Friday I'm In Love: Oh, Hell

I know, I know, this is supposed to be my happy post. The one day a week I try to focus on the happy. The one day that I share things I've loved this week, like a lowbrow version of New York Magazine's culture diaries.

But this week I was too preoccupied to fall in love. I was too busy being obsessed with this site/forum/snark fountain I accidentally discovered. It's not love; it's stalking.

It's very, very, bad.

My usual tactic on the interwebz (Facebook wall arguments aside) is to avoid you if I don't like you. I don't really have time to read the blogs I like, so there's definitely no time for hate reading. If I think you're spoiled/uptight/stupid/annoying/smug/fake or otherwise asshole-ish, I will not read your blog or follow you on Twitter or look at your pins or like your Facebook page.*

This is what I like about being on the interwebz; I can make all the people I don't like disappear.

Some other bloggers and social media gadflies don't like to use this superpower, apparently.  There's a lot of hate reading in the blog community. In fact, there got to be so much hate reading that a forum was designed with the specific intent of making fun of certain bloggers. And speculating about their lives. And discussing rumors and gossip.

I suppose this is the part where I say I'm relieved that I'm not a popular blogger, but I have to admit that I haven't heard of more than half of the bloggers who have threads about them. In fact, I think all you have to do to get a thread on there is piss one reader off. So um, this is the part where I say I'm relieved that I haven't pissed any of you off enough that you needed to go start a hate thread about me. Thanks. Have I mentioned that you look fabulous today?

What I should have done was closed the tab after ascertaining that the forum actually exists. I should not have started reading the threads, dreading the mentions of people I "know" and being oddly comforted that that one blogger I used to read annoys others even more than she annoyed me. But it wasn't the gossip that hooked me.

It was the blogging advice. You know that expression, "Just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they're not out to get you?" Well, I discovered that just because people are jaded and cynical and have too much free time, it doesn't mean that they don't have any valid points. About blogging in general, not whether that one vintage obsessed mommy blogger is so twee that she actually homeschools her kids using 1960s work books because they're so much cuter than current work books.**

It's quite possible that if I had ever had to read that blog, I too might set up a snark forum. But I have never read a blog like that. So I just want to say thank you to all the wonderful people on my sidebar and on my blogroll and in my social media world. Thank you for not being assholes. It's you I truly love.

I just need to work this obsession thing out.



*So congratulations to the approximately 2000 people with whom I share my social media world: you're officially not assholes!

**I swear this is true. There were links. I followed them. It's unclear whether she is teaching her kids from the so cute, completely out of date work books. 

This Post May Only Make Sense In My Head

So I'm a bit depressed, which always translates into me writing crap that I delete. Or staring at Twitter until I think it's a good idea to join the #WEAREYELLINGABOUTSOAP Twitter party. Yeah, Backpacking Dad, I'm looking at you.

Anyway, one advantage to staring at Twitter and Facebook instead of being productive is that I find new posts to read. Not that I don't already have approximately a million posts to read in my Google Reader. But opening my reader makes me feel guilty and who needs that when she's already depressed? Exactly. But when I see posts somewhere else, in between tweets about soap, for example, then I can read without feeling guilty about the other 999,999 posts I'm not reading.

So I read this post by Aunt Becky. And it ticked me off, because I love some Aunt Becky and I hate nasty comments. If you want to pick on other people, write your own damn blog. Also, don't hate on Aunt Becky. Angie at A Whole Lot of Nothing then wrote a brilliant post about it. So, you know, what she said. I try to be funny and/or positive when I leave comments on blogs, because to me that's the whole point of leaving a comment.

But anyway, then I read Perez Hilton. And while I do like the fact that Perez writes his bitchy comments on his own damn blog instead of just making nasty comments on other people's, you can't deny that he can be mean as hell. And sure, he's usually being mean as hell about some celebrity who has gobs of money and has chased fame in some way and is not a blogger slaving away who probably does not have gobs of money (and if s/he does, it's probably not from blogging). But.

It's the same sort of thing, isn't it? Despite all that plastic surgery and money, celebrities are actual people. And would I actually say any of the mean things I have said about various celebrities to their faces? No. *

I used to work with this amazing woman, N. She was just the kindest person you ever met. She saw the best in everyone and had love for the most challenging kids. When she died way too freaking young, the church was filled with people whose lives she had made better. And I swore to myself that I would try harder to look for the good in people, to keep her kindness going.  She would want you to know that she once told me to start with myself.

But suddenly I had a 15 month old and a newborn and an imploding school and then we moved back to NJ and all sorts of old demons came back to haunt me. So I kinda forgot. But for whatever reason, reading those posts and thinking about what it must be like to be in any way famous and reading nasty comments about yourself. . .well, I kinda remembered.

So I am going to try harder to look for the good in people. But if I can't find it** , then all bets are off.





*Except for Sarah Palin and Michele Bachman.
**See names above. And the Westboro Baptist Church.