I came across an old post from five years ago on Facebook. (By the way, that "On This Day" feature is excellent and a great reminder of what kind of head space we were in compared to now. Very educational!) The post was a message to some friends that happened to be female that were forced to delete me as a friend because the interaction (whether we were talking sports, politics, or entertainment) created a problem for them at home with their significant others. In hindsight, it is funny but sad at the same time.
In today's times, which in this regard, is not much different than back then, social media users use their pages to attack people with veiled messages, accusations, and insults. Guess they forgot to tag the person they intended to target. Their comment section will likely be filled with sad retorts and some form of commiseration. "Yes, I understand, girl. I'm here for you. I got your back, homey. Don't worry about them haters! Blah blah blah!"
That might sound harsh but only because honestly that is fake at its core and a weak attempt to get sympathy from people the poster doesn't even respect or care for at all. See, I'm no expert at social media but I didn't imagine the original intent was to defame or shame people or attempt to elicit guilt through a post the offending party might not even see. (They have 3,000 friends and a job. Their timeline is moving every three minutes or less. They probably won't see your critique and there's a good chance they don't even know how you feel. I'm sorry but you needed to hear that!)
People are pounding away at the keyboard intending to hurt the other person or make them look bad when in all honesty, the sender of these posts almost never looks in the mirror and clearly never considers their part in the dispute. They're wrong. I'm right. Support me with tear faced emojis and make me feel better about this situation. If there is a takeaway I would love for you to get from this is be very careful who you come in agreement with and whose side you jump in on. You work with them. You go to church with them. You know them from high school. But that's not an automatic that you know them. There's a great chance that you are on the losing side. The offending party might know something you don't know about the person you are comforting who has been so "wronged".
That's the power of social media. You can align yourself with a person and a cause and have no idea what the background is and we ignore the pertinent details necessary to make a quality decision. We just go with the flow even if it takes us over a cliff. We've seen it a million times. We don't have all the facts because the poster of these veiled messages purposely leaves it out. A great example of this are my friends in several sports groups have seen the obliteration of these first hand because of that very reasons. That's why we can't have nice things! We don't use them properly! Social media is supposed to be for the purpose of communicating. Send. Receive. Encode. Decode. Call. Response. It's really not that hard.
So to all of the folks that feel the need to lash out in anger and try to sully other's reputations simply because playing the victim is easier than dealing with the reality that you're just too into you, if you wanted pity, you have it. I pity you. You don't care who you hurt and your focus is solely on you and that's why your life is probably a lot emptier than it should be. You could be doing so much more for your community, for your family, and even for yourself personally and spiritually but it's more important that you try to build a Lynch mob to support a twisted notion that you have been wronged but you have wronged no one. (I know there are some that have and still are lashing out at me and friends of mines online because we refused to be a slave to the whims of other people. Broken people beget broken people! Massa said we can be free now and we're gonna be free! You're going to have to respect us for us or find a new toy to play with.)
I don't write this to offend anyone but I would love this to help those someones who use social media maliciously and with a vindictive intent. I've been wrong many times and I probably am now but if being on social media means hurting people with my words and arming myself against them, I'll delete all my accounts and stay gone this time. Thankfully, some of my family and some good friends remind me that this is still a good medium when used correctly.
Maybe one day, the bold and courageous of us will call out these so called victims and shine a light on the victimizers they actually are. They use their timelines to hurt people when all they have to do is pick up the phone and privately (emphasis) share their feelings or admit their faults (yeah, that's rare!)
Until then, I'll just my little blog and pray and try to be do better. What else can we do, right?
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