Friday, August 10, 2007

Dooced



According to the numerous apocryphal urban dictionaries, to be "dooced" is to lose one's job due to the content of one's blog. The word came to be back in 2002 when Heather B. Armstrong lost her job because her online journal at dooce.com contained satirical stories regarding her workplace and coworkers. (As an interesting segway Armstrong is a resident of Utah, so once again Utah is recognized for pioneering, although this time it is for pioneering employment law).
As you can imagine Armstrong's doocing sparked quite the debate over freedom of speech. Somewhat surprising , in my opinion, the company won out in this situation, although the rehash of that debate is a whole post unto itself.
What got me thinking about it was what would happen if people from work started reading this blog. Often times it becomes the venue for our expose on the idiocy we see in the company. Sorro and I use codes and nicknames to "protect" the true identities both on the blog and in the office, but anyone from our company would have little difficulty deciphering who we are talking about. The potential consequence is stiff, but even so I think the risk is worth it. I for one would be quite sad to lose my outlets for frustration and even sadder still to see Sorro's weekly leadership meeting review discontinued. Dooce or no, I think I speak for Sorro and myself when I say it's all worth it. And I sit with some satisfaction knowing that if we get dooced our EVP will having to start doing some actual work.

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