IMO: Internet Etiquette (feat. The Avengers)

I want to smash my head against the wall to be perfectly honest with you.

I know the Internet is not always a great place to be. However, as a naive fourteen year old girl, I found a wonderful and fantastic place where I could express everything I loved about books in two places. Blogger and Goodreads. Goodreads came first, but Blogger wasn't far behind. 

However, since 2009, for some reason these magical places have been overrun by the bad guys. The Wicked Witch of the West and the likes of Loki who like to do things like create fights, plagiarise and be nasty.

There really is a simple solution to all this. Without pointing fingers and playing the blame-game, I have one sentence that sums everything I’m going to elaborate on (and maybe a little more) in this post. The only catch is that for it to work EVERYONE has to do it.

You ready?

It’s super top-secret.

“If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say it at all.”

Honestly, people, it is a very simple concept. I’ve already written a three-part Internet Etiquette post on my old blog when the Jacqueline Howett thing happened, but this is such a reoccurring incident that I feel like it needs to be re-said a billion times over (because there’s probably close to a billion posts of this style) before people understand.

No matter whether you are a self-published or traditionally-published, you are entering yourself in a professional business where there are reputations and incomes at stake. No matter whether you have a thousand followers with a ‘.com’ domain or two hundred followers with a ‘.blogspot/wordpress’ domain, you are entering into a professional business.

By entering into this professional business, there are thing you must remember. You need to act cordial and respectable. You do those two things, you can’t really go wrong. Just because you’re book reviewing online, rather than in print, does not mean you are not a part of the profession. Your opinions influence other people’s opinions and that can impact on sales and reputation, depending on what you said. Some people even make money from their blog with advertising. To me, that is a clear indication that you’ve entered a profession.

Internet is such a tricky thing to convey emotions on, thankfully they invented emotion-cons to help convey our meanings. But it becomes a different thing when what you are saying clearly has the intention to hurt.

I could link you guys to a billion incidents that's occured in the blogger atmosphere. The beginning of last year set a record of fights and insults and recently plagiarism has become the new "weapon of mass destruction". 

The intention to cause someone pain—physical or emotional—is a seriously horrible thing. Plagiarising someone's work, insulting them online or face-to-face is all very hurtful. 

I haven’t been sheltered under a rock all my life, so I know there are people like that out there. But the blogging community can be such a nice place to be at times. It can be exciting, exhilarating, funny and so many other things. To see this case happen again and again is disheartening. It also makes me wonder whether I’ll have my reviews attacked or stolen one day and I simply do not want that to happen. 


If you want to get your foot in the door, one of the most impressive things you can do is act professional when Loki is right up in your face. Or if you're the Hulk, feel free to bang Loki around like a rag doll. 

But that’s my advice and opinion on Internet Etiquette. Let me know what you guys think in the comments!