The hypocritical blogger – a self-cancelling existence

What is hypocrisy?

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, has an excellent working definition of hypocrisy. Here are two short excerpts:

Hypocrisy is the act of pretending to have morals or virtues that one does not truly possess or practice.

Hypocrisy also refers to the act of criticizing others for behavior which one engages in as well, or in other words, not practising what you preach.

There are hypocrites in all walks of life, but this post is about the dangers of being hypocritical as a blogger.

Bloggers, by the nature of their calling, tend to take positions on many issues. Some even have the audacity to offer advice to their readers or to inspire them with high sounding ideals to follow.

The downside to all of this is that a blogger’s real attitudes about life tend to come through after a while and if these attitudes do not match up with the virtues that the blogger espouses, it undermines the blogger’s credibility bigtime!

I have seen several examples of this recently where bloggers promoted the necessity of positive attitudes in business relationships, yet devoted space in their blog to snarky remarks about people and things they didn’t like.

I have seen other blogs where the emphasis is upon keeping a cheerful attitude toward life, but there is post after post bemoaning their fate and lamenting the unfairness of it all.

The strangest one I ran across was a blogger known for unrelenting rants about the indecisive gutlessness of government officials. A minor standard domestic crisis (spouse exits stage left) and this blogger is reduced to whining and pleas for pity.

In all cases I have mentioned, the blogger was no longer a credible source of opinion after their hypocrisy was revealed.

If you constantly say one thing, but think and live another, the dichotomy will eventually tear you apart and you will certainly stop blogging. If your readers notice what you are doing, they will leave comments and the word will get around that you "talk the talk" but cannot "walk the walk".

Bloggers need to be real

Write with conviction, but make sure it is your conviction, not something you read in a book. The bottom line is that it is best to be real. Readers will learn to like you, warts and all, if you practice what you preach.

You don’t have to be nice, or particularly erudite to have a devoted readership. A consistent point of view and an honest way of making your points using real examples would be a good start.

Questions? Objections? Any really good examples I have missed?