like me to keep things a bit lighter? Because I don’t know if I have the mental strength to delve into how awful it truly is for the people that live here on a regular basis in this blog. I’ve said it before here, if I spend all my time thinking about the bad stuff that goes on, I am going to come home broken.

The floor is open to you now, my dear readers. How do you think this should be being written? Do you think I am being disrespectful? I welcome your feedback on this post – you can either email me directly, or comment in the section below, it’s pretty easy and you can post anonymously.