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| Angry Penguin (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Memorial Day Monday was busier than I had expected seeing as how the response to my telemarketer post was better than I had expected. Today starts where that post left off and if you didn't read my Monday post you can, but understanding today's post is not contingent upon reading that previous post. That post was just a story about something that happened to me recently. Today's post is the actual point I want to make--or at least the point I want to make until Friday's post.
This world is filled with so much anger. People seem to get ticked off over the most minor irrelevant things. Most anger stems from impatience, misunderstanding, self-absorption, and unwillingness to listen carefully to what others are saying.
Anger is a behavioral choice we make. In most cases it is a spur of the moment, often irrational, reaction to some external stimulus. Sometimes though, anger is an ongoing state of mind--it's the way certain people look at life and a condition of their own failings of self-acceptance. Something may be lacking in their lives and rather than accept the responsibility of addressing the shortcomings within themselves they will direct their negativity outwardly.
A specific example of this that I encountered recently came from a blogger who will remain nameless in this post. A few of you know the story because you noticed the exchange in my comments or have seen similar exchanges in other blog comment sections. Some of you may even have come here today expecting me to name this angry blogger and dish out some dirt. Sorry, but I'm not interested in making enemies, but just to understand something about this type of anger in the world of blogging. And besides, I might be totally wrong about what I have perceived.
To briefly recount an overview of the story, I had noticed an author blogger whose name I knew though I knew little about that blogger repeatedly attacking a blogger friend of mine ad nauseam in this latter blogger's comment section. A rather vicious feud developed on both blogs. Curious, I started investigating the author blogger and became intrigued. This blogger had many published works listed and seemed to me to be a somewhat interesting person. Since I had nothing against the author blogger I decided to engage in order to form a blogger friendship.
This author blogger in turn left me a rather nasty unfriendly comment which suggested to me that he wanted nothing to do with me nor was he interested in having any sort of professional friendship. That's fine because I already follow more blogs now than I can keep up with in an adequate manner. I was just trying to be nice. And I was genuinely interested in this person's background as a writer.
The series of incidents involving this author blogger led me to wonder about anger in social media in the context of professional relationships and what makes us follow certain bloggers. To take this to a broader scale my question becomes more of why we chose certain people to be our friends.
Obviously, common interests and situational involvement have a great bearing on why we pick our friends. When we have interests in the same or similar things then we have something to talk about and can share experiences involving those things. In some cases we might befriend others because they live next door, work with us, or some other circumstance that brings us together even if we have little else in common. Then there are those we just like for some undefinable reason.
Perhaps similar to the way we develop preferences in the people we want to consider friends, we choose particular music, literature, movies, or whatever else it is that we like. Specifically thinking of music--since this series is leading up to my Battle of the Bands post of Monday June 1st--favorite songs or music styles can have connections to certain people, places, events, or points in the space-time continuum. Sometimes our preference is obvious and can be pinpointed while in other cases a preference just seems to happen without our specifically noticing why.
In the case of friendships--or professional relationships of mutual benefit--the question I would want to answer is why someone would display belligerence or harbor an ongoing grudge toward anyone else without first making an attempt to resolve issues and smooth over the rocky places in the road as best as possible. More specifically in the case of the angry blogger to whom I refer, how would a display of resentment toward me or anyone else make them look better?
I try my best to be nice to others and not harbor grudges as best as I can. Life's too short as is often said. Anger and discontentment is emotionally and physically unhealthy. When tempted to fall into an ongoing state of anger we should probably ask ourselves if this is a constructive state of mind for us to be in and does what we choose to feel, do, and say make the world a better place to be. What exactly do we accomplish when we leave a trail of enemies and hurt feelings behind us?
Sorry that I've rambled on so, but I try to maintain some degree of positive attitude in what is so often a very negative world. When those doses of negativity infringe upon my attempt at keeping a peaceful state of mind, they can at times weigh so heavily upon me that I tend to fixate upon them. Sometimes I will wake up in the wee morning hours pondering the garbage that makes our world a nastier meaner place and wonder what I can do to bring peace between feuding bloggers and any other unhappy folk within my realm of life.
So if you want to belittle me, chide me, or unleash your attacks upon me then have at it. I like to reason and discuss, but when you take combat stance then I probably won't be donning my sparring gloves to fight back. And if you think you're being funny rather than vicious then maybe you need to put a smiley face behind your words.
My apologies again as I had a rough night non-related to the issues here, but nevertheless related to blogging and complicated by other life issues weighing upon me. Yeah, I feel like crap. This post is probably not what you were expecting and it was not exactly what I had planned. For now I'm laying the groundwork for my next post which is supposed to be about preferences. Or maybe it will be more related to making choices, but I suppose our choices have something to do with our preferences since our preferences are essentially choices. Something like that.
Do you think a blogger who is marketing product should respond negatively to the readers of his or her blog? Should an author openly express disdain toward someone who has given their book a negative review? Have you ever let loose on another blogger? Do you think personally directed anger can help one's image? Does it make you feel better to unleash anger on someone else and if so, how?
