Shane wrote about some of the hate messages and even threats he’s been receiving lately and it makes me sick to my stomach. No matter how strongly you disagree with someone, resorting to hate comments and/or threats is low.

Seriously, wtf?

Maybe you disagree with him writing about .ws investments for example, that’s fine.

I for one don’t like .ws as an investment option… so what?

Am I now supposed to tell everyone who disagrees with me that they suck or that I’m going to come to their house and kick their butts?

Didn’t think so.

Maybe .ws will prove to be a good investment, as much as I doubt it.

Maybe not.

Time will tell.

The same principle is valid when it comes to short domains in general.

Maybe prices will increase 10x by the end of the year.

Maybe they’ll drop to zero.

Again, time will tell.

At the end of the day, I invest in whatever I want. You invest in whatever you want. Shane invests in whatever he wants.

Those who get it right make money and those who get it wrong lose money.

And let me make one thing perfectly clear: if you invested in .ws domains and end up losing money, it’s NOT Shane’s fault.

Had he come to your house with a gun and threatened you to buy .ws names then yes, that would have been different. I’m pretty sure he didn’t though. I for one can confirm that out of all the people who came to my home with guns recently, Shane wasn’t among them 🙂

Nobody forced you to invest in whatever it is you’re currently investing in.

Be it .ws domains, one word dot com domains or whatever.

Nobody.

Sure, different people blog about different things. Some think keyword dot com domains are great investments, some like new gTLDs, some like short domains and yes, some even like .ws domains.

It’s their right to blog about whatever they want.

You can listen to their arguments if you want to or if not, you can simply stop reading.

Back when we were in school for example, it kind of sucked that we didn’t get to choose who to spend time with. During the school day, whether we liked it or not, we had to stay in the same room with people we liked as well as people we didn’t. There was nothing we could do about it.

As adults however, we have this little thing called freedom.

If you don’t like one of the pundits you see on TV, your remote control enables you to get rid of him forever by changing the channel.

You don’t have to write hate mail, you don’t have to threaten him.

The same principle is valid when it comes to blogs.

All you have to do is click on that small “x” button and bam, the blog will be gone. You can leave and never ever visit again, isn’t that awesome?

Bloggers type in words on a keyboard and click “publish”, they’re human beings just like you and not clairvoyants. They can’t predict the future. They don’t have it all figured out. They can and frequently do make mistakes.

Never ever EVER read blogs with a “please tell me what to do/think” mindset, never ever EVER outsource the actual decision making process.

By all means, read blogs. Or forums. Or geocities pages 🙂

But only read them to gather information in order to ultimately make a decision YOURSELF.

A decision you assume responsibility for.

A decision which may very well prove to be wrong and if it does, guess who’s at fault?

If you don’t know the answer to this question, you’ve read this post for nothing.

Look, I know being a beginner in the domaining world is hard but a lot of things that have to do with being adults are hard (putting food on the table and all that). And I can pretty much guarantee that unless you develop the habit of assuming responsibility for your mistakes and learning from them, you won’t do well.

Finding someone to blame for your mistakes may alleviate some of the initial anxiety/shame you’re feeling but in the long run, this habit can and will destroy you.