One of the challenges I face as creator, editor, and primary writer for a website about relationships is making sure I also stay true to my journalist roots. This means that while I might tell a seemingly far-fetched story about a person, place, or thing, the story is true and I tell it without embellishment.  Thus, you won’t see a sentence like this:

“And he very stupidly took the door handle and, like a big imbecile, decided that…”

My goal is not to mock. It’s to learn, teach, and share.

Nevertheless, there is the possibility that someone somewhere is going to read an article in which his name is used and feel sad or angry that I’m talking about him. One of the ways I also try to get around hurt feelings is by allowing some time to pass between the date or experience and when I publish the article.

I read a match.com article about people either acting badly during or after a date. I’ve never used match.com for dating, but the articles pop up onto headlines on various search engines, like Yahoo!

Here’s an excerpt. It actually applies for any social situation and not just a date.

“Dealing with rude post-date behavior There is one other area of concern for poor behavior in the dating world: post-date hecklers. These are the people who can’t wait to get on Facebook or Twitter and tell everyone and anyone about their crummy dates, blog about the poor quality of your goodnight kiss, or ridicule your lousy restaurant choice. These attention-seekers rush to text and email others about your clothes, car, or otherwise find ways to insult and degrade your time spent together.

In more civilized times, these people would be considered gauche or caddish at best. And in today’s social media-driven climate, this behavior should still be viewed as classless, but given our ability to share information fast with virtually anyone online, it often triumphs over tactful introspection.
In cases like this, follow these tips:

The pic match.com used to illustrate its article about post-date hecklers

1. It’s wise not to take it personally. People who want to be entertaining to their friends usually find more humor in complaining than contentment, so they tend to exaggerate the former;
2. Really, it’s none of our business what others think of us, and you can’t please everyone — it’s nobler to turn the other cheek; and
3. If it gets really personal and really specific, remember that the American Bar Association tells us there are approximately 1,225,452 practicing lawyers in the U.S. — and individual states are constantly looking at updating their online harassment and privacy laws.

Fortunately most dates don’t result in lawsuits or, in fact, any sort of misbehaving by either party. Maybe you won’t hit it off, but it’s highly unlikely you will have to call the authorities in. If there’s one rule to bear in mind, make it the golden one: If you want to be treated with respect, treat others respectfully.”

Source:

http://www.match.com/y/article.aspx?articleid=11245&TrackingID=526103&BannerID=1332732