Hello My Imaginary Friends,
Stand aside Mos Eisley Spaceport, you’ve got some competition. Yes, I mean Facebook, although the internet at large is quite bad.
Please, no advice is required.
Over the past week I’ve been procrastinating taking breaks from editing by reading my news feed. Here’s a short list of things that I’ve read that have made me wonder if Ultron was being too generous:
- Defending a celebrity who’s been accused of sexual assault with the incel call to arms, “Innocent until proven guilty.”
- Same person and same post then doing self promotion for their product.
- People telling disabled people to call ahead or just wait outside because it’s too expensive to make things accessible. (I personally think there should be a government subsidy to make these things accessible and not bankrupt businesses, but I’m a deluded socialist.)
- That there’s some sort of shame in watching films with Closed Captioning. (I took media communications and I had 4 separate professors; film, music, feminism, and advertising encourage us to use CC as often as possible to catch all the details of what was happening and intended.)
- Someone posting a poem on a writers group comparing men to vagabond ships and women to the anchors that keep them from straying. (This devolved into him saying I was too argumentative and was headed for divorce, followed by being called a fairy, and being told I was going to hell.)
And that’s not even mentioning all the Anti-vaxx pro-plague comments on every Covid-19 post.
So this week I’ve been called:
- Anti-Business
- Communist (Starting to think this isn’t an insult.)
- Fairy (Definitely not an insult. Fear my sparkling wrath.)
- Unable to love
- Headed for divorce (my wife laughed at this. She practically guffawed. It was adorable.)
- Going to hell
- Child abuser (because I want my kids immunized)
- Snowflake
- Tru-anon cultist
- MeToo Groupie
- Anti-law
- Pitchfork carrying mob
- A Shill (BTW Big-Pharma, Liberal Party, NDP, Big-Agriculture, #MeToo, and disabled community, I’m still waiting on those e-transfers.)
I’m not saying I’m perfect and always right, but I try to follow simple rules. Listen to the victims, listen to those affected/minorities, listen to science, and listen credible sources.
I’ve been called on internalized toxic opinions and I’m trying to grow.
If your first reaction is to get defensive when someone asks for help, you should maybe check why and re-evaluate your opinion.
It might be time to lessen my social media scrolling for a while and find another way to procrastinate take breaks from editing.
Stay safe and stay kind,
Éric