I've been biting this one back for a very long time.
"I just want everyone to get along," says the person who rallies war cries in a chat room for group block parties, who makes a game of blocking and unfollowing instead of talking things through, who insists on everyone pretending everything is fine so that person doesn't have to deal with anything being real.
I was born to rock boats. You can't ride in a boat with me and keep telling me to sit down and shut up and behave without me pissing you off sooner or later. No one ever changed anything by sitting down and shutting up. I've been living through sink or swim through my whole life, and God save whoever tells me to sit down and shut up one more time. #aspienado
I've been working on paring my twitter connections back down to more 'real' accounts with more compatible agendas. So far I've unfollowed at least a hundred accounts of actual people so obsessed with Trump (both ways) that I'm not sure how they live and breathe without his presence on this earth. An account I unfollowed last night wasn't even trying to hide illegal drug sales. A whole string of business accounts promoting legitimate businesses have apparently caved to the interspersed naked butt tweets to retain and grow their numbers. My head has been spinning- didn't I vet all these accounts myself when they first followed me before I followed them back? Why, yes I did. What happened???
#Twitterfail includes the notion that growing followers means something. It means power. Well, yes it does when all your followers actually read your tweets and interact with you, like they do a few celebrities. The numbers game is just that- a game. Yeah, it looks cool to have accounts following with 50K or more followers, it must mean they're worth something, right?
Every week 3 or 4 different sources tweet out how many people followed and unfollowed me. Last few weeks my unfollowing number has been laughably disproportionate to my following number, which looks awful, like people can't wait to get away from me. Yet, my actual number of followers has held rock steady. I stopped complusively following back several months ago, even stopped caring weeks ago, and that number is steady. Real or fake, it would seem that not playing the follow back game hasn't hurt me at all.
As I slowly sift out more and more crap, I'm also able to better see who is really helping me, who my friends really are, who stains my floors, who actually drives other people away... I've been sad to see direct consequences of being tagged in group convo threads that negatively impact my account, even when I don't respond with so much as a like. As much as I like my friends, and I really do, some of them seem to be really good at pissing other people off, which flies directly against my own agenda. Simply being tagged in convos has raised significant ire in a couple of reactions over the last couple of weeks, and marked me as part of the problem. I'm not part of the problem. I'm not the one provoking people and stealing their tweets without sourcing and then getting snotty for being yelled at to get off the neighbor's lawn. This isn't the snotty tweet thing, but one of several examples I realized I should stop participating in.
Example of highjacking someone else's tweet with the quote option.
It's actually really rude to do this. I would be upset, too,
if other people did this to my tweets, esp if they used
my tweets to represent stuff I don't stand for.
So here's the conundrum- I keep being told I'm smart. Several different people have made me such a part of their lives that I've struggled with feeling tied to their whims for years. YEARS. I've still got my old lurkers and even stalkers from ages back, but a few friends I've picked up on twitter have far exceeded them in actual trolling and adding to my daily stress level. I've tried muting, even blocked one person that begged back in with a different account (so basically I was making a statement and even though I was assured I was heard, apparently I was not). I asked several times, I was polite, we had private convos about this, and I'm done. This is not who I am.
Original tweet here
I've specifically asked multiple times to stop
being tagged in tweets with pix of goats
used in religious context.
I won't even go into a couple other humiliations I've found myself part of. You know, it's one thing to have friends and stuff, it's another thing when people who call themselves your friend say they love you and then push you around and beg you to love them back, and then some of them bully you in private when you don't, and my definition of bully here is being pushed to respond, especially after I've clearly demarcated my boundaries across several very public posts on two different blogs. stopbullying.gov
See, the thing about blocking is that private convos get cut off when I do that. When I block people, all the ugly dementia spills out into public, on blog comments, on facebook, tags on twitter...
I'm just going to stop talking to some people. I'm so very tired of being walked on at other people's whims. Tag me all you want, throw yourselves around my social medias waving and jumping up and down, ping me with private messages at all hours of the day and night, tell me I'm smart and you love me all you want, but this is our goodbye post. Just because you don't find yourselves blocked doesn't mean I want you in my life if you're going to be like this. And the fact that I've emotionally struggled over this for months on Pinky blog is testament to how deeply I have cared about these friends. I got emotionally invested. I have yet to see that level reciprocated by any one of them, and I'm past the point of wanting to. Apparently my 'friends' think it's all a joke. I really don't understand the pouting and whining and poking for attention. Has anyone noticed I don't do that back...? If I tagged people the same way they tag me I'd look completely mental.
I've already been so far into the dark myself that I totally get the help my friends desperately need, but I can't help them, and giving them attention is only enabling them. Their choices are their own. I can't walk that path again. I've already said it- I suck as a friend. "I just know I'm never going back into the dark. I can't face stagnation death."
If I unfollow you, I mean it this time.
p.s. Eddie Izzard fans will get the title up there.
