Today, I’m angry. A person with whom I have to deal is misbehaving and may destroy something good through bad, inexcusably bad, behavior. This person doesn’t work for me nor for anyone I know, in fact there’s no authority relationship either way. I seriously considered using ongoing as a weapon. Suppose I posted a piece here whose title was that person’s name, laying out in succinct but forceful detail the nature of the bad behavior, solidly illustrated by pointers to online examples. Suppose I offered a calmly-worded opinion that nobody in their right mind should consider hiring, or doing business with, or dating, this person. Suppose some other people who shared my opinions saw fit to point to the attack and perhaps chime in a bit. Given the way search engines work, I’d say that such an attack would be extremely damaging, and very hard to recover from. Would I do this? I don’t think so, unless it was a matter of life or death. But I sure do think about it sometimes.
