Okay, it might not be cute, but I say it counts toward my Mecca photo quota offered in my original promises to you.
Twitter has become a regular part of my life, casually glancing off to the bar on the left and seeing what my pals in the internet world are doing throughout the course of their day. Using this sort of social media is not at all unlike instant messaging in that your experience can be made joyous or annoying depending on the company you keep, and how you plan to use the tool.
Like Facebook, like the "Space I do not speak of" and a variety of other toys, monitoring your privacy is the chief concern...the second easily for me becomes keeping my friend list manageable and meaningful. This means, if I haven't met you virtually or otherwise by reading your work or interacting with you somewhere else, I won't add you. if I don't find what you do on the internet specifically relevant to my own interests or in the range of what I find entertaining or meaningful, I won't add you. If I wouldn't be inclined to sit in a cafe and chat with you, I won't add you.
Lately I've found myself whittling again. My rule of thumb has become, if you make me audibly sigh, or roll my eyes into my head and even grimace more than five times within one week...I have to ask myself if what you bring to the social medium is in alignment with information I find humorous, enlightening, informative or just plain thought provoking. It's not a mark against the person (I say this partially tongue in cheek recalling my own personal offense to being blocked without knowing why). It's just reserving the right to experience the internet as I like. Based on my preferences.
Twitter is the perfect example of putting my internet information guidelines to the test. And by default, my living guidelines for my personal information, anywhere. Twitter used to be a space I loved for it's ability to create communities of conversation. IM in a virtual cafe. Cool. By default, you begin adding the people you normally roam about the internets with...and maybe some additional folks that might be..."on the bubble." And sometimes those "on the bubble" ones can throw your experience out of whack. I, in particular, have a thing about TMI. There are things I don't go into excessive detail about, regarding my life. Wrong or right, I like what I see, to mirror that. Is it being closed-minded, pretentious or haughty to want to guard the sanctity of my eyes and ears? After all, who am I to judge what is newsworthy and what is not? What are the "TMI guidelines?" I would imagine they vary, person to person...but I'll take a stab at telling you mine. I will use twitter as my social media example.
I won't go into intimate details about my relationships. If I am seeing someone, you may know that. Details about them, minutiae about our everyday interactions or updates on our current agreements or disagreements? That belongs exclusively to me. if I do make mention of something, I try to do so in a manner that protects the privacy of the other party. And only if might in someway share something relevant to all of us.
Obviously, I won't divulge excessive details about my career, my company, my job or other people affiliated with my company. This does not include the occasional "vent" which will and should be handled with the same reverence regarding privacy of the other party.
Sometimes, everyday stuff is amusing, ironic, humorous, even significant. The problem is...some of us don't understand that just because we can 'think out loud' all day long...doesn't necessarily mean we should. Give it some thought, after all...
You are what you tweet.
“You are a rude, thoughtless little pig.”
from the Times Herald Record Online.
Why is this news? And why am I hearing it over and over and over on CNN? And why do we feel we have the right to take a ringside seat to something as gut wrenching, dysfunctional and nasty as a brutal custody battle between two parents? I am really, really sick of the news.
I won't share any more quotes. I'm sure you've already heard it anyway.
There's nothing more heartbreaking to me then the erosion of a family, because the splintering shows its damage for years and years to come. Having been the adult child of divorce, I recall watching my parents over the course of their 25 year union slowly breakdown into shadows of their former selves. My father had always been a rager, but during it's worst moments, he could turn it on all of us, with disastrous results. My mother had always been a quiet manipulator, so her shifting was a lot less clear to see until I was able to look back with a clearer lens. The only audience exposed to all the gross nastiness of it all were the kids. Us. We got to have the ring side seats watching the battle and occasionally getting nabbed in some really unfriendly, friendly fire. We got to see our parents at their very best, and their very, very worst.
I was on the phone with my sister this morning as she was on her way to work, when I watched (and she overheard) the story on CNN. I hate to tell you this, but we both...laughed. I guess we're both hardened to things like that. Not because we don't believe his daughter was likely horrified, frightened and deeply hurt by this raging tirade from her father...but because we could not believe such ugly, nasty, dirty, family business was put over the airwaves. As if dealing with it privately is easy to begin with.
We laughed, because we'd been there. On the receiving end of messages and rants from our father that would have had some ladies with an uneasy constitution swooning and sliding out of their chairs. It felt familiar. Kind of like when you remember the most painful klutz moment you ever had...but chuckle because elements of it were too insane not to be funny once you were healed. Note, I said kinda. Because truly, getting reamed by a raging parent...is scary, it hurts and it can feel absolutely dehumanizing. But the wounds can be healed.
Like every other "news" event we get, we don't know the story we just get the "juicy" parts. We don't know what provoked that tirade. We don't know the context. The point of this post is...
It ain't our business.
That's family business. And the saddest thing about that whole "airing" of the American family...is that tirades like that happen all over the place in the throes of bitter, nasty custody fights and divorces. And yet...throngs of people will gasp in horror publicly, point and frown and tsk tsk tsk and speculate about all the damage he's done, label him whatever they need to and become a superior subject matter expert on all the things a good parent never does (while their own family dysfunctions fester in indiscriminate silence). We won't acknowledge that sometimes we do things we wish we could take back (big or small). We won't acknowledge that sometimes we create regrettable moments. Nah...we'll sweep those under the carpet. And if pushed we'll snap and say...'it's none of your business what goes on in my life!"
We all should have the right to endure those moments without public shame and review. We're not their therapists. And this...this is not news.