We Say Tomahto, You Say Tomayto
So guess yesterday’s post was a bit of an eye opener for us. We found what might be a slight cultural difference can cause quite a stir on the Internet. Offline we mingle with people in our environment. Friends, family, colleagues etc. Most of them have either the same eduction, smoke eat the same grass, watch the same TV shows, go shopping in the same stores and use the same slang. You move with the crowd and adjust to your surroundings more or less.
Online is a different game, especially if you’re a blogger, a forum visitor or a chatter on IRC for example. All these tools are used to do one thing –communicate. Over 90% of the people you will at one point communicate with online will be from either a different city, country or even continent. And they all have their own culture, slang and a certain tolerance towards specific words that they use a lot. You could say we become immune to certain things people say around us. They probably don’t even think about what they are saying –its that common.
So along came the cows and they used the C-word as it’s been referred to by some. The article would probably not have reached the amount of comments that it did if it was read only by Irish people. But like we said, the Internet is a HUGE place and people from other parts of the world read it, and the C-word suddenly made us look like a ****!
It’s all a matter of interpretation. What’s offense for one person might be something innocent to the other. When we posted the article “Our Blog Is Not Your Bitch” we actually had to think twice before we published. It’s a much worse word in our opinion but nobody seemed to share that perspective. Not one comment referred to the title as being inappropriate.
Now we changed the title after the complaints, obviously we had no intention of offending anyone since the C-word was not aimed at anyone in particular. But because people seemed to take offense, we decided to edit it. Not because we’re COWards like someone mentioned in the comments, but because it’s effect was not the one we had put it up for in the first place. Looks like we can all learn a bit from this situation. If you’re in the public eye, be mindful how you communicate to other people. They might have no sense of humor and take offense to your jokes.
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