Flattery or simply stated.

As i have said many times before in this blog i am not blogging for the gifts it brings me personally nor for any other reason than i just want to share my work with any readers who come across this blog.

And in 2020 do we take any words or comments we see at face value or just see them as part of an agenda to get you to look and believe in ‘elsewhere’ when you should and do know better than that.

Some comments i receive on this blog are so obviously ‘fake’ all i can do is smile and instantly delete them, but most of all it is because i don’t like where they are leading either me or my blog to, so they have to go, be deleted that is.

Occasionally I have to accept that some people do like my work and accept their comments at face value, but even then I have to decide if there is a hidden agenda behind it, its fair to say the comment i received recently which i am about to show you made me think is this genuine? And yes, i believe it might be, but we all have to be careful that we don’t fall into the trap of listing a comment just because it flatters our ego to do so. Also, you must be careful not to alienate the commentator as usually I don’t know them personally and i certainly don’t know what their true intention was; so with that in mind I am not going to say this ‘one’ was ‘fake’ because that would be silly, because the person’s intention was probably one of honesty. My point here is two-fold: When a person can’t take a simple comment at face value because he [me] doesn’t believe it is warranted or even any where near what he believes is or could be true, and doesn’t even allow himself to believe that good intention exists because he is so aware of people taking the mickey or having an alternate intention, like bringing my blog in connection to theirs in some way, well what is he or I to do?

Trust is a very hard thing to manage, and is perhaps why we often see on many social media sites friends posting lots of warm wishes to each other on the understanding that they know they are on relatively safe ground by doing so. But in a blog like mine where anyone can comment and you don’t know them from Adam, you have to be a bit more circumspect.

Now, as we know or have seen ‘spammers’ have ‘set’ texts they send to all manner of sites, and it is sometimes harder to spot who is being genuine and who is not, although certain clues usually give the game away, in this case if you are the person who sent me this comment and you are reading this, read it as a general ‘go’ or ‘attack’ on the nature or the way ‘comments’ have to be looked at by any blogger and not in any other or personal way, the above words should make this clear to you, if it doesn’t then you are probably going to be reading more into this then I intend, as its not a personal attack. I am just using your comment to show my readers what goes through my mind when reading any comment.

Your comment as I am sure you could agree can be seen in the light of either honest intent or something else, but not knowing any body’s real intentions in commenting the dilemma is always ‘how’ do I take this or any comment? And like I said earlier it is for every blogger to make his or her own mind-up about something. But before I reveal what the comment said and it’s a fairly innocent comment from what I can see, i asked myself would i be fooling myself to take it at face value, or indeed does the comment even say anything of importance to me, should I simply smile, ignore and delete as I do with so many comments i have seen or have been sent my way, the real question I always ask myself is should i take this [or any] comment seriously and what might happen if I do and more so even show it on the blog itself.

So, with that all said, you are about to say what is or has all the big ‘fuss’ been about? as this person has actually payed-you a nice comment. But, remember it’s the process of what a blogger has to go through with their comments they receive that has been the main thrust so far and not the actual comment itself which i’ve been getting at.

They said: to quote; You need to take part in a contest for one of the best blogs on the net. I most certainly will highly recommend this web site!

Now, as you might say, what is wrong with that??? Nothing much, you are right, someone just gave you a nice comment, and indeed they did. But any blogger knows that they have to decide what to do with such comments as i said earlier, and here is my problem and it is a simple enough one, do I agree or even accept what has been said here? Well in all honesty what does it matter?

I have been ‘flattered’ but so what? Its up to me whether i can take ‘flattery’ if indeed it even is flattery, it might just be a simple expression of what someone thought about my blog and fair enough it probably is more like this at its core, but do I take their advice and enter a competition for one of the best blogs on the net? No, because that has little or no appeal to me, again fair enough its my choice, and i wouldn’t know how to go about doing this anyway, and don’t even want to find-out about doing so. Simply i must accept someone thought my blog was good enough to get or be in this position, so I thank them for saying this about my blog. Truth is I don’t even think there is a contest for best blog on the net, but what do I know? I ain’t going to google it to find-out either, as I don’t want to go down that path.

Therefore, i can only walk-away from this comment feeling pretty good that someone would highly recommend this web site!

You may say i have either overplayed a simple an innocent enough comment and turned it into a treatise on the perils of looking at comments or even over-egged or explained something in great detail for which it probably wasn’t deserving and yes you would be right. But what else was I to do? I felt my mental process i was going through was worth sharing over anything the comment actually said.

You may say, well there is just no-way I am going to comment on any thing in this blog if this is the way he takes things, he [me] is a bit over sensitive don’t you think, but remember this is just a rather long-winded way of showing ‘my’ mental processing, and although this is what I go through it doesn’t mean much more than that, or should mean that much to any one who wishes to comment on my work here, as in all honesty the rigorous mental gymnastics that i go through will always occur to some level in any thing I do in this blog whatever you have to say or think, it is my ‘problem’ [if I can call it that, but i don’t] and not yours and the likelihood of me going into this much detail for you all to read in the future yet again is slight at best, so just comment and leave me to make ‘whatever’ of what you might say to me, as its unlikely i will ever go into this much explanation ever again.

My conclusion has to be that yes, i don’t take such comments very well, and why is this? Do i feel undeserving of them? Perhaps!! But probably more because what am I to do with hearing such things as was said? Just accept that someone likes my blog and say thank you and move-on as any normal person would, yes i can and will do that, but this could’ve turned-out much worse in that i could’ve actually replied to the comment directly and made a mountain out of a mole hill which wasn’t there in the first place, but I guess even this post will show where or what i truly think about the whole thing, of course it does.

Commenting is a mine-field and usually its far from necessary to take things to the degree i have when the intention is quite clear in what the commentator is saying to you, so forgive my pugnaciousness as its only meant in the way i sometimes deal with things, and yes I am having a laugh now as I write this next bit: You may well rightly be saying to yourself ‘if this is how he takes a good comment then how the heck does he take a really bad or negative comment’? The answer as strange as it might seem is probably ‘better’ because usually there is often more to be seen and noted and indeed learnt from such things.

Anyway, i am starting to wonder ‘if’ I should post this? but as I didn’t have a direct ‘go’ at the commentator and actually in the end saw their comment as a good thing but needed to use their comment as a reference point to say what else i did, i think its fair enough and who knows they themselves may enjoy how I have used their comment in a post of mine, after all they said my blog was one of the best on the net, i just hope they feel the same way about it after reading this post, if not frankly too bad. Peace.