I completely disagree. Only on very, very rare occasions is someone actually held accountable for their online actions and blog posts. For the most part, you can say, do, and act however you want under the veil of anonymity, and most people do.

Additionally, anytime someone brings a counter-point to your blog, posts a negative comment, or generally calls you on your bullsh**, you can simply ignore them and delete the comment (as I know, from experience, even Trent has done).

As for being accountable to your readers, that’s not entirely true. At first, it may have been, but now, based on your popularity, you could post the worst advice ever (and sometimes do) and still receive roughly the same amounts of praise and criticism for it.

You could tell people that, with some ridiculous justifications, getting and paying for a servant (maid) is *frugal*, and they’d not only believe you but commend your great logic. Ironically, you did that last week, and I highly doubt your hit count went down that day.

Blogging doesn’t make you accountable to anyone since the readers either add to your own justifications for your actions, thoughts, ideas, logic or you completely blow off, ignore, delete, or otherwise counter opposition to the conclusion(s) you’ve already made. No one wants to here *other* opinions, they want others to justify their own opinion.

And that isn’t accountability.

Good post, Trent.

I can’t talk to friends and family so blogging anon and reading about other peoples’ trials and tribulations has gone a long way to helping me to sort out my crazy behavior. It’s free therapy.

People had different codes over the histories, but honor is something they all had. They “mostly” followed the laws, but realized they were all accountable to all the people you stated.

Could you please elaborate on your accountability to your readers?

For me accountability became a major issue when I realize that after University I wanted to obtain my Master’s Degree. This means that I must be more serious about my education and more catious with my spending..

Studenomist
http://www.studenomics.com

I’ve been a guest writer at The Happy Rock for the past four months, and I can’t tell you how many decisions have been altered because of the fact I knew I’d be blogging about it.

This really struck a chord with me as its something I’ve struggled with. When I was in the process of making a career change I ended up drifting around rather aimlessly and ended up wasting a lot of time and money.

I realized later that I needed to approach things like other people were depending on me. Once I looked at work and school as things which impacted people beyond me I grew much more focused and disciplined.

Thanks for a good article.

I think that my husband and I help to keep each other accountable too…if we didn’t talk about money so regularly, it’d be easy for us to do some sneaky spending!