So You’re Building A Cult of Personality…Where Do You Draw The Line?

I’m Still So New At This Social Media Thing, But I Still Think Boundaries Are Important — Regardless of Your Labels

Every single day I am trying to find ways to get more people to pay attention to what I’m doing, because what I am doing matters, and the more people who see what I am doing, the more likely that I’ll be able to start making a living at blogging about mental health.

That’s the goal, but is it the mission? That’s a different story together.

It’s important for me to remind little Brown, Black, and even Indigenous girls everywhere, that they have the right to speak up, to stand up, to shout and scream about how unfair it is that life is so cruel to them, ONLY because the colour of their skin, is darker than their whiter counterparts.

There are days when I sit here and I feel so functional and proud, and just one slip and the next thing you know I’m feeling like a peice of you know what, because I wasn’t “good enough,” that day, or whatever.

We each in our own right need to set up boundaries that help us heal, but the attention that we get from sharing our stories can be addictive, so how do we know when it’s time to stop?

One of my favourite bloggers — a woman who wrote about the suicide of her husband, and being robbed on the same day in her own home, as his funeral, was fun, light, and amusing, but it was also filled with undertones of sadness, growth, evolution, and hope that life can get better, and then one day it was gone.

Her social media was scrubbed, and she vanished from the internet, she found something new, something different, and she no longer needed us, but I wonder often if she knows how much she meant to us.

Not all of the people who inspire us are celebrities — yes many of them have stories of struggle, strife, and challenges, that they overcame to get where they are, and yes we cry when we hear their stories and yes they deserve love, BUT BUT BUT, some of our heros are just regular degular folks like me, or yourself, just trying to get from one day to the next.

It doesn’t matter why someone inspires us, honestly, I think what matters is the fact that they do. Inspiration isn’t always a positive thing, sometimes people are inspired to do horrible things, by horrible people, and worse, often they are encouraged to be inspired to do horrible things.

So again I ask, where do we draw the line?

I think it’s important to remember that not everyone — including myself — is the same person offline as they are in real life. In real life I’m a mess, my life is a mess, I deal with chronic fatigue, I don’t always get the site updated every day and honestly, I’m drained by the energy it takes to constantly try to promote myself only to not be getting as far as I’d like to be able to get on my own.

So when we’re talking boundaries what exactly do we mean? I think it starts with the comments.

I, like many writers from around the world, put myself out there every single day, and then in return, we are faced with the most vitriol that people can throw out there, and we’re supposed to remain “Graceful,” because Michelle Obama said so? But I don’t really understand why we as creatives need to be nice all the time when it’s so rarely returned.

No, I’m not talking about being kind just so others will be kind, I’m talking about being kind to people who consistently kick you. Yup, there’s a block button, but many women can tell you that blocking our online abusers often doesn’t work.

It’s very easy — too easy — to set up a fake social media account, to harass and abuse and to get away with it. Too many really important to me people have vanished from the internet for their own safety, and there’s every chance that one day I might have to do the same.

I have asked my followers — and they have silently and not so silently agreed — not to dogpile on people who insult me online because it only makes it worse, but the problem that I’m noticing a lot of though, is that a lot of people do this specifically because there is no such thing as bad press.

Each of us has to decide the kind of person that we’re going to be online and off, but when it comes to being online, the temptation to be a jerk is incredibly seductive, and too many people give in rather than pause and think about how life would be different if we were just kind because specifically because we know what it feels like to feel unloved in all the corners of our world.

The next time you have the chance to comment on someone’s work, ask how you’d feel if you were in their shoes, maybe that’ll change how you respond.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl