Yesterday, I came across a website that is a forum for people to complain about bloggers. It was started in 2009 to "snark" about various online personalities. I feel as though expressing it in such a way gives people permission to talk shit without feeling so bad. It's a "personality" they are portraying that they hate, not the person themselves. But where and when does it stop? There are people behind the words posted, however sincere or insincere you may view them. These are people with real emotions, capable of reacting to the negative things out there about them.
I have never wanted to self-sabotage more than anything after viewing the most horrendously vitriolic comments aimed at fairly popular bloggers simply because they're successful. It's an attack on those willing to put themselves out there, and when they change even slightly, people take to the message boards to tear apart. Looking at my own blogging experience, I have changed a lot over the three years since I began to blog on a semi-regular basis. I suppose I am different in the sense that I don't blog for money. I don't think many of the for-profit blogs out there began for the sake of money. I think it just evolved over time into a business. I could be naive, I guess, but I guess I haven't become so cynical that I allow the negativity to consume me so much that I have to put it out there for everyone to read.
Online personalities are equated as being the "reality star of the Modern World." I feel as though giving them a name with negative connotation gives others permission to abuse them, and still sleep at night. As humans, we should treat other humans with kindness and respect we expect in return. By turning these bloggers into just "personalities" or "reality starts of the Modern World" almost dehumanizes them. It's like saying,"Hey, it's not necessarily the real person you're insulting. It's the personality they're putting on for the world. Buck up, kiddo. You're not so bad." I don't think that's a right way to look at it though. Where does the personality they portray stop and the real person begin? How does one know that this "personality" they're attacking isn't the real person? No one knows, except for the people behind the blogs themselves. I feel a though everybody has admitted that yeah, they put their best face forward. "It's because they're selling a brand, a lifestyle." Maybe. Or maybe they'd like their blog to be an escape, not only for themselves, but for their readers.
I have never understood the need to bring down another person in order to make myself feel better. I'm definitely not the most secure person, and could see how one could go down that route, but I don't understand how it's supposed to make me feel better. The objects of whatever vitriol I decide to spew are going to live on, doing what they do, in spite of what I say. It's energy wasted. It's easy to critique those out there doing things, rather than expending that energy doing something positive.
Get Off The Internet
heaven's to betsy
It's silly, right? To be this broken up about a car? You have to understand some things, though. Most importantly, I grew as a driver in this car. My first and only accident occurred in this car. I have spent many nights chatting and flirting in this car. For a while, I had my own car, a Cavalier that was such a hazard to drive, but I loved it. It was something all mine. Once my mom got herself a car, we'd no longer have to share Betsy. She'd be all mine. But then the axle broke, other things were corroded, or falling apart, and she just wasn't worth saving, I guess. She'd never fully be mine. Just like that, it felt as though I was stripped of my freedom. For a while, I'll have to rely on others for transportation, and it gives me anxiety, waiting around for who knows what to happen.
I feel as though when things are looking up, the universe has to shake things up for me a little bit. Car first, apartment next. It's as though the restart button was pushed on the gaming console before you could get to a save checkpoint, but y'know, real life things. Now back to waiting to find and save for a car again, pushing my move out date to next year. Goodbye, more freedoms. I want a cat companion. I want to be able to spread out my possessions, rather than cramming everything into one little bedroom. I want things to call my own so I can feel like I have accomplished something, anything.
how it began and evolved
I wrote creatively for the first time when I was six year old. I was in the first grade. We kept journals made from brightly colored construction paper and newsprint paper, folded in half, and stapled at the crease. I recall it was something about a rainbow and a unicorn, but the teachers were impressed that a first grader could rhyme, I guess? They published it in the school newsletter, which I thought was weird, and still do. I didn't write much more until the fifth grade when I began to write what I learned years later had a name- fanfiction. I continued to do a lot of that throughout middle school, and even ventured into creating my own characters, rather than others developed by more experienced writers. In middle school, I also began to dabble with poetry. I became obsessed with poetry until I was about fifteen. From then on, I wrote sporadically. Mostly poetry, but of course, once a year, I would attempt National Novel Writing Month. In college, I took an introduction to creative writing class, which stretched my creative mind back to writing habitually again.
I've started to read personal essays within the last four years of my life. I find them fascinating, how people can turn the mundane into something poetic and could be mistaken for fiction. My obsession with the HBO show, GIRLS, amplified my want to dabble in personal essay writing. My photographs and I had also been picked (but since been dropped, at least the photo aspect to keep the things strictly prose) to participate in an online literary zine called The Inner Condition. I've since become a little bit more comfortable sharing my words with few so if you stumble upon this and enjoy the words, cool. If not, cool, too. I'm here to keep track of how I continue to evolve.