Social media is a thing these days, especially with the likes of the Muskrat gumming up the works, and Dorsey keeping his fingers in the pie, and the Zuckster challenging the status quo. And that's not even touching on the likes of Mastadon or Hive or TikTok or, Insert-A-Platform-Here. It’s too much, to be honest, especially when having a social media presence, in some form or other, is necessary. Because I am a writer. And an introvert. That second one doesn’t bode well for a promoter of books, but I do what I can.
So, when the great social media wars broke out, where Musk promised to make all sorts of horrendous changes to Twitter (“X”) once he acquired it, and has been fulfilling that promise ever since, I was one of millions who scrambled to find that new place to inhabit, to maybe find some like minded readers and writers (and viewers and screenwriters) to support each other, to keep track of the writing world and to maybe sell some books.
But that’s not how social media works, is it. Social media inevitably wants to take that turn down the unlit path to show us the seedy underbelly of its existence—the antisocial network. And that underbelly is vast and ravenous and bloated. Or so it seems. I’m going to remain positive and suggest that none of us want to go there, knowing full well that maybe pieces of us do if for no reason than to peek, to say that we've seen what can’t be unseen, to experience the reprehensible. And whether we've accepted this sad truth or not, I'm willing to bet money that most of us have had to, at some point, deal with it.
Recent case in point, the Threads Guy. I’m not going to officially name the Threads Guy. Let’s face it, we've all had bad days including myself with this particular encounter. But the Threads Guy reached out with a promise:
The Threads Guy wanted to do something charitable for his fellow writers in the community, in part to gain some followers, no doubt, but hey, that’s the catch 22 of the social media writing community—support other writers, but hopefully gain something in return. What Threads Guy is giving away is pretty common in the writing community, a chance to post your book on his thread, free advertising of sorts! And the slim chance that he will be interested enough to buy it, maybe review it.
I’ve posted things like this, but never with the promise to buy one or two. I prefer to pay it forward once in a while by checking out an author's work without teasing anyone with the promise that I will. But I’ve hosted a few ShamelessPromo days inviting authors to list their books and repost others in the list. Like I said, it’s a common thing. So I followed Threads Guy and I posted a book with a thanks, if he happened to decide to buy it. I did it hastily, amidst a rough week of personal things going down, but I posted it and moved on.
Needless to say, Threads Guy wasn’t happy with my post. I didn’t lead with a teaser to what the book was about, and legit my bad. I was rushed when I posted, distracted to get out the door on time. It doesn’t matter. It happened, and I missed an opportunity, and oh well. That should have been the end of it. Except for that little bit of passive aggressiveness at the end. “They're really not difficult rules." Clearly, I had complicated Threads Guy's day.
It irked me, that little finger wag. It really did. Not because he wasn’t going to RT my post, I don’t have time to worry about that. The dude gave his reason, and that was fair enough. But, "they’re really not difficult rules." Why was that necessary? I brushed it off and moved on.
But Threads Guy followed up about his ruined day with a separate post…
This one really did irritate me because I knew he might not be speaking about me specifically, but I was definitely one of the ones to provide the ruin of his day. So I unfollowed the guy and responded in kind—wrong turn #1 on my part, but, I had had a long day once I saw it, a long couple of months to be honest, and I hoped to give him something to think about.
That didn’t go well... In fact, Mr. Nice Guy showed his underbelly, where his charitable act of reposting the work of other writers came down to HIS effing RULES. He decided that my angry volley in return was because he refused to repost me, because he assumed that I thought I should get special treatment, when in reality I was just irked that he felt the need to reprimand me by reminding me that "it’s not that hard."
I still don’t think Mr. Nice Charitable Threads Guy gets it, as is highlighted by the maniacal laughter and the suggestion for me to grow up. Maybe I don’t get it, but really…nah. At minimum, I would have taken the time to say, sorry for your loss.
But there's a chance that he’s right about my need to grow up because, while I’m mature enough to block out Threads Guy's identity, I can’t unsee the irony in how those simple green cross outs resemble a dick.
Be kind, people. Or at least try. I know, sometimes it’s hard. It’s the effort that counts.
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