Being a writer is hard.
I now see that even though I can try to write the best that I can, there will always that one person who misinterprets my words, twisting them into malicious & arrogant sentences.
Several people were deeply affected by my last post. People I call friends; people who have a special place in my heart; people I respect. I also lost about dozen followers on Twitter. This — losing followers, I mean — doesn’t bother me much; nor am I bothered by people who seemingly disagree on my point of view. What bothers me most is knowing that I hurt (& angered) others, causing them to think me a hypocrite, amongst many other things. Seeing the sour outcome of my the post makes me think that perhaps I’m not very good at composing my thoughts. If I were, I most certainly wouldn’t have gotten such a strong backlash from my readers.
While I can’t please everyone (& I know this), I’m happy to know that I managed to at least please some people, most of them being followers of Jonathan’s blog. Those people “got it” & everything else I was trying to convey. They didn’t think that I was being pretentious or cold-hearted; they simply thought that it was funny. (& for that, thank you, because that was truly my only intention.)
I know all of this is sounding like an apology, but it isn’t — though I am truly sorry if I have offended anyone. This is me trying to set the record straight, because I absolutely hate being misunderstood.
Again, I’d like to reiterate that what I wrote was purely satirical. It was supposed to be taken with a grain of salt & a sense of humor. I was poking fun at those who are constantly angry, constantly ignorant, constantly over-sharing, constantly promoting themselves on Twitter. Not “every once in a while”, not “once or twice in the day”… but all the damn time. The post was extremely sarcastic, extremely over-exaggerated, with a bit of truth penciled in. I wasn’t talking about you, specifically, & I certainly wasn’t putting myself on a higher “tweeting” pedestal. I write an angry, TMI, promoting tweet every once in a while myself, but do I do it all the time? Is my entire Twitter profile dedicated to such nonsense mentioned in my post? Absolutely not! & I’m sure yours isn’t, either.
I think that the reason people got so perturbed with my Twitter post is because it was too truthful. People saw themselves in a different light within this post, & it made them uncomfortable. If my assumption is correct, then I succeeded in my mission, because my entire intention for the post was to try to make us all (myself included) step outside of ourselves & truly see how much useless, senseless information we’re giving away to others on Twitter. I wanted to bring awareness to a subject, humorously, that I feel no one really thinks about, because tweeting what you ate for dinner or how long of a shower you just took is normal these days. The way people [ab]use Twitter is like a sickness… & I wanted people to see themselves & try to form better, healthier habits.
I don’t know if I accomplished that for you, but I accomplished that for myself.
For those who of you who are now paranoid that I might find you a bad tweeter, rest assured & know that I am not asking you to stop your “bad” habits, per se (if you even have any). I am also not suggesting that someone’s tweets should be 140-characters of Shakespearean bliss. All I’m asking is that you think before you tweet. Nothing more, nothing less.
The comments are closed on this post. If you want to contact me, feel free to email me. Otherwise, I’m glad I’ve attempted to set the record straight & clear the air. Because while I stand by my work 100%, I cannot rest knowing that it was terribly misunderstood.
[ETA: A lot of people asked about this, but there will be no "things I love about Twitter" posted here; not by me at least. I like to write about things that break boundaries, & writing a love-fest post about Twitter would only add to the noise. I hope you understand.]
