And in other news...

Why does my profile insist on saying that my star sign is Cancer? Why would it say that?

It's not even close! Cancerians are born months away from February.

*irritation*

How I learned to stop worrying and love the blog

Disclaimer: This post is not meant to stir up more drama. Furthermore, all views expressed in this blog post are purely and solely the opinion of the author and none other. And I may wrong. Heck, I vote conservative so I'm almost certainly evil.

I also do not know many of the people who this post is possibly aimed at, and may well be misjudging people horribly.




This post is mostly in response to a comment that was left in this blog yesterday. Someone (and I have no idea who) asked me about my views on assorted internet trauma which is happening at the moment.

There were many things I wished to say in reply to this comment, but I have instead decided that I shall post this. This post is basically my story - the story of what happened to me, and why I have the views on blog/livejournal etiquette and conflict resolution that I have.

A long time ago, I went to Edinburgh University. In my first year there I met a guy called Paul. Paul was witty, charming, handsome and incredibly intelligent. We got on, we started going out. It lasted four years, and (as many relationships do) it went wrong, and finally ended in a horrifically messy breakup involving physical violence on his part, a fair bit of infidelity on my part, and levels of insanity which I have no intention of going into.

It was bad. At the time I had a livejournal, and he had a livejournal, and frankly both of us were as bad as eachother in using our livejournals to show the world how hurt and angry the writer was, and how wrong wrong wrong the other party was. This was done through open ranting, or through heavy duty play of the 'innocent' card, which involved carefully linking to the mean things the other person had said and waiting for friends to gather round and provide all the righteous sympathy the writer wanted. I think there were quite a few cryptic and passive aggressive entries as well. (I suspect Paul was far more prone to the straightforward and abusive. I had an 'innocent' card and I played it like most poker players play their aces. I was all about the 'look! Look what my abusive ex has done now' style posts)

It was a nightmare, and I still cringe if I look back at any of those entries. At about this time Paul got a new girlfriend, called Jen, who responded to her boyfriend still having a lot of hangups about me by blaming me entirely and deciding I was The Devil. She also decided to express these views on her livejournal.

Finally, I decided that enough was enough. By this point I had finished my degree and first Masters in Edinburgh. I had just come to the end of one job, and I wanted out. A friend of mine - Krystyna - wanted to go backpacking around South America and invited me to come with her. I packed a bag, and took off, intending entirely to leave the entire mess behind.

And I kinda did, and kinda didn't.

I came back from South America and moved to Oxford to do my MPhil, which at the time I had hopes of being a phd (but we all change our minds sometimes). I was living in an entirely different country. Paul and Jen, however, still had livejournals. I had a livejournal. They still read my LJ, and periodically got offended/ranty/bitchy about things I wrote. I still read their LJs, and still got offended/upset when I read comments about 'a certain self-centered English twat', or 'that History student' (the latter coming in the middle of a long rant about hypocritical and stuck up academics who don't even bother to do their research before insulting someone else's religion after I posted an essay on 'Why The Burning Times Never Happened').

Then finally, one day, I had a revelation. Two revelations, rather.

1) No one can hurt you unless you let them
2) If you respond when you don't have to, you're engaging with and perpetrating the situation

Those, obviously, are not entirely true comments at all times. Someone punching you in the face can always hurt, whether you let them or not, but I do really believe that they hold true when it comes to internet communication.

At the end of the day, if you are interacting with someone primarily on the internet, they are for all effects and purposes not real. In my case, I realised that I lived in a different country to Paul and Jen. I lived in England, they were in Scotland. We had some mutual friends, but none of them had any desire to act as a go between between us, or even discuss the matter. They did not have a real life address for me, or phone number for me. If Paul had wanted to find me, he couldn't have done. They had no contact with any of my friends down south, with my boyfriend, with my family, with my supervisor - with any of the people who actually mattered. They could not touch my real life. All the damage they could do was to my peace of mind, and in order for them to do that I had to let it matter. I had to listen to the things they had to say, and I had to care.

I also realised that every time I responded, whether it be as a hurt and innocent 'why do those mean people say such things about me' or not (and I do know that asking for reassurance/sympathy/making comment about such things is a natural response), I was engaging with them and perpetrating the situation. Partly because I was opening dialogue, albeit indirectly, and partly coz my use of the 'innocent' card was antagonistic. It was portraying Paul and Jen as villains, and thus putting them in a position where they felt attacked and felt the need to defend. It was a fairly socially competent counter attack, whether I admitted it to myself or not.

And so I decided the time had come for it to end. No more.

And it did.

I disabled anonymous posting on my livejournal, and banned Paul and Jen's usernames from commenting. That removed their ability to directly communicate with me. I then stopped reading both of their livejournals completely. I'm actually quite proud of the fact that from the day I made this decision I have never looked at their LJs. I then proceeded to ignore the fact that they existed. I did not post about them, but I didn't let them affect my posting habits in any other way. I just ignored it.

And it worked.

Maybe they are still out there bitching about me somewhere. But, y'know, I discovered that if I don't know about it, it actually can't hurt me.

I've also dealt with a fair few flame wars on my livejournal over the years, and I've learned that the best way I've ever found of dealing with them is to just delete any comments I really feel are nasty without any kind of commentary. The badness goes away. I forget what was said in about 24 hours.

That's how I dealt with the atom bomb of harsh words in the blogosphere. Now, I don't pretend to be a great guru of internet communication. However, I have now been keeping a highly personal blog for friends and family since February 2001, and I still keep one with pretty much no drama these days, which makes me think I'm getting something right. This brings me on to Sally's final spiel, which may be directly equally at all parties in this recent extravaganza of online rifle fire.

If someone is mean/rude/offensive/nightmarishly abusive about you on the internet, just walk away. This, by the way, is advice I have given to Leah (who I love and who is a wonderful person who has got into a crappy dynamic with a bunch of bloggers) and would equally give to Vivienne (who seems to be a very smart woman who I am quite sure knows exactly what she is doing with her 'innocent' card). That is a right you have, and a capacity you have. If you receive comments on your blog that you do not like or feel are reasonable, delete them without comment. If offensive blogs are written about you, then ignore them entirely. I know that takes a bit of self discipline, but viewing them as Not Real does help. If you post, comment, interact, or retaliate, no matter how righteous your vengeance may be, it is feeding into the situation and makes you partially responsible.

Now, you may read this and think 'what a pile of crap'. In fact, I'm also entirely certain that a significant number of those people who will read this* will want to post to this blog to tell me that I'm wrong wrong wrong and how can I tell the victim of all this to suffer in silence. You may well be right. I'm not an all knowing guru, and these are purely my own opinions. I am also entirely biased in that Leah has been a very good friend to me for over twelve years now, and Vivienne Raper is almost entirely some bird on the internet.** However, as I have said before, I have kept a blog for a long time. I've kept a very personal and very intimate blog, I've made a lot of mistakes, and I've encountered a lot of drama and I've learned a lot, so I feel able to at least post up my story, and the lessons that I feel I've learned.

And I guess, as the hideously mangled quotation at the top of this entry suggests, it all comes down to not worrying, use the blog for good, and don't let the bad stuff touch you. And that's way easier than you think.



* which is admittedly, a limited number. By the way, if you actually are interested in getting to know me as a person instead of as 'that bird who's friends with Leah', may I suggest http://annwfyn.livejournal.com. It's probably quite dull to those who come following the drama, but it has more pictures, and some quite endearing stories about cats on it.

** bird is not meant in a derrogatory way. Apologies to any who are offended.