Take it from Whom it Comes
I remember, as a child, complaining to my mother about hurtful things said to me by someone my fifth grade class. My mother just looked at me, and said “Take it from whom it comes.” Mom was born in 1917; and what she meant was that a sour, bitter person would say sour, bitter, things and that those sour, bitter comments said nothing at all about me, and could not hurt me if I remembered the context. In that way, I learned not to feel hurt when a sour person said sour things that happened to be about me.
In the same way, in the internet world, there are some posters whose posts I have learned not to open, and to delete without reading. That is because these sourpuss posters have taught me that they have nothing to say that I value. Because these folk are sour in a global way, their posts simply amplify that sourness rather than having meaningful content.
In the context of the psychology classes I later took, it may be that these sour folk value negative attention in the same way that “any attention is good attention – negative or positive” to a child, or “there is no bad ink in marketing.” Often in a family, one child garners the positive attention and is “the good kid” and another child garners the negative attention, and is “the bad kid.” If the parents seek help, or know intuitively what to do, they reward only the good acts, ignore and don’t “reward” the negative acts by being outraged and attentive. The exception to this, of course, is negative acts by a child that endanger the child or others, or destroy/damage property, at which time more active intervention is needed.
So, the chronic sour/nasty/negative poster may value any response at all highly. These individuals may have given up on receiving positive responses because they actually do not value themselves, and so go after shock value, negativity, and extreme sourness in order to foment responses.
I suggest when you know a certain persona’s posts only irritate, hurt, or sorrow you – use the delete key like the parent of a toddler needs to learn to use the word “no”. At a minimum, you will avoid a bad taste in you mind; just possibly, the negative poster who receives no attention will just go away. Amazing how much my 90 year old mother knew – then and now.
In turning 60 this week, I reread journals and letters, and pondered various memories; this post results from that process. My mothers pithy words when I was dealing with a verbal bully in elementary school seem to me to apply in the internet world.
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Yum!
My mother loves sour lemon candies. A PERFECT comment.
…you could have given me a 6 rating. I would have loved a 6 rating. It would have been sweet.
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p>By the way, here’s my car. Do you like my car? It’s much nicer than that Howie Carr that has been driving around the neighborhood.
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How do you DO that with those graphics? Great stuff!!!
Happy birthday, AmberPaw!
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p>When I as a kid I remember one of those motivational speakers coming through our area, selling the key to happiness for the price of a ticket to his lecture. But there was one slogan he had that I do actually think had some validity, and your comment reminded me of it. It was “You are what you were when”. In other words, our responses and points of view are to some degree influenced by “the times” and circumstances we grew up in. It is really just a repackaging of your mom’s “consider the source” statement, but was meant for individuals to better understand themselves as opposed to understanding the (sometimes nutty) behavior of others. fwiw.