It seems that Doug is misunderstanding my last post on Drama. I thought he, of all people, would read the post for what it was and not get defensive.
Oops.
So, in case it was missed in the nuance, let’s recap. My observation was simply that we have a lot of people in our class who claim to hate drama, but then participate in it frequently. Most of those folks don’t blog, but some, like Doug, spend a lot of time complaining about the drama.
And there’s nothing wrong with that… except when someone does that while referencing specific incidents. That, like it or not, does nothing but perpetuate the drama.
Of course, Doug’s opening paragraph frames the issue in a very odd way:
So, posting about 1) how much you dislike your friends fighting over pettiness, 2) how you dislike being put in the middle of it and being forced to ‘choose’ between friends, 3) how reputations are hard to shake, and 4) how you find it wholly inappropriate that undergrads think it is o.k. to sexually assault someone in a bar is bad, but of course posting about drama or creating drama through your own posts is perfectly o.k.
First of all, I didn’t mention any specific topic of his post… and that’s because this is not a topic-specific argument I’m making. As a thought experiment… pick something arbitrary to write about. Now… can you think of more than one way to approach the topic? Maybe some ways that are more or less inflammatory than others? Some ways that are more or less hypocritical than others? Of course you can.
Doug could’ve written about, say, how he hates being forced to choose sides. Of course, nobody can really force him to choose sides, but that’s another issue. More importantly, that could be written about in a way that is anonymized, time-shifted, generalized, or otherwise obscured so that it is not patently clear to the participants in the drama that you are talking about them. Yes, I know, that’s a lot of trouble to go to… but if you choose to go the easy route and toss out identifiable details, you pay the price of fueling the fire. Let’s also not forget that the easiest thing to do is to not write about the drama at all.
To be even more clear, I’m not advocating drama or condemning it. I’m not saying people should be for or against. I’m not even saying that it should or shouldn’t be written about. I’m simply saying that someone simply saying that they hate drama does not mean nothing they do is dramatic. In fact, I’ve noticed that one of the class’s favorite things to gossip about is who gossips the most or who creates the most drama. Very few people seem to recognize the irony of that.
The main issue aside, though, there are some other comments worth recognizing:
From time to time, I post about what happens in my life instead of just what I think about other things in the world. I’ll keep doing that because, frankly, my friends and other readers find it interesting. They want to know what’s going on in my life and what I think about it.
Short of actually saying “I participate in the drama that I whine about”, this is about as close as it gets to Doug actually saying “Yeah, okay, I guess you have a point.”
[A] central tenet to the Holiday Method that the Hass Method doesn’t adopt: posting about drama is especially o.k. if your primary reason for posting is to take an unnecessary dig at one of your friends.
Of course, of course. It’s always personal, right? Let’s not talk about the actual post… let’s talk about the guy who posted it. No need for independent thought, analysis, or self-awareness. Let’s just get right to the distractions!
I know that he likes to argue for argument’s sake, but ripping your friends in public tends to make them not as friendly.
It’s unfortunate if Doug took that post as some sort of attack… but that’s life. It was just a simple observation that for someone who claims to be so anti-drama, you’d be hard pressed to find another IU Law Blogger who participates in more of it.
If that’s true, then I fail to see how the post was a problem… it was simply pointing out something that everyone could’ve noticed on their own. I wasn’t supplying any new info. If it’s not true… well… if it weren’t true you might see some sort of denial or rebuttal. Instead you get half a post with vague references to how mean I am and how I shouldn’t speak ill of my friends on the internet.
At the end of the day, though, I have no expectation of any of my friends that they be perfect because none of them are. So when I point out some hypocrisy or other flaw1, it’s to start discussion… not to make them look/feel bad. Is that sometimes a side-effect? Sure. And I’m okay with that.
Pete–since you’re actually on both sides of this debate, I’ll let you handle things from here.
I really just have to chalk this comment up to reading too quickly. Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of the two posts:
“both” - there’s a lot of benefit to bringing the drama to the internets.
“sides” - Don’t act like you hate drama and then spend your life talking about it.
Now… I’m probably just not clever enough to see what coin those are the two sides of… but it looks to me that, where they are not saying the same thing, they are still not in conflict.
Anyway…
At the end of the day, the bottom line is still this: If you hate the water, quit playing in the pool.
Which, by the way, I cannot even remember having done to anyone who didn’t broadcast the flaw on the internet to anyone that would listen.
August 27th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
I’m fairly certain that when you name a PERSON in your blog, it becomes immediately PERSONal. Your post and its personal nature are inextricably intertwined. You made it personal with your post. He just left it there.
“Let’s not talk about the actual post… let’s talk about the guy who posted it.” Umm…isn’t that exactly what you did through insinuation as soon as you dropped the name “Hass.” And what you’re continuing to do now by saying that he participates in a lot of drama? (Which he really doesn’t…probably why he’s so well-liked).
I enjoy reading your arguments and your battles of wit because they’re interesting…but I think you may want to consider what’s more important - 1) keeping Doug as a friend or 2) winning an argument so caught up in the obscurity of skewed logic as to be rendered irrelevant to over 99 percent of the law school population.
P.S. Anxious to see your college football preseason picks..
August 27th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
Gotta disagree at a few places here, Peter…
August 27th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
I’ll humbly disagree with number one. Overt acts are the embodiment of intrinsic qualities, or, alternatively, people, who are quick to judge, will always assume them to be.
3) I agree with the first part of three regarding questioning a friend’s actions. However, perhaps a very public blog is not the proper vehicle for such questioning, at least not without going to the friend personally before publishing. As far as the second part, preach on brother. Because the drama-related hypocriticism has been ridiculous lately…for better or worse…
August 27th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
Overt acts are, indeed, the embodiment of a person’s intrinsic qualities… but which ones? Does any one thing we do really tie back to one particular quality exclusively? And in any discernible way? And what about free will and judgment?
I don’t think there’s a reasonable basis for tying a one-time event back to anything more than judgment. A patterned course of behavior (like the kind I’m talking about here) certainly does tie back to some sort of intrinsic quality (or qualities) but which ones?
To my way of thinking, if you criticize a certain pattern of behavior, all you are saying is that a certain confluence of things have come together in a displeasing way… not that any of the individual parts are bad… but that their combination in this set of circumstances leaves something to be desired.
You might think jalapenos are delicious… and you might love ice cream… but that doesn’t mean you’re going to like jalapeno flavored ice cream. Criticizing jalapeno-flavored ice cream is not an impeachment of peppers or dairy based desserts… it’s a criticism of one confluence of ingredients.
Regarding Doug’s participation… you’re definitely right that there is a continuum here, and Doug is on the light end of it… but I still feel like if you are participating at all, you ought not be complaining about how much drama there is.
One thing I want to exclude is discussion about the sexual harassment/assault. I don’t think this is “drama” in the typical sense of the word. It is dramatic, yes, but it is not really the kind of gossipy drama that the word is typically used to describe.
And as for the publicity of my criticism… I don’t believe that criticism from a peer needs to be any less public than the actions being critiqued. If we were talking directly about some quality of Doug’s personality, I would agree with you… Were I wanting to complain about some pattern of behavior that is known only to a few people, I would agree that this would not be an appropriate place for that… but we’re talking about a course of action that has taken place almost exclusively on his (even more public) blog… so I really don’t feel any compulsion to be discrete.
Doug’s reply to my initial post was on his blog. Were we to apply this rule fairly, then he “should” have spoken with me offline about it. I don’t buy that. I think that my blog is a perfectly reasonable place to discuss others’ blogging and their blogs are a perfect place to discuss mine.