Um, duh?

There's an article on MSN.com lifestyle today that is titled, "When is it okay to blog about your dates?"

Um, always...Especially when the date went particularly badly. Blogging is how people with no friends rehash and try to make sense of emotionally scarring experiences.

The article cited several concerns, such as defamation, inaccurate portrayals of events, and scaring people away with the propsect that they are dating a blogger.

First, defamation. It's only defamation if you're saying something unkind that is provably not true. If some people I knew in high school blogged about how this girl Katie used to flip off cheerleaders in the hallways behind their backs, I couldn't get upset about them defaming my character - it's ugly, but it's the truth. Plus, the burden of proof resides on the one being defamed, not the defamer. I'm working on my memoir, and no, I'm not defaming a lot of people in it, but there are two or three people I don't have a whole lot of good things to say about. As long as I change defining physical characteristics - making them tall instead of short, black hair instead of blonde, well-endowed instead of...well, you get the idea - I've done my part. I didn't name them by name or physical description, and I depicted the event true to my rememberance of it.

Which brings me to the second point - accuracy. No one can remember an event or situation perfectly, unless it occured on the set of "More to Love" and they were being followed around by video cameras. Even then, the overall story arc is subject to editing. As long as you're not making things up, that you truly perceived an event to happen the way you say it did, there's really no case against you.

Do you drive people away by the mere fact that you have a blog? I say no. Chances are, most of the people in your life aren't interesting enough to write about in the first place, thereby ensuring their own protection from the blogosphere. On dates, I can think of many, many things more important to talk about than how you spend your free time on the internet. "Oh, you're into porn? I have a blog!" I'd much rather know if there is a felony conviction for anything in my date's past, or how many children they've sired out of wedlock, or their status of gainful employment. I strongly believe it is my apparently unattainable requirements of men that keeps me single, not my blog.

Finally comes the one unassailable fact of blogging about dates: If they show up in your blog, they did something very deserving. I don't blog about the men I've just not had a connection with. But the men who ask me on our first phone call if I'm bad in bed, or if I'm into being spanked...welcome to your fifteen minutes of fame.