I do separate my civic stuff from my business, and tend to do the community blog thing instead of the personal blog, so they don’t really cross paths. I also run a FB fanpage: http://facebook.com/pawsitivevybe to really keep the focus on my business.

I do want to share some things with people in the social network setting, but don’t want to argue or push an ideology.

I also try to keep civic discussions out of conversations IRL, but it’s near impossible for me. lol…

It happens, but the nonpartisan, or equal opportunity bashing, insulates me from the real partisan ire out there.

Please be sure to share your brand thoughts with me on the fb when you get around to it.

I’d be very interested.

Actually, what you bring up needs to be its own blog post. I’ve put it on my list of things to write about soon and will let you know when that happens.

As you can tell, I have the exact same issue. I have several personal brands, so the question becomes should I have one website or several? I like having *one*, but what happens is that I end up mixing content together across different ideas. I might do a video editing post. I might do a dating post. I might do a Social Media post. I might do a gym post. My “brand” ends up being whatever I feel like outputting, which necessarily dilutes all of my brands at the same time.

The current “difference” between you and I is that I blog almost entirely for self-expression. I like to write. My friends like to read what I write and we laugh about it over brews. Now that I’ve recognized it for what it is, I’m WAAAAAY more interested in my “Bill The Socialite” brand than my “Bill The Video Editor” brand. I edit video to get money. I hang out because that’s my real life, so that brand has naturally overshadowed all the rest and it turns out that that’s the way I like it. :)

Having said that, there are still LOTS of topics I won’t blog about or even talk about IRL. It’s not because I don’t have opinions on the topics, but because nothing good is going to come out of the conversation. If I don’t bring it up, I still know what I know and people treat me differently because they don’t know what my opinions are on those topics. Similar to Tiger Woods, people will treat you as status quo until you tell or show them why they should treat you otherwise.

So I think it all comes down to what you want to project about yourself, to whom, and what effect you’re attempting to achieve. I don’t know that your dog community is interested in your anti-establishment views, BECAUSE it’s not an “anti-establishment” community. See what I mean? So while you’re expressing yourself authentically, you might be expressing yourself to the wrong people.

My dating blog, for instance.. I’ve run into a grand total of three people in four years that were willing to tell me to my face, IRL that they didn’t like whatever about my blog. I don’t even remember the third situation, but the other two people felt differently after I asked them what they didn’t like and then we discussed it rationally and intelligently. It’s easy for context to be lost when you translate your thoughts to print and then that’s translated into thoughts in someone else’s head. What might appear to be me saying “I think women in general are stupid” may actually be me saying “Women would be smarter if they shunned their brainwashing and thought for themselves” or “Women allow emotions to cloud their abilities to think properly and accurately”.

There are people that read my blog and think I’m anti-female, when the people who have hung out with me for more than the last DECADE know that if I’m not hanging out with a female, I’m probably not hanging out AT ALL. :D I would guess that 85% of my daily interactions are done with females, if not more than that.

One example of the “fallout” situation that you bring up is the Michael Vick situation. I’m from New York City. People train their dogs here to be a defense system. They don’t have to carry guns because they’ve trained their dogs to make it happen on command if someone bothers them. They train their dogs with tires, bricks, whatever.

So my viewpoint is different from people who only understand dogs as fluffy pets. It’s absolutely incredible to them that a guy would make two dogs fight each other. It doesn’t compute. So, while, personally, the concept is no big deal to me, a great percentage of my online community was up in arms, really upset over the situation and calling for sanctions and jail-time blah blah blah. Then, when he went to jail for it and did his time like the law told him to, those same people wanted him to be banned from the NFL.

So I can either say something PRO-Vick, causing people to cry, bitch & moan and unfriend me on social services, stay neutral to the situation and post links to his reinstatement into football, or jump on the bandwagon denouncing him, gain more followers and feel like a jerk for doing/saying stuff I don’t believe.

The question becomes whether the fallout is worth your expressing your honest opinion in the first place. If you’re blogging for business, it might not be. You might want to make an anonymous account to do that from, which SUCKS, but protects your business. If you’re blogging for self-expression, as I am, there’s the added benefit of when people run into you IRL, they either pat you on the back and say “Good Job.. That’s exactly what I was thinking, but nobody ever has the nerve to actually SAY it.” or they look at you with disdain like “I hope he doesn’t notice that I’m looking at him with disdain”. It’s actually rather beneficial for separating the wheat from the chaff…

I’m having some issues on this topic.

Right now, on facebook, I’m casting as wide a net as possible to be sure to touch as many potential clients as possible and to be up to speed on developments in the disc dog community.

I also am pretty seriously anti-Establishment. So far, I’ve been quite nonpartisan, which is no stretch for my Socialist bent, but I posted this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx7SKRv-G_s
which some people are most likely not going to like.

I’m quite passionate about civics and want to share that with people in a personal way, but the fallout from stuff is a bit unnerving.

anyway, great post!
peace,
Ron

I didn’t get any such reminders! :D haha I was told how it was supposed to be and then I either followed the rules, didn’t follow the rules and got away with it or didn’t follow the rules, got caught and got “what for”! :D

‘…now, you be yourself, be yourself…” as if he assumed, bless him, that my ‘self’ would act better than that and just needed a reminder!