A few days ago I came across a great conversation between two well-known bloggers Fred Wilson and Jason Calacanis on the topic of life in public and the costs associated with it.  Thought it’s a nice topic to share.

With a tragic story told about his friend Josh Harris and the Sundance-winning film We Live in Public, Jason wrote on his newsletter:

We’re all canaries in the coal mines now … We’re harvesting our lives and putting them online. We’re addicted to gaining followers and friends (or email subscribers, as the case may be), and reading comments we get in return. As we look for validation and our daily 15 minutes of fame, we do so at the cost of our humanity.

Fred, in response, points out that our social behavior evolves with changes in technologies and communication methods, and we as a society will be able to build real accountability while adapting this process. He then concludes with a following set of rules based on his own experience:

1. Keep your family out of it until they want to be in it

2. Be nice

3. Demand that others are nice back

4. Encourage the community to police the comments. Early on Jackson was my “bouncer” and now Kid Mercury has assumed that role

5. Take the nasty comments lightly and use humor to defuse them

6. Do not delete comments unless they are hateful to others, porn, or spam

7. Ignore the trolls even though it kills you

8. Be careful with photos. They greatest lesson I got was when I posted a photo of me on vacation looking smug. Bad move that I learned a lot from

9. Give more than you take

10. Enjoy yourself. Talking, discussing, and debating is fun. Keep it that way

The two articles can be found here. Great reads:
We Live in Public (and the end of empathy) - by Jason Calacanis
Living In Public Doesn’t Have To Be Destructive - by Fred Wilson