What to do with the Bryco Post?

Oh Dear! Mail came earlier today from the headquarters of Bryco Funding asking if the eighteen month old post about their company - Thank You Bryco! - could be removed.

This appeared back in 2005 around the time that government regulators were first getting about the task of doing something about home equity extraction that had become as easy as picking up a phone and fogging a mirror.

The piece was inspired by transcribed from a TV ad that was happened upon one Sunday morning, and in light of news at that time about changes to home equity lending standards, it was a no-brainer.

It attracted a fair number of comments, clearly not evenly balanced, but both sides were duly represented - a 62-year old grandmother even wrote in to say a few good words about the kind people at Bryco.

Of course a few ex-employees showed up too and had a few unkind thoughts to share, but generally speaking it didn't appear to be doing anyone any harm.

Well, a quick search on Bryco Funding reveals the problem and surely explains the motivation for the correspondence received earlier.


Having just read through the entire post and all the comments, one thing becomes immediately and painfully clear.

No longer using the "royal we" was an excellent mid course adjustment for this blog. It's not clear where that originated - at the time, the use of pluralis majestatis (the majestic plural) to avoid singular pronouns may have seemed like a good thing to do, but in retrospect, it sounds like there was a mouse in my pocket.

Where did that come from?

[Note the use of a single "my" thus far - it's not easy, but it's worth it.]

These days, pronouns are avoided completely if possible, though that makes story telling a bit more difficult. There are a few exceptions where the word "I" is littered throughout a post, but that's more for dramatic effect - a sort of shock to the system where regular readers may notice something different, but not know what it is at first.

There's nothing more annoying to some readers than to constantly hear "I this" and "I that". "I think that he should do this" and "I know that she can do that" - it can be quite annoying to see and read that word over and over.

More than likely, most people write this way naturally because that's the way they speak. But, it looks a little different in print, especially when the word is used over and over.

The fact that my last name starts with that letter makes it all the more awkward here, and at first the "royal we" seemed the perfect solution.

Looking back now, it just sounds a little silly - surely, it was the right thing to do.

Anyway, where were we?

Oh yeah.

It's not clear what should be done with that old post that keeps popping up when Bryco Funding is Googled. In a sense, maybe that's what makes the internet great. The comments for and against Bryco both seem compelling in their own way and perhaps leaves potential customers walking away better informed than they would otherwise be.

On the other hand, this may be affecting the company's bottom line, so maybe strategy sessions have been held where management figures that if they could only get that blog post down, then business would pick up and they won't have to lay off Suzy in accounting.

I (oops!) don't know. What do you think?