Tag: Writing

No no, it has nothing to do with washing your hands before blogging. But that’s a good practice too. “Health brings wealth” I always say.

What exactly is a Pontius Pilate blogger? Well, just in time for the Holy Week here in the Philippines, the Pontius Pilate blogger is someone who does not edit his or her posts for one reason or another. This is based on the biblical reference of Pilate when he said “what I have written I have written” when the Jews wanted him to change the INRI inscription (Iesu Nazarenus Rex Iudeorum or Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews) on the cross.

I’ve never known a blogger who doesn’t edit posts. And for the most part, bloggers are all into covert ops editing, which is my term for editing posts without a time stamp or text notification. This usually occurs when the editables have to do more with spelling, grammar and sentence construction.

But more often than not, adding a bold “EDIT” or “UPDATE” to the post helps inform frequent visitors that there have been changes to the post. But you know this already, as it really is common sense.

I guess the extreme Pilate blogger would never even dare delete a post that may have come off as offensive or worse, bordering on “non-disclosure agreement breaches.” The Pilate blogger stands by the code “what I have written, I have written” and puts this in front of prudence. It is a double edged sword as well as a trait that can be feared as well as admired.

UPDATE: Jason points out that a Pontius Pilate blogger has more to do with washing his hands off things, namely the ill effects of link baiting:

And to me, a Pontius Pilate blogger is one who puts up linkbait posts and then washed his hands of the consequences by saying “oh, I never really meant to say that” or “hey, I never thought people would react that way” or “jeesh, you guys are reading too much between the lines.”

Linkbaiting has gotten such a bad name. I state my analogy with how, in the real world, you can equate link baiting with a sexy girl on the cover of the magazine.

Linkbait tactics or not, the important thing to do is always be mindful of mistakes and make necessary and sincere amends for them 🙂

Today I was browsing through Alister Cameron’s blog (love his content) and was curious about his post on the Filipino link builder who can’t write.

I went over to that blog to check it out (something I will usually do if you leave me a comment), and something was immediately obvious to me: this is a caucasian male who clearly has a good command of the English language, and (from the Contact page) lives in Ontario, Canada. So it seemed immediately strange to me that his comment on my blog post was written in broken, second-rate English.

What you can’t see from the front-end of my blog is what my admin page tells me: that the IP address of this commenter is 58.69.208.247. I do an RDNS lookup, a traceroute, a geo-ip lookup and all that jazz and come up with the confident fact that the commenter is in the Philippines! What the?!

What the?! indeed! This makes me reflect back to an old post as to why Filipinos would make good bloggers. And there was a lot of pride in my words when I did mention that we have a good command of English as it is a national language in this Asian country, apart from our local Filipino.

But what’s peculiar was the RDNS thing. I’m clueless and would rather leave this up to the experts who can explain why something like this can happen.

I was tagged by Abraham but took my sweet time to answer this. Here are the five things you probably don’t know about me but now you do.

1. I have a great fear of contact lenses. Or anything that has to do with the eye. I’ve worn glasses but those don’t really count. I get weak and queazy with the eye doctor.

2. I’m a miracle baby. Carbon monoxide poisoning when I was one year old. I was rushed to the hospital and they did a full blood transfusion. Which is why I now have asthma and allergies to certain things. But I love the smell of gasoline and freon. Hehe.

3. I like living my life as if the whole world was watching. Which is why I have a James Bond complex. No matter what I do, it has to look good in some way or another because life is a stage.

4. I don’t eat fruits. Unless turned to juice.

5. If I had a choice, I would have relived my life and become a professional dancer. Whenever I go to formal functions I always wished I could dance as well as the best dancer on the floor.