The Best Retort for the “Atheists Are Arrogant” Argument

It is considered good social networking etiquette–especially on
Twitter–to warn your followers that you are posting a link to content on your own
blog or company website.

I hereby reject this for the following reasons:

1. When I follow someone it’s because I think they, on the whole, produce
   content that I want to read vs. content that I find spammy, boring, or
   otherwise low-signal-to-noise. If this ever stops being the case, I will
   no longer follow, and I don’t care at all where that content comes from.

2. If you’re worried that the links I post might be “spam” then we already
   have a much more serious problem than a labeling issue.

3. The odds of my own content being significantly lower quality than the
   content I enjoy and share from other sources that you DO enjoy, is low.

4. If I don’t have to warn you before I tell you I am going to get a coffee
   at Starbucks, then I damn sure am not going to warn you before I refer
   you to a piece I wrote that I think you might find valuable.

In short, what it really means to warn people that you’re posting your own
stuff is:

But if that were the case, then you probably wouldn’t be following me in the
first place.

The whole purpose of social media and networking is to put yourself out
there–to share your life and ideas with others. There is simply no more pure
way to do this than to show people what you’re thinking and writing about.

So no, I will not shield or obscure my own perception of what I find
interesting in what amounts to a preemptively apology. If you like what I
normally post then you should also like what I write about. From the
follower perspective, you either trust me to post content that is somehow
worth your time or you don’t. ::