The Internet Supported My Passive-Aggressive Behaviors and Habits

Good morning/afternoon/evening Good People!

Summer is creep creep creeping right on up outta here, but every once in a while, it will bust back through the door to remind us that it still has the juice. It was H.A.F. yesterday.

Ok now the real reason yall are here......



So do you ever have an epiphany so deep and wide that it makes you stop in your tracks and re-evaluate your WHOLE life. One that makes you wonder who the hell you are and why you exist? Yeah....one of those. I had one of those this month. It came slamming down on me. Wanna hear about it? Here it go.....

I used to think it was the slickest thing to slide people in posts on the internet. I've been doing it since I joined the internet on the now defunct Yahoo 360 website. I took the drags to Multiply, Black Planet, Blogger, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Where ever I was.....there was the occasional spark of drama and messiness. Bump naming people in posts. That was too direct, too messy, too dramatic, and it took shine away from what I was actually trying to do. Imagine yourself scrolling through your social media and then BOOM, you read a post that you either suspect or KNOW is about you. You're reading and you're suddenly flushed with all kinds of feelings. You're mad, you're disappointed, you're offended, you're embarrassed, you're wondering WTF LETRICE? This was a nasty habit and horrible internet behavior on my part for a long long long long long long time.

You think, "if you had a problem with me, why not just address me directly?" And the fact that I can trace this behavior back to 2001 Innanet Letrice gave me the LONGEST PAUSE.

*disclaimer*
I'm admitting A LOT in this post that I would not have had the courage or nerve to admit 2 weeks ago
*end disclaimer*

That question....the "why not just address me directly?" is what I have been asking myself since last Friday.

Is it because I actually only like confrontation when I'm in a perceived position of power?
Is it because I can use my platform to get support by presenting my side of the story from my vantage point?
Is it because it's easier to just be passive aggressive instead of being courageous enough to be direct?
Is it because there's a part of me that just likes being messy?

The honest answer to all of these questions is a resounding yes. So guess what happened to me Friday? My perspective about passive aggressive posting on social media shifted. I made new rules for myself.

If I can't talk to you about it, I can't talk to social media about it. If I can't address you directly, I won't address you in a roundabout way. If I don't feel like having a conversation with you, I won't allow myself to get opinions about the situation on social media.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I need to put a hard stop in front of this kind of behavior for myself. It allows for me to be mean, but not accountable. It allows for me to be a coward. It allows for me to avoid using my words in a meaningful way to create harmony and understanding.

What's REALLY wild is that since I created this rule for myself, I can't figure out how to navigate social media in the moment. I don't know if that's because I was doing this so much that now I don't have anything else to do or something else. But I definitely side-eyed myself when I couldn't find anything to post about. Maybe I'm still in reflection mode. Cuz there ARE a lot of words here....

So I will continue to reflect and you will see different behaviors from me on social media. This was an uglass realization that I had about uglass behavior. So we'll see. I'm STILL figuring out how to figure out who and what will or won't need to be "addressed" on social media too. CUZ LAWD KNOWS everything ain't my business and my business needs to be handled appropriately.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

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