Fake, Or Don't Believe Everything You Read

I was inspired by another of Seth Godin’s blog posts, this one on fake.

Here are a few excerpts which struck me:

We can leave a trail of wreckage without much thought, especially if we're anonymous…

When we want to hide behind an alias…we do…

Worse, when we want to deceive or lash out, it's easy to do…relationships and even reputations are disposable. We don't have to look you in the eye, it's dark in here, and we're wearing a mask.

My name is on this blog. I thought about using a pseudonym, a nom de plume, and then thought better of it: I don’t plan to write anything that I don’t want next to my name.

I write about things I have experienced, things I have seen with my own eyes. I claim my re-telling of things as my own. I don’t write about things I haven’t been through as though I had been through them. I didn't come up with a clever blog title to impute more credibility.

My issue is how easy it is to lash out, to hide anonymously, lobbing grenades into someone’s life, ministry, or mission. Once the grenade has exploded, there is damage to repair, requiring a great deal of time & effort.  Time and effort spent to rebuild, even if the damage was based on a lie. Or a “partial truth”. It’s easy for someone to anonymously create the wreckage without any data, facts, or evidence. And too often people read something & assume it is true—because why would someone write it if it weren't true?

It is not easy to stand toe-to-toe, have the difficult conversation, identify the miscommunication & misunderstandings—admit when I’m wrong. I do it, though, because it is what men do. Or at least what men *should* do, rather than working hard to convince you that your trust is well-placed in their stories.

Godin ends his post by asking, “Do we really need to add another layer of fake?”

Preach on, brother, preach on.