Day 8: I Was Blocked!

I want to be very clear as I start here that I take responsibility for all of this. 
 
A couple of weeks ago I ducked in to Twitter for a few minutes.  I have not been on Twitter as regularly in the past few months, but I have still enjoyed occasionally reading a few posts, saving a few good links, and occasionally posting a few things myself.  I have developed a pretty good network of people I follow, so I don’t have to sort through many pointless posts to get to useful material.  It’s also nice to have short “conversations” with friends that I seldom (if ever) see in person.
 
Reading a post from an educator I have not met, but whom I respect, I was referred to an instructional video on a topic that interested me.  I started the video, and the speaker started by introducing himself as an “Instructional coach and educational consultant.”. At this point I stopped the video, completely turned off by these titles.  I won’t justify my dislike of these kind of titles, I’ll simply say that I find them jargony and off-putting, and I’m pretty sure were I to show this video to a group of teachers, their experience would be much the same. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t know of anyone who takes a speaker more seriously because he is a “certified educational consultant.” My issue, but OK, it’s my blog.
 
Here’s where I made my mistake.  Since every week is “Snark Week” in my world, I wrote back to the originally poster (who did not make the video) and said , “I’m afraid you lost me at instructional coach and educational consultant :).” Please note the smiley…my thought was that we might both laugh about terms like this and move on.  
 
However, this wasn’t the reaction I received.  I won’t quote another person, but he was clearly offended by my judgmental approach.  We had a short exchange with me trying to explain my position, and he becoming angrier.  At a point he referred to my own profile (which is blank), and I said it wasn’t because I was concealing myself, rather pure laziness that kept me from putting in additional information.  The next time I want on Twitter I found that he had stopped following me. There was also a miffed message from the creator of the video.
 
This irked me.  I had followed this person for some time.  I liked his blog and had referred many people to it.  I was also hurt that someone would do this to me…I’m so likeable.  So I wrote a direct message to him saying that I found the whole thing silly and can we just get past it.  Soon after this, I saw a message where he accused me of being a spammer, blocked me, and notified his whole follower list of this action.  I stared at my screen stunned.  How could I be blocked?  I’m such a nice guy.
 
Looking back, it’s clear that I wasn’t such a nice guy. I forgot the key rule of Internet conversation that you need to be very cautious with sarcasm.  I should not have initiated a sarcastic exchange unless I knew we were on equal footing.  Second, once he registered irritation with my comment, I should have apologized and moved on rather than try to justify my position.  His comment showed that this was a sore point for him, and I was not going to be successful in changing his mind.  Finally, once I was unfriended, I should have taken the lesson and moved on.  It’s the classic example of digging a hole deeper.
 
Finally I looked at recent comments and saw that my “snark to value” ratio was way out of whack. It’s fun to banter, but unless you bring something to the table occasionally, there really is no reason for anyone to follow you.
 
Social media is fun, useful, and occasionally treacherous.
 
And if anyone unfriended me because I’m a spammer, please give me another chance.
 
As always, I welcome your comments.