Anti-social?

This is not one blog post. This is the result of more than 25 revisions of a blog post that I started writing over a month ago. I just – can’t – post what I originally started writing, because at this stage I’m bored to tears by my own sentences. I generally have more drafts here than published items. It’s a vicious circle; every time I find something new to write about, I tell myself I have to finish one I’m already working on first, and I can’t finish one I’m working on because, because… Anyway, as anyone can see from my infrequent additions, this means that nothing has been published at all for almost two months.

This blog post started out (actually, the only resemblance to the original is the title) as a rant on your everyday, typical Facebook posts, written in a huff after a very bad day. It was one of those days where nothing works out, everybody is stupid, road-rage takes you over, you shout at your family and do not relent until doors are slamming or someone (most likely yourself) is crying. I was about to take it out on the world but decided against it, and after a few days it developed into a reflection on self-censorship online. Reflection soon became action however, and here I am again with a half-written post, unable to finish and just press “enter”.

At some stage in this process I came across the article 7 Ways to Be Insufferable on Facebook, and I think this might be what my enterphobia boils down to. The author of the article claims that most insufferable fb-posts are motivated by image crafting, narcissism, attention craving, wanting to induce jealousy or loneliness (in other words, great qualities that you want to expose to the world, right?). To a certain degree, I agree that people should reconsider before they inform 300 people + that they are off to bed, but I’m finding it hard to identify any post in social media that can’t be boiled down to one of the qualities above. Even hilarious or inspiring ones are a form of image crafting, are they not?  And why would we publicly proclaim something if we didn’t want to receive attention?

So yes, on a bad day I might find everyone on Facebook insufferable. But always, always, I’m a lot more afraid of being insufferable to everybody else. Thus, photos remain unpublished and half-written comments and tweets are deleted. Blog posts are edited until I forget what it was I wanted to say.

Now, what was it I wanted to say? Oh yes, I say, “no more self-sencorship!” Expect to hear a lot more from me in the future, whether you like it or not!