“So if you can’t handle keeping things private that have absolutely no business being public, then we’re going to have to talk.”

There was this one time, maybe around when I last posted on this blog, that someone got really upset at me for posting on my bookface account that they watched a particular TV show.

I know people can get really sensitive about what goes online, but why should anyone care if I out them as someone who has seen episodes of anything?

The post was only posted to my friends, not publicly or on here, and it didn’t include the @person_who_now_hates_me tag or anything. I did use a name, which I avoid on the blog, but it was just a common first name, which multiple people on my three hundred something person friends list have. But yes they considered that public.

Now. This is public. The name has been withheld, and I’m even withholding the name of the show in case the your name gets out.

I know how the paparazzi can be.

Question? Yes, you in the front. Was it porn? No, it wasn’t porn, but let’s just make something clear. Are there really any adults out there who haven’t seen porn? Okay, that’s true. The Amish may or may not have watched internet porn, but I bet they have flip-books or something.

It’s not a show I would show any shame watching. It’s a show I’ve watched before and admitted I enjoyed to real, live, human beings (not just my cat and potted plants). The only reason I found it even a bit noteworthy is that this same person made fun of me for watching the show once, which is a bit hypocritical. I didn’t say that in my bookface post, though. I’m saying it now, though. And I’m asking, what’s up with that? I don’t know this person to generally be a hypocrite.

“FYI, people at work see your facebook.”

Okay, so we have some mutual friends where you work. Trust me, I was just as likely to verbally tell them next time I saw them. Why? Because I didn’t know it was a secret. Because you teased me about it before, and now it was my turn to tease a little.

Maybe I should have known that you had really serious feelings about the stupid TV shows. Some teasing is just teasing, but a lot of teasing is bullying that happens when people are self-loathing and trying to feel better about themselves. It’s like you’re in the closet about a TV show, teasing those of us who have come out. Is your ego really so fragile? Is your self-esteem so low? I know you to be a person of confidence and even sometimes, when it counts, humility. So what is this really about?

This can’t really be about you defending your right to have people be silent when concerning your TV show prefrences? ..can it?

Well, unless they amend the constitution, is not a right. It’s also silly to think a person would consider that confidential information. It’s not even an overshare.

So, is this person going to get really silly angry when I post this? I don’t know. I really have no idea. I obviously don’t share their values about what is ‘okay to be public’ or ‘should be private’.

One more detail: this person reads my blog.

While I can block people on or add them to the ‘post this to everyone but so and so’ bookface group, I can’t do that here. And still here I post. I might even one day end up with a book. You can’t control who reads a book. Let’s Pretend This Never Happened was pretty inspiring. I think that she’s really lucky that the people in her life didn’t go all “you told people I watch this really silly TV show and that’s not okay” on her. Maybe they did. I hope they didn’t. It’s a great book.

Oh, one more detail. That person, bought her book. They should understand this while writing about life thing.

People should be able to tell their story. My story includes other people who I interact with.

So here we are with a blog that I stopped posting on for most of this year. It’s not a coincidence.

I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with this going forward, but I think step one is to not get upset myself. You know how I work through stuff? Writing about stupid stuff in my life on my blog. Yeah. What a person to do then when they become afraid to?

I can’t understand why this person cared. He was teased by a mutual friend, and that friend only did it because he knew it would bother him. This mutual friend also heard the hypocrisy. People tease you when they know it bothers you, but if you lived through kindergarten to twelfth grade, you should understand that principal. It’s trolling 101.

So I know this is ridiculous. So why did I let it get to me?

The problem is that I actually care about what this person thinks. I’ve tried talking to them about it, but we went in a circle. We tried again, another circle. It’s like talking religion or politics with people who have opposing viewpoints. At some point you should realize nothing you say is going to really change the other person’s mind.

I didn’t change my mind, but something else happened. I became, for once, a bit afraid to express myself in my desired medium. That’s not okay. I write. I share my writing online. It’s been part of my identity since I was posting poems to people on Compuserve and local BBS forums.

Look at this blog. Am I what you would call a private person?

I know there must be a way to simultaneously respect people who prefer to be private while continuing to be open myself, but I felt like I was already doing that.

I’m not going to stop writing about myself and my experiences- even if I never posted here again. The people around me are part of my experiences. There would be no stories without you! Even if I were to try and be selfish and only post about myself, I’d still have to bring in those ‘minor characters’.

What I’m trying to say is that I do not mean any disrespect, but people either going to have to live with some degree of this…

Or they have to make sure I don’t catch then watching TV…

Or they have to say “Hey, don’t go telling anyone about how I watched this on TV. It’s super personal and private and means a lot to me.”

I know it won’t be the last person who gets upset because I wrote something about them, but I was surprised about who it was and what set them off. I’m surprised at how mean and serious it got. I was just downright confused when I was contacted at work about it.

We choose the people we associate with to a large degree. I pride myself in surrounding myself with people who are both pretty amazing and who, to some degree, get and accept me.

I don’t know how we let dumb TV shows get between us.