The hate part of this relationship comes in the form of people taking text out of context and choosing to attack the character of the person posting because they can't read the context in which a post was written. Right now someone is reading this blog post and thinking it's directed towards them and that I'm being passive aggressive and wondering why I didn't tell them I had a problem with them in the first place. That's not what's happening here. I'm simply commenting on something I've noticed for several years, ever since I was pregnant with 2.0 and visited a message board for the first time consistently. I will be using that message board on the What To Expect website as the example in this post (it was the March 2011 board which is now listed under the Toddler section).
My pregnancy with 2.0 was my first that ended in a healthy baby. I had symptoms that I didn't want to bother my obgyn with and wondered if other women were experiencing at the same time in their pregnancy too. So I hopped on a message board and almost instantly regretted it. Why? Let me answer a question with a question: Have you ever heard of a troll?
A troll is someone who starts drama needlessly and then perpetrates the drama until someone in the discussion thread calls them out for being a troll. Then this drama addict goes to the next board and starts the same stuff over again. We could also possibly call these people catfish if they are perpetrating fraud online. I've seen that too on the same website. Trolls like to go into a pregnancy message board and drop bombs like 'circumcision', 'abortion', and 'government assistance' in posts and then watch the fur fly. I'm sure there have been enough complaints about this on regular boards that someone started one called Hot Topics, where trolls hang out for a little while before spreading their venom on the next group.
I got caught on one of these discussion threads when I was about seven and a half months pregnant. I was told that it was better for me to pay $10 a month on a $20000 hospital bill than go on medicaid (please feel free to do the math and see that my grand kids would still be paying for my son's birth if I stuck to that plan). On a side note, I had medicaid when 2.0 was born and he is still covered by medicaid because no matter how many hours Nate and I worked for our employer, said employer refused to offer health insurance to us and we didn't make enough money to purchase our own privately. The thread got so toxic that I pulled out of the board and didn't go back for almost three weeks. I probably would never have returned if one of the women on the thread hadn't messaged me privately through the website and asked me to look at the thread to see how many other women were defending me. The troll was kicked out and I went back in.
Slowly I have watched posts that were intended to be personal reflections on life get taken so far out of context that the person offended turned it into a personal attack on their beliefs. That person isn't my friend anymore and I don't know what went wrong. I wasn't even thinking about her at the time I wrote the post. I was just thinking. That's why it smells like bacon over here.
If a comment or a post or a message or whatever it is online offends you, that might be the time to ask yourself what it is that gets your back up so much. Is the person wrong? Sometimes that's the case. Is it worth commenting? Probably not. You'll just end up creating needless drama and if the person is really your friend, can't you agree to disagree and move on with life? I'm pretty sure the other person already did that and when they posted that thing that offended you so much, you weren't even a blip on their radar. Don't feed the trolls. Don't be that person.
You have a choice online. You can choose to read stuff or you can choose to ignore it and move on. No one is holding a gun to your head and making you read stuff you don't agree with. No one is deliberately posting derogatory stuff on Facebook about your profession or your religion or your political beliefs or the color of your underwear to make you mad. In the end, your mother told you that if you can't say something nice that you should keep your darned mouth shut. This applies to your fingers and your phone, tablet, and computer. If you can't respond with something nice or constructive, keep your opinion to yourself.
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