can never be wrong.
Good luck all!

No hard feelings at all.

Peace – Darren

I simply wanted to name a popular blogging tips site and yours was the first that came up to my mind.

I absolutely understand your point. The post was in no way against you and I will add a note at the end specifying that.

Here, though, Livia, you’re not really saying anything ‘about’ Darren so much as using his name to make a point.

It was effective, but I think I’d have to agree with Darren on this one.
I think anyone who’s ever been terrorized by a stalker would be sympathetic to his plight in this case.

I understand what you were doing – the problem is that being provocative by using the name of another person can actually be misinterpretted by your readers who may not know the person you’re talking about or understand that you’re not actually meaning what you’ve written.

I’m particularly sensitive to this (probably overly sensitive) as a result of a similar situation a couple of years back when a well known blogger wrote a similar post about me. They were being provocative and wrote in a way that got them attention – but in doing so said things about me which were not true. Unfortunately this lead to two things:

- Firstly, it hurt my reputation and business. The flow on effect was that other readers who didn’t understand what the blogger was doing took what they’d written at face value without checking to see if it was true, jumped on the bandwagon and started laying in on their own blogs
- Secondly, (and more importantly) one of the people who read the orginal post who was suffering with a mental illness happened to live in my city. In their mind the unfounded allegations made against me became an obsession for them and I ended up with stalker who put my family, property and self at physical risk.

OK – this is an extreme example – but I guess it taught me the power of blogs and the responsibility that bloggers need to take when they write about other people.

I agree with the main arguement of your post (it’s actually a powerful and important one) – but I guess would have preferred it if you’d left anyone’s name out of it unless it were true. To me (and I’m biased) your main point actually becomes secondary to the title of your post. In some people’s eyes the post becomes one about me rather than the valid points you’re making.

Alternatively you could have still written a great provocative post with a more neutral title – ‘Why You Might Not be Good Enough to Make Money Blogging’ for instance would have been a fairly confronting title – and on topic.

Anyway – I guess I just wanted to shed some light on what went through my mind when I read your post.