Replied to Blogging in the Second Person: Open Correspondence for a Social Web? by James Shelley (jamesshelley.com)

@jamesshelley  Thank you for your post. I’m going to try to respond to you in the second person, as you suggested in your article. Let me say, it feels very strange and very informal. 😶

Here’s a couple of thoughts (in no particular order):
– comments are usually in 2nd person, whereas reply to blog posts are usually 3rd person (I’d have no qualms about responding to you in the 2nd person if I was replying to you in the comments section/micro.blog reply, but doing this in my own CMS is strange)
– love the idea of blog posts being like letters to each other
– would posts in the 2nd person restrict the conversation between the original poster and the responder? I’d feel rude butting in on someone else’s conversation.

I’ll need to think more about this.

Bookmarked Why Press the ‘Publish’ Button? by James Shelley (jamesshelley.com)

To me, this is why the grand declaration of selfie culture — “This is my identity, and I don’t care what you think of me!” — boils down to a non sequitur. “I don’t care what you think of me” dissolves into a self-contradictory statement. As humans who have opinions, it seems nonsensical to act under the pretence that the opinions others do not matter.

I made this text public because I want your attention. Like a performer preparing for opening night, I have spent time in private orchestrating these words into a (hopefully) coherent structure. And, like a photographer who has toiled with light, I now present my creation to you. The culminating question of our inquiry is, therefore: now that I have your attention, what do I want you to think or do?

Bookmarked The respect of personhood vs the respect of authority (kottke.org)
Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority” and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person” and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.