Troll Me... I Dare You!
Before I get started, I would like to state that this blog post is by no means an open invitation for people to "Troll" and leave nasty comments - however if you feel the need to get something off your chest freedom of speech and all that and hey with the size of my chest I could always do with getting something off of it!!
Now, you may have clicked through to this post thinking, "Okay, that's it... she's finally cracked and is asking for people to "Troll her"! I mean WTF?!" No, I am in fact not asking for that in the slightest but then no one ever does ask for it. There are tens of thousands of us living here in our
own part of blog world and whilst we share intimate details of our lives we generally mind our own business. If anything, from what I have observed of the blogging community, we reach out to praise, support and uplift each other whether we need it that day or not. I have a wonderfully supportive group of women (all women because I think the male species are currently too afraid of a group of 50 babbling women to have reached out to join us yet) known as "my tribe" who ironically enough I found via writing a blog post mockingly advertising for a group of friends - little did I know that I would find myself
up to my neck in love and support from these amazing women I am proud to say are now indeed my friends.
All but three of the women who are part of my community are bloggers and the three that aren't still have a presence on social media and therefore, although marginally less than the bloggers, leave themselves open for trolling and criticism. I was having a private conversation with one member not so long ago, only to find out that she had experienced some horrible messages left on her blog posts for absolutely no reason. What was even worse was that the comments had no reasoning or foundation. Anyone choosing to read these comments after having read the blog post would have quickly discovered that the writer of the comments had
probably only got as far as reading the title and then jumped straight to their "Judging a book by it's cover" comment.
I spoke to another blogging friend of mine, who received horrible and unnecessary comments for a blog post but, wait for it, not the writing but the cover image she had chosen to share and promote the post with on Twitter. My friend was told that she had not only spelt something wrong on the image but that one of the phrases on the image was a stereotypical judgement of a type of person and was in fact untrue and that facts should be checked first as they could be quite upsetting to people who would fall under said stereotype. However, had this person
bothered to read the post they were commenting on, they would have seen that the post was actually about fighting against lots of stereotypes and that actually the writer of the blog post shared the same feelings as the commenter on such topics.
I myself have been lucky enough not to come face to face with any negative comments towards my blog posts despite the somewhat controversial topics I choose to write about. However, I have been criticised for the way I manage my social media and in quite an open way which I personally found unnecessary and not a particularly nice
experience at all. The comments came from a non blogger who has no concept of how bloggers use social media to drive traffic and was honestly quite rude about it - I mean name calling? How old are we?! Not only did this person choose to criticise me, but half an hour later was over criticising a blogger of 6 years experience - hats off as that takes balls I guess... but why? What is the point?!
Now whilst none of these incidents were for extended periods of time, or involved overly outrageous comments towards us and our actions online, they do remind me of being back at school and the bullies that at some point or another 99% of us had to face. I would not necessarily call the acts I have described above "TROLLING" but surely that is how they start. All of the incidents I mentioned were not founded on any real reason and as far as I can see, there was no need for them ever to have taken place.So why?! Why do people feel the need to put
other people down? If you have had a bad day, week, month, life then I truly am sorry but don't reach out and take that out on someone who's brave enough in the first place to even be attempting to have a voice in this big wide web. Do you know how much guts it takes to hit that publish button sometimes? Let me tell you it's a lot. So rather than telling us we shouldn't have bothered, say well done, say bravo and if you can't do that then heed my own mother's advice.... "If you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all!" When the comments I mentioned before were made to me, within seconds I had 49 not so happy tribal members messaging me to check I was okay and telling me not to listen and generally doing everything they could to make me feel better whilst restraining themselves from publicly commenting on the situation and probably worsening it.
So, here I am. This is MY blog and NOT yours. If I say something that truly and with great foundation offends you in anyway then please accept my apologies. However, if you come here merely because you are bored, or you've had a bad day or simply that the name Mummy in a Tutu pisses you off so you have come to textually spit all over my blog, I ask you to please STOP. THINK. MOVE ON! One reason being, I don't know how long I can hold back those tribal ladies in order for you to make your escape. However, if you are really feeling brave...
Troll Me... I Dare You!
