Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Never annoy a writer

Never piss off a writer in fact. Whatever you do can and will be used as fodder. Even if only in a blog post, although this particular person has annoyed me so much that she will in fact be killed off in a suitably bloody and painful way further on into the book. She has just become a character I will enjoy disposing of.

Really, social media is a great thing in so many ways. You can reconnect with friends from your past and you can start talking immediately if you are both online. You can even see them if you wish to talk on cam. You can share photos with family across the world, make friends with people irrespective of geography or anything else. Social media is a great leveller. People connect purely with their minds - age, colour, race, religion, they are only an issue if a person chooses to make them one. To wax poetic for one short sentence, souls can connect in a very real way.

Because of social media, people can easily learn how different cultures live their lives, and this I am sure in time will level out a lot of the problems facing our world. If we understand another persons culture, it's a lot more difficult to have prejudice against it. Hopefully through avenues like social media, the world will begin to edge towards a more global way of living. By this I do not mean a homogeneous society, but rather the understanding that each and every one of us is part of the world, we are all connected and we should all have tolerance for the differences between us all. And we should help each other, people helping people, countries helping countries.

But then, who am I to talk? Someone did something that at first upset me and now has got me really annoyed and I'm going to kill her off in my book! Sigh, human nature. There's another side to social media. It's terribly easy to stalk someone. Now a little stalking is to be expected. If you are interested in someone you are going to check out their facebook/twitter account and see what they are like. If they have public settings you can see just about everything. Privacy settings depend of course on the individual.

As it happens, I am very bad at twitter and constantly forget to do anything with it. However my facebook timeline is very active. I share photos I like, quotes I think have merit, memes that I find funny. I like to mix it up and try to make it all entertaining. I have followers, and that's fine with me. My timeline is completely public, I have nothing to hide. I use it to publicise my blogs, I will use it when I finish the latest book. I have no doubt I have been stalked at times by someone with a less friendly motive but I don't know so it doesn't worry me. BUT...

When someone who I am guessing was stalking me for a while - when that someone announces her presence by following me, and when that someone is not so friendly towards me - well it pisses me off. This person is someone who should have known better, who I once thought of as a friend. This person showed a side of her personality I was not aware of. It's not nice to stalk someone if you are only trying to find out dirt on them and I'm pretty sure that was the motive.

There are unwritten etiquette rules to social media and one of them is if you become obsessed with a person to the point where you feel impelled to stalk them, do it silently! Don't warn them by following them (if you don't have followers or you have never followed anyone, if you follow someone on facebook that someone receives a notification from a very helpful facebook - so and so is following you). Well actually, if you feel impelled to stalk someone DON'T DO IT! It's rude and invasive. And don't follow them, that is also rude and invasive.

If you are obsessed with someone in an unfriendly way to that point, maybe you should examine your life, your motives, your actions and your intentions. Maybe, just maybe, you are the one who has a problem and maybe you should look at changing your own behaviour. Maybe you are insecure, for you are if you feel this need, and maybe you are insecure for a reason. Whatever the real reason, the underlying cause, FIX YOURSELF - do not stalk someone who has nothing to do with your problem. The problem is in yourself, look inside yourself and not at another persons profile.

It's a pity this person will not read this blog, unless of course she found the link while stalking me, before I took the enjoyable step of blocking her. In that case she may well check out my blogs and if so hello! Yes this is about you. Again I say, never piss off a writer. Especially when that writer has been through some quite difficult times and is still going through them. But actually, just don't unless you don't mind finding yourself the subject of a blog post and also a character meeting a messy and untimely end in a book.

Rant over, I feel pretty good now :) For this is not my problem, this person is not my problem and her insecurity is not my problem. She may be on the path I have just travelled - worry too much about something and you may just make it happen. It's a hard lesson, hope she's prepared.