There are a lot of people on line who play games with the emotions of other people. This is a rant about how I’ve been affected by these games.
A person on line whom we’ll call “C”, recently deleted and blocked me from their page without any explanation, no reason given. Now, this happens all the time on line, folks narrow down their lists, or eliminate people that haven’t had contact in a while, no big deal, but this really upset me because of the “games” this particular person seems to play routinely.
There are folks on line who have taken very definite political ’sides’ in the political blogging arena. These folks take very seriously their friendships and feuds. They attack one another for their views and sometimes it gets very personal. There have been folks leave social network communities and on line blogging because of harassment and bullying that stems from political blogging.
“C” goes to blogs on both sides of the political spectrum, gives them kudos, agrees with what’s written and befriends folks with entirely opposing views, seemingly agreeing with all of them.
When I was first ‘introduced’ to “C”, people from both sides of the political debate messaged me and warned me that this person liked to play games, couldn’t be trusted. I don’t decide who my friends are based on what other people say, so I befriended her.
“C” fell in love with my dog Kodi, in fact she lifted his pictures from my page and posted them in her own photo albums. She referred to herself as the “Official President of the Kodi Fan Club” and asked constantly for more pictures to be posted, to share more about what he was doing.
I actually created a page just for Kodi, so she would be able to follow what he was doing and see current pictures.
“C” began to pull away, stopped sending private messages, wouldn’t respond to instant messages, stopped commenting on my blogs and stopped visiting Kodi’s page.
She became obsessed with a blogger who routinely attacked her and her friends, wrote blogs about people that included personal attacks, so that even when she did comment on friends’ blogs the purpose was to make contact with him, to ask her friends to contact him for her.
People on both sides of the political debate have come to distrust her because she seems to be committed to both positions and equally as opposed to both positions.
I watched her as she messaged friends organizing to get other bloggers deleted, but saw her telling bloggers she hated the ‘deletion’ games and would never do anything like that.
I found myself to be completely confused by her behavior, I felt it was hard to ‘trust’ her and was thinking about removing her from my friend list, how I would tell her I was going to do so without hurting her was my concern. I hadn’t been able to make a decision, so I just kept her on my list while I tried to figure out how I felt.
She wrote a blog talking about wanting God to take her home, that she was tired of this world and this life. I didn’t comment on the blog because I didn’t know what to say. She had routinely blogged about not being a Christian, so once again, her blog confused me.
I wanted to shake her and tell her to be thankful for the life she has, for the gift that it is, rather than wanting to end it, so I thought better of commenting at all.
She posted a thank you to her ‘friends’ for their support. I felt bad, having not commented, so I emailed her.
Hi “C”,
I wanted to let you know why I didn’t comment on your blog letter to God.
I know you’re having a hard time right now, you have a lot on your mind, on your plate and you’re feeling exhausted. That seems to be a situation many of us find ourselves in lately, unfortunately.
When you wrote:
Can I come home now, please? I’m so tired.
If you want me to continue, I will. I will, but please, send me a sign. Is that too much to ask? I’m hurting, so much. My heart hurts. My family is divided. My kids are misguided. My momma, my beautiful mother is dying. Is there really anymore for me to do?
I just found that so hard to read. My estranged sister is always begging God to ‘go home’. I’ve had a number of friends who’ve talked non-stop about ‘going home’, about being so tired they wanted to go to sleep and never wake up again.
I just didn’t know what to say. You really scared me.
I didn’t want you to think I was mad at you, or upset, I’m just having a hard time understanding a lot of the things I’m reading on MySpace these days. I click off a lot of blogs feeling confused, not sure exactly what people are trying to say, what they want to convey.
Feel better, Know Peace… ox
I got the following response:
Well, I do want to go home. I mean it sincerely..I am tired of this job called life. Everyone is dropping off all around me Robin. My brother Tony is 40 yrs old and knocking on deaths door. I take that back..He’s beating on the door. He has 20% left of his lungs and 3 brain tumors. My mother is not long for this world. My kids have disowned me and I am tired!
I’m tired so tired of crying..and I want to throw a pity party
Shortly thereafter she deleted me and blocked me. There was no explanation, no justification.
Since that time, a mutual friend tells me she has said the reason she deleted me was that I didn’t respond to an email she sent me. That is completely untrue, as you can see there was nothing about that email that required a response. There was no other email from her.
She has asked a mutual friend how I am, which I find to be self-serving, as she knows the mutual friend didn’t think much of the deletion and she cares what that friend thinks, therefore I see that as feigned interest.
Why am I writing a blog about this here? Because I needed to vent my frustration, I needed to be able to be angry and express it so I can move forward. Not being able to confront “C” about this has denied closure for the situation.
I really wish people would stop playing games.
If you’re going to tell people you’re not a Christian, lead campaigns to get people deleted, tell people you take a liberal position politically, complain ad nauseam about being abused by conservative bloggers, then you have to expect people to question you if you’re quoting Bible verses and writing letters to God, telling people you disagree with deleting profiles and wouldn’t do that yourself or add ‘hate bloggers’ and pretend to be their friends while you’re commenting against them other places on line.
Doesn’t that make sense?
No comments:
Post a Comment