I have been noticing a trend of people finding it their personal right to smear someone who they do not know anything other than the tweets or certain people. In fact, recently, an incident mentioning @AlohaArleen came up. I have never met her in person, but I tweet with her on Twitter and have been for the past year. I am not what you call a close Twitter friend of hers, but I think she is a sweet and classy lady. She does have a lot of followers and that is quite alright with me. She obviously does connect with people.

Without telling the entire situation, I received some comments on my blog in reference to a smear campaign against her by a guy who I am more than certain is posting under another alias, or what some of us who are into the fan lingo, sock puppet. I really have no reason to mention WHO, but if it is enough to come by and leave an off-topic comment twice in a month, I think it is something that needs to be addressed without entirely embarrassing the culprit of the smear campaign.

Smear campaigns are not a reason to spam or post off-topic material on others blogs. The proper channel is to find similar places that allow such behavior and post it there, like celebrity sites, or regular gossip sites. There is even a Fandom Wank Wiki. The problem is that some smear campaigns do not entirely tell the truth, or do not tell truth at all.

Unless a person loves drama, I find from most people I have talked to, they try to avoid being a part of the mess. Smear campaigns can possibly hurt both parties involved – the “antagonist”, the people for, the people against, and the protagonist. It could possibly lead to legal litigation if defamation is involved and could even hurt if employers of any party involved catch wind. It could hurt the blogger’s influence if the smear campaign is indeed baseless and false accusations. It can get parties banned from their webhost and their Internet Service Provider, or even arrested if found to be harassing. This is nothing short of being a possibly scarring event.

What are your thoughts about this type of behavior? Are you likely to read or avoid?

Related posts:

1. The Art of Blogging: Do Not Be Afraid To Leave Comments
2. Social Network Sites And Blogging Are Hurting the News Industry?
3. Indentifying And Taking Care Of Comment Spam