I talked about clicking away when confronted with a post that makes you angry or upset earlier. This applies to all online spaces – be it a chat room, news article, or something you see on The Facebook.
Sounds simple and common sense-like and why am I bringing it up? The world has gotten a tad crazy right? If you spend more than 5 minutes online, you will more than likely see an example of someone not using their common sense and rage replying. I see it all the time on Yahoo news stories. I avoid Facebook and Twitter mainly for this reason. It happens all the time.
It can be super hard not to post a reply, it takes great powers of self-control sometimes.
I have a super silly example of something that happened to me just this Saturday on Pinterest. It didn’t make me angry or upset, just more like wtf accompanied by an eyeroll. Some people have 0 humor. I replied. There were a LOT of things I could have said but didn’t and I probably should have just ignored this for sure. I am 100% genX, any opportunity to be an uncool asshole just to piss an “authority figure” off when I think it’s called for…. I’ll probably take it. Bad me 🤪…
There was another oddball response on one of my morning posts that I can’t find at the moment, I think the person who got so upset about it removed their comment. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/206250857925391221/
Anyways, what should you do when confronted with something that brings out this need to respond so intensely? Here’s my suggestion:
- Capture what upset you – copy the link and click out of it.
- Open up your word program or Google docs and write out your initial response.
- Proofread it and eliminate 25% of the words.
- Walk away for 15 minutes.
- Proofread it again and eliminate another 25%.
- Walk away again.
- When you get back, if you still feel a strong need to reply, eliminate another 25% and ensure that what you have written makes sense, is true to you (stated as an opinion), is helpful and inspiring in offering a differing opinion and doesn’t outright make you sound like an asshole.
- If possible, talk it out with someone irl. Read your reply and see what they say.
- Then, if it still passes the above criteria by all means, reopen the offending piece and copy/paste your much calmer and coherent reply.
You can only control YOU and how you act and behave. You generally cannot change another person’s mind about something when engaged in a disagreament of this type.
xoxo,
Da’Nela, an American Misfit, [she/her/hers/trying to be humanish, maybe]
Disclaimer | Send some Love or Hate Mail – I welcome both 😎
Journal Entry for TTBH; Topic: Rage, #9 and Brand Yourself, #8
