I recently caused a bit of a stir on Facebook after stating my opinion about a few YouTube videos made by two girls in my community.

I’m not going to go into detail about the girls, nor what their videos contain, but does this little ole Facebook status really exhibit anything to make it extremely rude or unnecessary to express?

I don’t know the two girls. At the time that I posted the status, I only knew one thing: I didn’t care for the videos. I didn’t judge their appearances nor pick out qualities of them that I didn’t like. I simply didn’t care for the material used in videos they were making, which would constantly appear on my Facebook news feed. The material wasn’t as humorous to me as it was for the people sharing the links. Like most people, if I see something shared on FB, I’ll tap it and watch it (if I’m on my phone of course). I gave it a chance, but wasn’t impressed. Thinking I was judging the videos too quickly, I watched another one. Once again, not entertained.

The first day of my status being up, I had TONS of people agreeing with me. I WASN’T the only one that struggled to find amusement from the videos. I had a good bit of likes and several comments. Like most posts, the notifications die down by the end of the day and then you prepare for your next one. This wasn’t the case. The next morning, I had comment after comment about how “rude” my status update was and how I was talking down about the girls, with one of the girls commenting on it herself.

—I’ll be leaving a link to the Facebook post at the end.—

What is going on? What did I say that was so awful and how is my opinion being taken to such an extreme? I never commented on a video or contacted the girls telling them that I didn’t like the videos. This was my own thought…that I posted in a very appropriate place…MY TIMELINE. I was being told that I shouldn’t say anything if it wasn’t nice. Excuse me, but I think my residency rests firmly in the United States of America. Since when is criticism over a form of media not acceptable? How am I worse than the people that post that “The new Transformers movie sucked!”? I highly doubt Michael Bay or the cast of the movie is going to privately contact you and ask that you not talk down about their hard work.

I decided I would reply to the people that had something to say. If these videos could be posted for the world to see, then why couldn’t my opinions be posted for only my Facebook friends list to see? The only reason it spread to those outside of my friends is because people chose to give their two cents about the situation, which led to their entire friends list being able to see it. So on and so forth. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, so I didn’t mind spending the majority of that day defending myself.

Every single person to ever be in the eye of the public has had to deal with negativity. They could be the salt of the earth, but still have people that will criticize them. It’s part of life. Instead of having their feelings hurt and hunting down the people that dislike them, they do something extremely wise and courageous: IGNORE IT. So, why couldn’t these girls and their friends just ignore me? I wasn’t begging for attention because I was “jealous.” I wasn’t hoping to have the community start a war under my status. They could’ve simply acted like the status wasn’t even there.

I was never upset or distraught over the comments. Throughout the day, I actually became more entertained by the ignorance I was witnessing. I also had numerous people private messaging, texting, and even snap chatting me wondering why on earth these people were making such a big deal out of a tiny bit of criticism.

YouTube doesn’t tell viewers to only comment if they have something super duper positive to say. There’s even a “dislike” option under the videos. There’s a reason for this: opinions. Some people want to know how to improve their entertainment value. Yes, I myself, would love to see positive comments on something I posted, but I’m fooling myself if I think the entire world is going to be positive or view something in the same way everyone else does. If someone makes a negative comment, I can either 1. Ignore it or 2. Improve from it.

As one of my friends commented in support of my opinion, “Facebook is like an open diary.” YES, it is! Facebook asks every member every day “What’s on your mind?” Right? Please believe in my rights to type a few words within my public forum just as much as you believe in a person’s right to post videos to YouTube and other media outlets.

Honestly, my words could have been very hurtful, but I wasn’t attempting to hurt anyone. There ARE people that intentionally want to hurt people. If you can’t make it through a 21 year old woman’s negative status regarding something you chose to make visible to the world, then close your eyes and hold your ears…..the world is much more cruel than I am.

No matter what form of entertainment you’re trying to provide for people, whether it’s singing, dancing, comedy, critiques, etc., know that you will have at least one person that likes what you do and at least one person that hates what you do. Please do this though: Pay more attention to the people that like what you do. Thrive from that positivity and support. Like I mentioned above, ignore my opinion if it isn’t beneficial to your pursuit of success. I promise my intention is not to keep you from that, just as I would hope no one would try to keep me from my dreams.

What’s fun for the people that read this and don’t agree with me? YOU totally have the right to go and post the most negative thing you could possibly think about me. Isn’t that awesome? So, if you happen to be one of the people that was against me during the course of the conversation on Wednesday, you now have material to completely bash me for. If you’re not my friend and you do that, I won’t see it unless I’m told about it. Here, I have three options on how to respond: 1. Ignore it. 2. Go and look at it, and then ignore it. 3. Choose to make a comment. Say I chose to comment on your opinion about me. Would you then get angry at me for invading your personal Facebook space to defend myself? Come on and be honest, you probably would. In that moment, you would be in the same shoes I’ve been wearing for the past few days.

FINALLY, I’m almost done.

My last little thought is this….

The Internet is HUGE. It gives us space to create our own little world, either to keep in private or to share with everyone else’s little world. In that special space that you’ve created for yourself, you have the right to express what is going on in your heart and mind. We all have that right, equally.

I gave an opinion. Not once did I say that those girls shouldn’t be sharing their videos or that they should give up. They can do whatever they want to with their YouTube channel and Facebook page. I was the one told not to share what I wanted to.

Thanks for reading and thank you to those that are supportive. I have super cool friends.

The link to the post is below.

https://www.facebook.com/shannonsummerlovestheearth/posts/4398446495132?comment_id=4400307101646&notif_t=like

“People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but that doesn’t stop you from having your own opinion.”
― Anne Frank