Since becoming a serious member of the Blogosphere through participating in my own site, writing for Gender Across Borders and The Huffington Post, I’ve adopted one simple etiquette policy: if you don’t have anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Although it is evident through some of the nasty comments I’ve gotten (though few and far between) and through reading the comments on other popular websites, many people don’t fly by this rule, and prefer to spew vile and hide behind the anonymity that the World Wide Web often provides.
Although I apply this rule to my internet comings and goings, there is no doubt in my mind that most of us first heard the phrase, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all from our mothers or some other parental figure during a time where the phrase was to be applied to everyday life before the internet existed. There are many reasons why this is a good policy. Many of those reasons includes common courtesy, being a nice person, and otherwise overlooking another’s indiscretions and personal failures in favor of letting karma work it all out for you. Another reason is because when you say something mean or nasty with intent to harm, it sometimes comes back and bites you in the butt, or as Donald Trump recently demonstrated, it sometimes comes back and bites you in the butt before you can even formulate the words, “Your Fired.”