Cause and Effect

So a few weeks ago, a good friend came to me in crisis and asked me for help. I adore this person, have known her a long-ass time, she is like my family — so, of course I agreed to help her how best I can…

I hate to be vague, but I’ll have to be, what I can say is that this is a serious situation with real life consequences and that her safety is of concern to those who know and care about her.

There has been a lot of ugly stuff said to or about my friend by WOMEN who were once her friend. And, given that I am generally cranky and feel very protective of her, I’ve been very vocal about my support for my friend. I may have also said online that if people go after her that I will “burn them to the ground” on social media.

Big, ill advised words. I feel strongly about this person and her situation; and, I cannot stand slut shaming/victim blaming. Especially by other women. And, that’s what’s going on here.

So… Having been the victim of online stalking/harassment, I tend to try to steer myself away from situations that could result in me being stalked/harassed again. However, I have now stepped in it squarely and opened myself up to all kinds of bullshit trolling.

Here’s what happened:
There is/are particular person(s) who have chosen to insert themselves into my friend’s problem in a way that is a.) dangerous, b.) borderline criminal. It was distressing my friend. And, thusly upsetting me and several of our mutual friends. There was talking amongst the group of friends supporting the friend in crisis and I was nominated to reach out to one of these people and ask the person(s) to stop the bullshit, highlighting that this person(s) were putting themselves in danger and also behaving in a way that could potentially be considered criminal, given the situation my friend is in the middle of dealing with and what the person(s) were involved in doing.

I decided — unlike several other people fed up with this person(s) behavior, who called said person(s) out publicly — to take this matter up privately with the person(s) and lay out my case for them to leave well enough alone and back the fuck out of the situation with expediency and care.

That, of course, went over like a lead balloon. There were several emails exchanged between myself and the person(s) and of course the person(s) fled to Facebook to post all about my emails to them to their group of sympathetic (ie: sycophantic) followers.

It wasn’t bad enough that the person(s) in question were bitching about me, but then one of their little minions decided to swing over to my public Facebook profile and start screen capturing everything I have ever posted about anything and reposting it on the person(s) circle jerk of a private FB page.

Fun times.

You know, the thing is that people think they’re being so sneaky, but you never know who you’re friends with who is friends with someone else… And, like every time some baloney like this has happened to me, I was informed of those posts by a Facebook Deep Throat.

I have not publicly said a single word about the person(s) who I contacted privately (well, until this blog post, but I’m still being vague and obscuring the identity of who I am talking about) — but, here this person/people is/are posting all kind of shit about me and encouraging their sycophantic little elfs to come send me friend requests and message me and post harassing things on my FB profile and otherwise act like 12 year olds…

Two things now:

1. Yes, I realize now that I shouldn’t have bothered emailing the person(s) who had inserted themselves into my friend’s situation. It was pointless and I should have known better that this bullshit would happen as a result.
2. Just because *I fucked up* doesn’t mean I am going to take copious amounts of shit from strangers on social media.

I posted a kind of general “go away, you’re not wanted here” post on my FB page and have been screen capturing every single weird thing that has crossed over my online threshold all day… I had a quick chat with a lawyer friend, who suggested that I just file out police reports on the people sending any stuff that really crosses the line (which I haven’t decided or not if I can be bothered to do.) Because, though charges won’t be brought, a police report will attach itself to that person’s permanent record and will come up anytime someone does a background check.

THIS SHIT IS NOT GOOD FOR ME

Like, I’ve wasted a whole day on this nonsense. When I have real problems in the real world that I could have been working on fixing. But, my desire to help my friend, mixed with my general crankiness at bad online behavior (especially slut shaming and victim blaming) compelled me to stick my fucking hand in the fire to grab the gold ring.

At least I recognize this. And, while I will always help my friends when they need me, when I have an emotional reaction that causes me to behave like a 12 year old, I need to remember to step back and wait until my adult brain takes over again…

I was talking to another friend who recently deactivated her Facebook account, I asked her why she’d done that and she said “I just couldn’t take the noise of social media coming at me anymore.”

I’m beginning to wonder if that’s not the smartest idea that anyone has ever had. It’s not like the people who really know me and love me wouldn’t be able to find me or communicate with me… But, the senseless bullshit that I have been trying to avoid (pretty successfully for a long while) but occasionally still step into being eliminated from my life is a big enough incentive to consider it.

Has Facebook hit the tipping point, Internet? Are grownups going to start bailing in mass on this platform and going offline? Maybe… All I know is I am sick to death of the cause and effect of interacting with people online.

Maybe I’m getting too old for this shit.

Yeah, I know this is my own fault. I own it and am dealing with the effect of my causal behavior. But, sheeit — I’m just over this whole social media thing. I’m down to return to the days of face to face interaction and mailing letters to people and leaving messages on someone’s answering machine.

Social media enables too much high school behavior in people who are supposed to be adults.