Dear Well Known Blogger: (No, not you, or you, or you.) (Quit it! It’s not you!!!)
I read you for a couple of months a year or so ago. I liked your writing and you had a great back story. Very sad, indeed. But you wrote it well. I followed you on the twit and Facebook. I wanted to know you. I really wanted to like you. I imagined gleefully meeting somewhere, having a beer. I wanted to like you as a person, not just a bloggy face.
But then…
Well, I have issues with the whole social media thing. I do. This spring I bore witness to the worst aspects of it, when a blogger got bullied and chest butted by another blogger’s husband over what I consider something so benign as to be laughable. On twitter. For the world to see. What I found so incredibly disturbing was that this was a case of cyber-bullying, in essence, by a person that brands himself as a family man. I think I get it. He mistakenly thought he was standing up for his wife, yet the way he went about it left me to wonder what he would have done if he’d had physical access to the person that offended him.
Is this what we’ve become? Is social media just the new jungle gym to knock someone else off of? Does anyone think of the embarrassment that they may cause? Or the pain?
Back to you. I stopped following you on the twit after I saw one of your tweets congratulating a country on their killing of a madman. Like Yay! He’s dead! Way to go! That just flat-out gave me pause. If you are a person that advocates for others (which you do), why would you ever tweet about anyone’s death like that? I didn’t get it. I unfollowed you and stopped reading. But like I said, I really wanted to like you. For you.
I just came back to you a few days ago. I was almost excited. Like reconnecting with an old friend. But you did it again. You insulted someone on twitter. Someone that had done a lot of work, laid themselves out in front of people. Someone who didn’t deserve to be made fun of because they were sharing their truth as they see it. You called them a name. I ask you; if that person read your ‘harmless’ little tweet, what do you think they would feel? What if that person made their living this way? Who are you to piss on them?
Again, I think I get it. I’m of the mind that you think you are as famous as The Bloggess. www.thebloggess.com. That just maybe, you can call people out and be rude when you feel because you are “famous” and no one will take you to task. Well, I’ve read almost all of Jenny’s work and I will say this. If she has to get into a shitfight, she manages to still do it with humour and dare I say, a semblance of class. If she calls out her minions on twitter, all of us now happy members of The Unicorn Success Club, she also can call us all back. Do you know why? Because we are all nice people. We read her because she has a good heart and like attracts like.
Having said that, if I have to be a social maven who is rude, mean and thinks others are beneath them to be successful at blogging, I guess I want no part of it.
I think I’ll happily stay here in my own dimly lit little corner of the web. I hope you are aware that if I tweet, as I’ve been known to do, the biggest person I make fun of is myself. And I never high-five anyone’s death. I don’t care who it is. That is just bad form.
I think that’s it. If you do read this, I can only hope that you realize that fame is fleeting. Someday soon you’ll be second-hand news. I also hope you learn that an inner censor is not a bad thing. You are better than some of the things you’ve put out to the world.
One Odd Duck 