This is not a pity party invitation, or a fishing expedition. Just something I felt I needed to type. Feel free to Like if you must, or ignore/delete/hide as appropriate. On that note I saw several discussions up here today I was tempted to hide because they were tipping me closer to rage than I like to get. For those who came in late, Ive been trying very hard to reduce sources of anger in my life for the last decade or so, and haphazardly for the decade before that. It doesnt always work, but I count it as a victory that I can at least identify the problem. Typically when I remove content from my feed, fb asks me why, and one of the canned responses is I dont think it belongs on fb. The problem is, I do believe it/they belong on fb. People sharing ideas is a >good< thing. People sharing opinions, engaging in rational discourse, these are things I want to happen. And that we as a species feel they can happen in front of so many strangers at once says both good and bad things. No, my worry is not about the content; its about the source and destination. My worry sometimes is that its me whos in the wrong place. My worry is that not too long ago, as such things are measured, I was a lot more noise than signal. I make no pretense that the balance has shifted all the way to the latter, but through my life goals above Id like to think Ive at least made some progress. But even at my mid 90s, drunken-haze worst, I would never imagine saying some of the things I saw online today. Never contemplated unleashing waves of pure hate upon strangers, for the flimsiest of reasons. Never thought Id have friends who would do it either. My rage was/is of a very personal nature. I wont name it here, but it has nothing to do with any of you. And yes, this is a publicly shared post. So before you share, click, repost, like, or un-friend, take a moment to think about what youre doing. Your addition to the content stream will be part of your permanent record. Not the 1s and 0s, but the effect you have on someone elses life. Make it a good one, if you can. (For the record, this post was originally two sentences long. Its up to you to decide what they were: the words I ended up with are the ones that needed to be said.)
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 06:58:11 +0000
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