Break the Cycle

Trigger: Secondhand Knowledge Acquisition

Okay, that was a vague title, but basically it means don't whisper about me when I can hear you, or online it means don't journal about me because I'll eventually find out. It's not cool. While I'm often offended by what you say about me, I'm mostly upset about you not saying it to my face. That indirect knowledge is what hurts me more than the opinion itself. I'm a tough opponent in debate. I recognize that. But I'm not so iron-hearted that I won't blink when I see you beat my opinions in your journal. My question is this. Why do you feel the need to hide your opinions from me when I have no fear of making mine public? To me, it screams cowardice. I'm not fearing the opposition. Why should you? It seems I'm willing to go to bat for what I think and feel...but I'm the only one.

If you think about that, though, this is all the more reason for people to stand up and directly counter an opinion which clashes with yours. Ever notice how rare this is in many aspects of modern life? All the bullshit is swapped behind closed doors where the person with the opposed argument hears exactly jack and squat. Well, then there's later on, when a random interloper strolls on by and drops off a news fragment to the unsuspecting sap whose opinion got slaughtered in the room. Well, so much for the secret annihilation, eh? It's all a matter of what comes around and what goes around. Seriously. I feel journals on the site operate in a similar fashion. When I put my thoughts on display, I present them for debate. Not too many people take me up on the offer, though. Thing is, my journal is both for me and for an audience, so if my stance is called into question directly (e-mail), I'm not afraid to debate. If I need to rant about someone on site (which happens), I usually wait until after I've confronted the person, and even then, I won't rant publically. I try to avoid this situation at all costs, but in the near four years I have been on this site, it has occassionally come to that point. I accept this as part of the Writing.com territory, though, and have devised a respectful way to go about it. When I'm pissed, I'm not shy about name dropping, so my site rants are hidden. Offline, though, I'll go straight for the kill and name names (even if I sometimes change them to keep myself out of potential legal trouble, keeping myself from getting kicked out, etc.). By the time I get to my journal in most cases, I've already made my stance known to my opponent. Onsite, in my mod role, I avoid no-holds barred, all-out, ass kicking confrontation (although I will e-mail some people and say "Hey, what are you doing?"). Otherwise, I'm not afraid of confrontation. The trick is to keep from getting violent. Trust me. When a kid scratched a CD my ex-boyfriend gave me, I punched that son of a bitch several times. He wasn't hurt since my punches were fairly weak, but I did enough of a job of hurting his pride since he tried to sneak away after scratching the disk. Moral of the story? If you have a beef with me, I advise you to be straight up about it because I will find out about it. Online and off, I have my ways of uncovering information. I can get over your opinion pretty damn quickly, but I'm not very forgiving if I learn about your opinion secondhand. That really chaps my ass.