There is a saying in hospital nursing: Nurses eat their young. It's not always true, of course, but often enough graduate nurses are treated like crap by the very people who should be welcoming them, training them, mentoring them, encouraging them, and helping them find their way.
It's the one thing I don't miss about nursing.
Our community has felt like a huge, dysfunctional hospital in the past few weeks ... and I have a few things to say about that. Put on your seat belts, folks, because Nurse Kelley is pissed off.
I would like to believe that 98% of the users on this site are here for good, healthy reasons. We share many common goals. We want many of the same things. Presumably, we weren't raised by wolves. We don't get into conversations in our workplaces and invade other peoples' spaces, spewing invective like,"Go fuck yourself, jerkface", or "Another bedwetter, I see!" or "You're too stupid to live."
If colleagues are having a conversation about something that doesn't interest us, most of us know better than to walk into the middle of the group and tell them how stupid or ill-chosen their topic is. That's a good way to get your head handed to you.
If we stand up in a business meeting and make a statement we believe to be true, and if someone in that meeting challenges us on our facts, most of us know how to hold a civil conversation. We explain why we believe what we believe, and we give the other person(s) an opportunity to challenge our facts. Our response to being challenged is NOT "Shut your fucking pie hole!" That's not a good way to build a career.
Even in our families, that social circle notorious for breeding dysfunction, there are boundaries. If you jump up from the holiday dinner and throw the turkey at your brother, chances are you won't be invited to the next holiday dinner.
SO WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH US? JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH, WHO RAISED SOME OF YOU PEOPLE? The manners of blogging are no different than they are in your "real" life. Play nice. Ask for permission. Don't piss in the communal sandbox. Learn the rules. If you don't learn ANYTHING else, learn this: If a diary has a "community" tag, and if that diary doesn't interest you, STAY OUT OF IT. Your attempts to disrupt that particular community are not funny, not attractive, not appreciated, and not well tolerated. You will develop a bad reputation and, more importantly, you will not be taken seriously in other areas of the site.
Finally, don't assume you know much about any particular diarist or commenter. The words on the screen don't give you the hundreds of bits of information you get in person-to-person contact. You don't know the blogger's age, race, physical condition, facial expressions, vocal intonations, posture, phrasing, and etc. and etc. For all you know, you could be telling an 89 year old nun to "shut the fuck up".
BEHAVE YOURSELVES OUT THERE! If you've lost your way or lost your temper once too often, take your fingers off your keyboard and limit your activity to reading for a month. There are dozens and dozens of gifted bloggers you can follow and learn from. Stay away from diaries that upset you until you learn how to write and interact civilly.
Folks, we're better than this.
UPDATE: My integrity has been questioned because I used the phrase "Jesus, Mary and Joseph". If you are offended, I apologize. I learned that phrase from the nuns ... and used it in place of the oath I heard my father and certain priests use, "Jesus fucking Christ!"
We Irish Catholics are not perfect, particularly when our Irish is up.