The Blondihacks audience has reached a substantial size, and for that I am eternally grateful. Thank you all for your interest in what I am doing! As with any large audience, however, it becomes necessary to have some ground rules for civility.
First and foremost, please comment! Participate! Join the conversation! Blondihacks thrives when the comment threads are vibrant, and your feedback is one of the main reasons I’m still doing this after all these years. So please do come on in- the water is warm! I just ask that you don’t pee in the pool. To that end:
1. Be Polite And Respectful Of Others
It’s startling that you need to tell people this, but please be nice to each other and to me. We all have a bad day sometimes, but channel that energy into krav maga or fine whiskey or video games, or whatever else works for you. Don’t drink-and-drive, and don’t rage-and-internet, please.
2. Don’t Make It About You
Blondihacks is designed to be a place for people of all stripes to talk about the projects at hand, share interesting ideas for improvements, and relate our shared experiences. It is not a platform for you to tell everyone how smart you are, or to work out your issues with women who have the gall to speak on the internet. Think about how to word what you want to say in a way that makes it about the topic at hand in a positive way. How can the project be built upon, or what similar experiences did you learn an interesting lesson from? Make it about the content. If your comment needs to be about your own knowledge and experiences, speak from a position of humility and understanding that other people may do things for reasons you aren’t aware of. If your comment includes any conjugation of “should” or contains the phrase “why didn’t you just…”, it’s probably violating this policy. I believe in building each other up, not tearing each other down, and if you’ve never been taught how to give feedback in a positive and constructive way, come back when you’ve figured it out.
3. No Safety Lectures
Shop safety is very important to me, and I take it seriously. I mention it regularly in my videos, and I have signs hanging all over my shop about it (visible in every video). Nevertheless, internet randos regularly decide, after seeing two minutes of a single video, I am unsafe in my shop and need to be scolded about it. Such comments will be deleted immediately. I am not interested in debating this with people commenting in bad faith. Write to me personally if you are interested in a genuine discussion about it.
3. No Mansplaining
Despite being female, I do actually know what I’m doing sometimes. This will come as a shock to most of the internet, judging by my twitter feed and YouTube comments. There are also plenty of times when I do not know what I am doing, but I share the experiences with you anyway. I never claim to be an expert on anything, and my content is always about bringing my friends (all of you!) along for the ride of learning neat things and trying stuff out. Here’s the kicker- you also don’t know what you are doing sometimes, so I ask that you not speak from a position of assuming you are never wrong about anything or that your life experience is universal. Remember that my YouTube videos and blog posts show a tiny window into my life, my equipment, and my experiences. Start from a position of assuming I’m doing things for good reasons that you may not be aware of, and let’s go from there. I’m first to admit when I’m wrong about things or don’t know what I’m doing, and I ask you to compete with me for first place on that.
Assuming you know better and pronouncing your wisdom as though it came from stone tablets is called “mansplaining”, and it isn’t welcome here. I have an editorial policy of being self-effacing and humble in my writing and my videos. That is politeness- it is not the golden opening you’ve been waiting for to drop some super boss man knowledge on a naïve pleeb.
Another way to frame this is follows: Giving advice to someone who has not asked you for it is rude. Plain and simple. It’s annoying, and certain men do it relentlessly to everyone around them. Please stop it. If I want your advice on anything at all, I will ask you for it. Until then, please understand that your opinions are not as fascinating as you think they are.
4. Factual Incorrectness
Your comment may be removed for the simple reason that it states purported facts that are incorrect. You may be super well-intentioned and your comment may have been worded extremely respectfully, but if your facts are wrong, your comment will be removed. This is not a criticism of your post, it’s simply that social media comment threads are the worst possible medium for intellectual conversation, and I haven’t the bandwidth nor space to engage on every little thing. I remove these comments so that future viewers/readers aren’t misled by them. Factually incorrect things that are left in writing contribute to a less well-informed world, and I don’t want my platform to participate in that potential degradation.
5. Do Not Police My Speech
I narrate 30 minute technical content every single week. With that level of production demand, verbal tics and such will occur. I say “so”, “here”, “there” and “this guy” a lot. I am aware and I try to mix things up, but if you think you are immune to this, you have never recorded 30 minutes of narration every week for several years. I may also have different names for tools than you do, because I am from a different country than you are. I may have speech patterns you dislike, such as “vocal fry” or “up-talking”. Fun fact, those criticisms of vocal pattern are tools of oppression that men have traditionally used to silence women. If you don’t like the way I speak or the words I use, you are free to cease watching, but comments about it will be deleted because they are not interesting, insightful, or helpful to anyone.
Consequences
If you’re furiously composing an email/tweet/letterbomb about free speech and how rules like this are ruining America, please consider this xkcd cartoon. Yes, you absolutely have a right to say anything you want to me. However, my blog and videos are not your platform. If you come into my home and shit on the furniture, don’t be surprised if I don’t invite you back to my annual Firefly-themed barbecue.
Violating this commenting policy will result in one of the following, in order of severity of the violation:
- Me rolling my eyes and ignoring you
- Me deleting your comment
- Me blocking your account
- Me doing all of the above, and also hoping you someday find peace and a way to cope with the genuine emotional damage that you are clearly working through.
You likely won’t know any of this has happened, because it is not my job to try and make you a better person. I’m way too busy for that. If you can’t be a mature adult, you’re off the guest list, plain and simple. I have to sift through hundreds of awful messages a week and there isn’t time to dwell on nuance, so my Delete and Block fingers are fast and loose. If you’re thinking, “well, nobody is ever going to read this policy”, you’re probably right. But again, it’s not my job to educate you on how to be a decent human being. It’s your job to figure it out, and if you found your way here, I hope this helped.
If all of this makes you Super Internet Mad™, consider that the sum total of this policy is basic rules for not being a douchebag to people you have never met. If it still bothers you, maybe you should go start your own internet elsewhere. We’d like to keep this one nice.
Thanks for your understanding. The vast, vast majority of the Blondihacks fans are delightful, insightful, curious, interesting people. Let’s all band together in our shared love of mechanical/electronic things and keep the outliers from ruining things for the rest of us.