Something I Have Finally Put Together About Facebook...But Far More Importantly, Myself.

Good Morning My Confidants!

It has been my goal since day one on social media to make my page a safe place for people to go. I want it to be a place to make people feel good, to feel thoughtful, to laugh, to see attractive men (I am gay after all) and to learn about what is going on in my writing.

I avoid politics, but not entirely. Being complacent in this world right now can be dangerous. So, I might post a meme about the ex-president or MTG or Lauren Boebert or Ron DeSantis or George Santos. But I try hard to stay away from that.

I sometimes post something that doesn't go across the way I expected--I am always surprised--and then I usually take it down, but not always. I make apologies when I see I may have done something insensitive.

The BIG thing is that I often spend HOURS pouring out my heart and writing posts because I am wanting to give people something to think about. I expose myself.

And I will get two or three comments....

It's makes me wonder...is anyone listening at all? Is anyone reading?

Last night I finally put two and two together and realized that people do read.

Because it feels like every time I post something people don't like, I will get tons and tons and tons of comments.

But I also see that we all are very raw right now. Between what is going on in the world, between rampant racism and other-isms, and what is going on personally, it is easy to be offended or hurt by a post that someone did, or in my case, did not mean to offend anyone. That doesn't mean I shouldn't take posts down when something offensive is brought to my attention. But on the other hand...no, I don't want to go there.

Last night I posted something about an actor, Jacob Elordi, I had never heard of. I called him "gangly." I wanted to know why every sketch on that episode of Saturday Night Live was about how good-looking he was. I have never, in a lifetime of watching SNL, seen that happen before. And there have been some gorgeous hosts. Pedro Pascal, Scarlett Johansson, Paul Rudd, Lindsay Lohan, Jason Momoa, Gal Gadot, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jessica Chastain, Ben Affleck, Jenna Ortega, Timothée Chalamet, Lady Gaga, Adam Levine, Emma Stone, Justine Timberlake, Jennifer Lopez, Michael B. Jordan, Margot Robbie, and Travis Kelce just to name a few. Not that how "sexy" someone is or isn't (and that all falls down to individual taste's right? as someone said in the comments, "à chacun son goût" or "to each his own taste") should make any difference at all. Because that objectifies people. makes them nothing more than their body when what is inside is what really counts.

What was going on? I expected people to tell me who he was, neither of my husbands knew, and Noah is up on the "who's who" thing, and dialogue on why the show was sexualizing the actor. He is more than his looks.

I got mountains of replies, 86 at this point now, many of them offended or pissed off or telling me that I was judging the actor, etc, etc. Yes, at first, the comments were calm and cool and collected, and the people obviously took the post the way I intended it. But then.... Whoa!

Now I did slightly edit the post changing the words "why in each skit pretending that he is sexy" to "why in each skit about how sexy he is," I could see how that might have been considered rude and that is why I changed it. But that didn't stop the onflow of comments, with a lot of them being negative.

BUT THIS IS MY POINT...

When I make a post about positive things, things to make people laugh, things to make people think, I get barely a nibble.

But if I post something that offends people, I can get close to two hundred comments, with there being 86 on last night's post.

People want to get offended.

I can understand.

I can get offended.

Easily.

I can be scrolling along on my morning social media feed and see something that gets under my skin, and I have to comment. When all I should have done was remember The Second Agreement.

That doesn't change the fact that the vitriol I sometimes gets shocks me. If people are reading my posts, they see I rarely say something offensive. And the comments weren't gently scolding me or telling me that I should think about what I said, it could be considered offensive. No. Not at all.

You see, this is what I noticed.

Look at my typical day's posting on Facebook. Funny, thoughtful, meaningful, sexy...and as I said. Rarely a nibble. I was wondering why in the world I was creating a blog. I spend hours on it, and if no one is reading, maybe I should spend those hours on my novels.

The people who jumped me.... They are people who rarely if ever comment on my posts.

Person 1: She hasn't so much as liked or commented on one of my posts since February 11, 2023, and I was saying how much I disliked Sam Smith's outfit on some awards ceremony. Nothing between then. The last supportive thing she has said was October 21, 2022, and it was about my weight loss.

Now if this person made comments on any kind of regular basis, then I might have felt shamed, But no. Apparently, I am only worth commenting on if I have offended her. On top of this, I have noticed when I see her comments on other people's posts, they are almost always negative or angry.

Person 2: A person who said I was being rude and that for someone who says he (me) is supposed to not be putting other people or other people's opinions down, I was doing it far more than I realized.

The last time this person commented or even liked a post of mine was last year in November.

Then there was the time I went shopping for three hours trying to find something I needed for an art project, and I didn't want to spend my $$$ at Hobby Lobby. I finally broke down and did so and was all but viciously attacked. One person suggested, publicly, that I must have a brain tumor, and that was the kind part. When I asked her why they were saying such things and why in almost ten years of Facebook friendship, she had never once commented before and why she was judging me so harshly, she said it was because she could clearly see that I would have simply discounted anything she said, that that was the way I was. And yet anyone who follows me in social media knows that I apologize all the time, publicly, I take down posts, that I am constantly growing and that I change my mind. This woman lied. In her self-righteousness, she publicly LIED.

The crazy this is though, that I forgot that I should "Never Take Anything Personally." I went through so much anguish over that. And why? Why did I give a sh*t what she thought of me?

NOW HERE IS WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING FOR ME....

Once I slept on it, wondering if I should take last night's post down, and I re-looked at the comments this morning? There were far fewer "bad' comments than I remember. and I mean FAR fewer!

any idea that this post was pointing fingers at people who only focus or remember that "bad"? Why I had three fingers pointed back at me!

Now this doesn't mean in posts past that most of the comments that I occasionally get avalanched with weren't attacking me. Goodness! I once posted a photo, from the hips down, of what a woman was wearing at the airport (extremely short short-shorts where part of her butt was showing, as well has fru-fru bedroom slippers) because I was so stunned, and WHOA! Talk about an avalanche of anger! The only real reason I posted it in the first place was I always got an eye-boggle when people post pictures of people shopping at Walmart and I figured that would be the reaction.....

I took the post down, and apologized.

WHAT IT COMES DOWN TO IS THIS.....

1)  People are hurting right now, especially with the mountains of injustice in the world right now and all the people getting hurt and fundamental rights being taken away and the dire threat that we could turn into a dictatorship. We see and hear that there is far too much of the “It can’t happen here” and it scares the crap out of us. So therefor people can be oversensitive. I get that. Because....

2)  I overreacted! I remembered there being a huge amount of nasty comments on that post last night and I had trouble sleeping about it...and it turns out all I remembered were the negative comments or comments where I felt attacked. I should have KNOWN better!

The Second Agreement is “Don't take anything personally,” and yet I did. A good moment for me to reflect.

3)  If I got 86 comments last night (and yes, some of them were me defending myself, because I felt attacked, proving that I am one of the wounded with raw nerves), then that means people are reading!

And I guess that's good.

Now if only I could get 86 comments on one of my posts that I spend all morning writing. That would be wonderful.

TODAY I AM GRATEFUL FOR....

....so much. For lessons learned. For insight. For the fresh perspective on a new day. For seeing what I need to fix in myself before pointing out what other people need to fix in themselves. For reminding myself not to take things personally, because, "nothing other people do is really because of [me]. The things other people do are a projection of the conditioning they have received throughout their lives. Once [I] understand this, [I can] realize that their opinions are not really about [me] at all. When [I] become immune to the opinions and actions of others, [I] won’t be the victim of needless suffering. Moreover, being offended by others is the number one cause of blockages in our relationships and in our minds. First of all, when [we] are offended, you become bitter towards the other person, but you also do something much worse... ...You should never let these words frame who you are. How others act toward you is an indication of who they are. If you don’t take these things personally, you claim a power over your enemy and 'their bad day.'" *

Thank all of you who made it this far in my post today. It means a lot.

Blessings to you all, and Namaste,

BG "Gentle Ben" Thomas

January 22, 2024, Entry #022

* The Four Agreements You Should Live Your Life by: https://www.learning-mind.com/the-four-agreements/