So You Want To Be A Superhero An Anonymous Blogger: 5 Practical Pointers

Engaging in social media can be fun, educational, and essential to promoting your brand name. It can also be a good way to kill your brand name and destroy your life, depending on what you do or say.

People think that being an anonymous blogger gives you more power to speak your mind. True, there are some things you can say more freely if your boss is not looking at your profile page, but that doesn’t mean you should act like no one is looking over your shoulder. My motto, written in stone in my office at the Lawprofblawg School of Law: You are one tweet away from your own total destruction.

I don’t want to get into who said what on the internet. However, we’re all familiar with some stories:

1. Someone says something ridiculous on Twitter, has a hashtag started about her, and gets fired while she is on an international flight. Her tweet was from her personal and identified account.
2. Someone says something ridiculous on Twitter, gets attacked on Twitter, doxxed, and then fired. Her tweet was from her anonymous account.
3. Someone in public office says something ridiculous on his Twitter account, gets put on leave.

There are more stories than this. But I think you get the picture.

If you’re an anonymous blogger, you should start with the assumption that you’ll be discovered. Someone will out you, and then all of your colleagues will look to see the awful things you’ve written about them. In my instance, this is of no concern, because I’ve told my colleagues directly that I don’t like meetings and enjoy their company only when in groups too small to be considered meetings. And everyone knows there is no love lost between my former associate dean and myself.

However, there was one tweet I made about Beyoncé and how unimportant I thought Lemonade was. It got retweeted, commented upon, retweeted more, more comments about me, and ……. There was a brief moment when I thought Lawprofblawg would be no more. It doesn’t take much to fire up the Internet. I had made similar comments about Adele and Justin Bieber, but this time it took an ugly turn. You just never know what will cause the groundswell, even if you’re trying to play nice most of the time.

Here are some tips to assure that you do not cause your own downfall, whether you blog, tweet, or post from your personal account or anonymously. Of course, these rules are beyond the golden rule never to criticize Beyoncé.

1. Your general rule should be to be nice. Don’t post hateful things. Know the difference between friendly snark and mean-spirited trolling. Use your social media presence to promote the work of others. In other words, help people, don’t hurt them.

The exception appears to be the realm of politicians. I’ve made plenty of tweets commenting on inconsistencies in posts of either party’s candidates, without much damage. But then again, there’s an art to attacking the policy or facts portrayed by a politician rather than the politicians themselves.

Besides, being mean-spirited hurts your brand. No one is going to remember the 10,000 inspiring or educational tweets you wrote before you wrote that one that made people question your sanity.

I posted recently about the state bars that do a good job of being informative and fun, without crossing this line. So, it is possible to accomplish these two goals without getting to extreme.

2. If you’re trying to promote debate or spur controversy, ask a question. It is better to ask a question than to take an extreme stand and watch as your audience turns on you. If you want to create a discussion, say, about recent horrific events involving children at certain zoos and theme parks, you might, for example, pose a question about the liability of the park or zoo. This approach is especially useful if you don’t think the zoo or park is liable. It is safer than taking an extreme position and will likely get the discussion you want.

3. Try to have a diverse following to keep your views in check. I’ve discovered my best friends in keeping me from getting too far ahead of myself are those with opposing viewpoints. I’m not talking about mean-spirited knee-jerk reactionaries here. I’m talking about people who have well-thought-out beliefs and have advocated those beliefs for a long time. If I tweet something with which they disagree, they will call me on it. I learn from this discussion, and hopefully they do, too. Regardless, a diverse following keeps you from believing your own press releases.

4. Stick to your theme to avoid being sucked in to a potentially risky media frenzy. There are many bloggers out there that stick to a theme. I’m not one of them, as I tend to tilt at the windmills more. However, other bloggers have the capacity to avoid running into trouble by sticking to their theme.

For example, Dr. Academic Batgirl (@AcademicBatgirl) does a great job of focusing on the trials and tribulations of our superheroes, the academics, in their constant quest to get their manuscripts out. At some point in the future I’ll post on my own blog the blogs that I follow for inspiration and education. It is always more rewarding to stick to your theme and be inspiring than it is to be vitriolic and caustic.

5. Watch your mood. You should never drive drunk or social media angry. If your associate dean has just delivered bad news to you, you should not immediately take to Twitter and write mean things about him or her. You’ll regret it, perhaps many times over.

I don’t always follow these rules. Sometimes, the risks of being edgy are worth the reward. Just keep in mind that it can also be devastating personally and professionally when you underestimate those risks. And remember: Never, ever criticize Beyoncé.

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LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here and on Twitter. Email him at [email protected].