Tweet Unto Others…

Tweet Unto Others…

*If you follow me on Instagram you’ve already seen this but it is worth sharing.


“If you can’t say anything nice—come and sit by me.”

I know, I know, that runs counter to everything our mother’s taught us as children, otherwise known as the “Don’t say anything at all” rule. 

I was the poster child for this way of thinking as a kid. But the minute I realized, around the age of twelve, that the girls who didn’t adhere to this dictum were so much more interesting and fun, well—you get the picture. 

Us “nice sayers” were a boring bunch. We helped in the convent, populated the honor roll, made cupcakes for the bake sale, wore horizontal stripes on free dress day, and our blue and grey plaid skirts always touched just below the knee.

Our less well-mannered classmates were a raucous bunch. Ragtag and rebellious, sassy and cheeky, they were smart girls who talked openly about taboo topics, made up funny nicknames for all the nuns, and generally seemed to be having one hell of a good time. 

Listen, if you can accomplish that in an uptight Catholic school, during the “duck and cover” days of the cold war, über repressed 1960’s—I have to tip my hat to you.

Secretly, I wanted to be just like them, flaunting the norms in favor of fun. It wasn’t unkind or hurtful. No one went home crying and nobody’s parents called the school to complain. 

I hate to use this tired cliché but nothing fits better—It was good, clean, fun. Don’t confuse nice with kind. They’re not the same thing. 

Eventually, I jumped ship, and by high school, if you couldn’t say anything particularly nice—you sat with our group of girls. 

Now, at the risk of sounding like someone who waxes poetic at the memory of the ten-cent phone call—at a payphone—or music embedded into the grooves of acetate discs, these days of social media have taken “Not nice” to a whole new level. To me, it looks a lot like, well, hate.

Let me be blunt. People seem fucking MEAN. 

If you don’t look, speak, or think like me—or live where and how I do—I fucking hate you.

What?

Not only do I not want to sit next to those people— I don’t want them anywhere near me!

It is my experience (which I admit at this point includes a minimum of tweeting and more just looking at the comments of the brave people who do) that Twitter is a cesspool filled with all of the ugly vitriol that repressed people who should have flown their fucking freak-flags back in middle-school should have already gotten out of their systems.  

I’m just gonna come out and say it—I miss civility. I miss the days where all of the people with horrible ideas still lived under rocks. I miss the days where nicknames happened on the schoolyard, not in the President of the United States’s Twitter feed. I miss peaceful protest and bands of rivals, and humane politics (if there was ever such a thing). What has happened to civil public discourse over differences of opinion free of name-calling and public shaming? And when did cruelty get to be a thing? I miss the days when the majority of us could agree on what was cruel and what wasn’t—and we didn’t quote Bible verses to justify it.

And I really, really miss vinyl records. 

Enjoy your weekend and carry on,

xox

4 Comments
  • Les says:

    Could not agree more with all the above !!
    My one “back of mind” hope is that this is some kind of purge taking place … and things’ll be the better for it at the other end (whenever that gets here!).
    Hey! Maybe somebody should write a musical about people remembering who we really are – like, part of a big yummy whole – instead of isolated bits of me vs. them?
    Its just crazy enough to work!!! <3

  • dominator says:

    Good observations.
    I miss civility also and I especially miss common sense.
    And I miss working out problems face to face, sometimes with fists and a beer, but not hiding behind the anonymity of a remote control device.
    Social media has become the “unsocial” carrier of frustrated juvenile lazy inconsiderate “weak-sucks”, untouched and unwilling to face the consequences of their vitriolic diatribes.
    We have transformed our wonderful sensory life (remember the five senses?) back into a two dimensional zeitgeist that is frying our nervous system.

    Ok… Breathe Dominator! Watch that blood pressure!
    ..And get off your ancient soapbox! …And stop highjacking other people’s blog! …And get back to a loving place!

Hi, I’m Janet

Mentor. Pirate. Dropper of F-bombs.

This is where I write about my version of life. My stories. Told in my own words.

Join The Mailing List

Join 1,304 other subscribers
Let’s Get Social
Categories
You Can Also Find Me Here:
Follow

Get every new post on this blog delivered to your Inbox.

Join other followers: