It would surprise pretty much all of the people that know me in adulthood to learn I was relatively sensitive as a kid. Sure, I could fight, I was witty enough to hold my own too, but some people could get the worst out of me or even tears. Typically, tears were only achievable with my parents. My sensitivity outside of the house usually led to me over doing it in fights as a defense mechanism. If I beat the breaks off of someone, I wouldn’t have to do it all the time. People call me something crazy, or try to play me, we fought and that was it. My aunt called me gay when I was 12 because I got my ear pierced, then my older cousin, her son, did the same thing a few weeks later and neither of us are gay. I couldn’t fight her for it of course, which is the only thing I can equate to this new era of trash talking. Now the new phenomenon is people talking crazy over the internet, knowing they’ll never see someone to do anything about it…e-Beefing if you will.
Unlike many of the other boys I knew in my neighborhood, I was unapologetically into reading, learning about outer space, and doing math, you know, nerd stuff. Naturally, this led to a lot of moments where people got a bit loose with the talk. There were no screen names or comment sections to hide behind, so you had to be ready to back up the BS. Folks now are not like this at all. The anonymity of the internet has created a lot of tough guys, and somehow, folks allow people with names like NuttzOut69 or Cockasaurus19 to get under their skin. NuttzOut will say some nonsense about somebody’s mom on Twitter which leads to a lot of thumb wars and hollow threats, just to find out he’s 16 years old and lives 5 states away.
Brittle Spirit
“Louis CK masturbated in front of me, it ruined my comedy dreams”
Dave Chappelle
Sometimes it’s tough to tell what will and won’t break someone’s resolve these days. I laughed rather loudly at Dave Chappelle talking about the lady that watched Louis CK masturbate and gave up on her dreams of being a comedian. Times have changed a lot. When I was a kid, if you did anything embarrassing, most of the people in school would know by the end of the day, but it only lived on for a couple days, if that. Now, we have the internet and every moron with thumbs has the ability to memorialize any embarrassing moment forever. That’s tough to deal with I’m sure. Much like the lady given the surprise show to Louis CK’s jack-off session, kids don’t think to just look away either. I’ve listened to what sounds like people addicted to drugs tell me they can’t just ignore it when it’s on social media.
My old ass, all I have to deal with is jazzy comments on YouTube videos from time to time, and the occasional comment on IG. I’m not on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok or any of the others because I just don’t have time to be. So the way I deal with crap given to me by way of these morons like NuttzOut69 goes like this…
- This dumb ass doesn’t know me and the comment is stupid…ignore
- This dumb ass doesn’t know me but the comment warrants a response
- This dumb ass doesn’t know me and is likely a clown to the people that know and love him/her…ignore altogether
I’ve never had to deal with people I do know over the internet, but it’s honestly not going to change much outside of “This dumb ass sent this stupid comment, I’ll see him/her and address it”. I’m not advocating for folks to get tough with people and go looking for fights, but don’t give NuttzOut69 the satisfaction of getting to you on the internet. That’s not real beef, that’s anonymous tough talk. If you know them and they do it, ignore them and keep it moving or address it when you see them, preferably without violence of course.
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The attention span of the typical human when I was a kid was about 30 minutes…it is exponentially shorter now for Millennials. The last estimate I heard is about 8 seconds, which is insane, but predictable considering memes and tweets are reading material with viral TikTok clips as a source of entertainment. There is so much going on that nothing lasts in the minds of people for too long. You could piss your pants in public and 1 month later, almost no one would care. There will be a meme or challenge to supplant your embarrassment by the end of the day, unless you are the meme of course.
“No matter what happens or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.”
Maya Angelou
Pinch Yourself
I was having a dream the other day that some people were chasing me. They didn’t have good intentions at all so I ran like a crazy person in my own dream. Glad there was no video footage of me sleeping, I’m sure I looked ridiculous. Moving on, in this dream I jumped off a bridge, threw heavy stuff at these guys and even did some stuff any action movie stunt double would be proud of. Finally, when none of this worked and I realized all attempts to escape were futile, I simply woke up because I knew in my dream that it wasn’t real.
Sometimes life is like a bad dream, especially on the internet. For most of the normal level crap people get, ignoring it is likely the best option. In the event remaining neutral or “waking up” are not options, realize that you are able to control the response you have, and to an extent the offender’s responses too. If you ignore them, you are actively telling the other person they aren’t worth your time or intellect. Eventually, even a fool will get the picture and move on to someone that will give them time. As Dave Chappelle said, Twitter is not a place.