Yes, it's a gross title. I remember when I first heard the term. It was during a Bible study about secrets. I'm not going to go into the details of the Bible study here, but needless to say, it was mostly about meeting God in the secret place. Verbal vomit is, essentially, the inability to keep your mouth shut. Only this post isn't about people just blurting things out.
Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, pretty much every social networking site, is a hotbed of the brand of verbal vomit that inspired my title.
I got up this morning, and as is my usual routine lately, I grabbed a bottle of water and sat down to persue facebook and the news. The news comes first. It's depressing, and usually there are funny pictures on facebook to counteract the depression. However, I find more and more that my facebook is full of just as much in the depressive category. It's full of verbal vomit. Attacking others who have done them wrong, whining about the injustices in their life.. basically, it's people looking for sympathy. Someone to pat them on the head and tell them that everything will work out, and they are a wonderful person who doesn't deserve all this bad stuff happening to them. It is people looking for an ego boost from a social networking site.
I ponder why this is happening, and I realize it's because, at least for those of us in an older generation, we were taught not to be mean. It is considered mean to say "Buck up. Everyone has problems. Now get your butt up and do something about it." We won't say that. Instead, we engage in the head patting and poor you speak that, maybe, makes a person feel better. At least in the short term. But the head patting and coddling don't solve the problems. The problems come back, and so tomorrow, or the day after, the sympathy seeking person is back on facebook with another status about the troubles in their life.
It used to be we did this with our friends. We picked up the phone, made a phone call, and our besties gave us the pep talk. Now? The pep talk is left to people we would rarely tell our deepest darkest secrets to, at least not in a face to face setting, where truth and reality can hit home awfully hard. Instead, we let people with only a surface knowledge of our life pat us on the head, because honestly, they don't really know that half the problems we bemoan on facebook are the result of our own poor choices. They have the sanitized version of our life, and in turn we get the sanitized version of the pep talk.
We are a society that now goes through life expecting to feel better after we post our problems as a facebook status. Social networking etiquette demands people take your side, or at least, try to make you feel better about your horrible life. And you are a horrid awful person if you have the nerve to comment on a status and say "hey, um, how about you NOT post this for the whole world to see, but instead, go do something about it. Buck up. Get off your rear and make some changes". Nope. You can't say that, because it's mean.
Part of me often thinks that getting rid of facebook wouldn't be a bad idea. I have no desire to be inundated with other people's problems all the time. This is not a lack of compassion, I swear. But if I'm not the person you would call in a crisis, why am I being constantly bombarded with all the horrible things in your life? Why is it that you want me to know the intimate details of your problems, if honestly, you'd never even ask for my help? Not really.
How can you tell if what you are posting on facebook is word vomit? If you wouldn't stand in the middle of your neighborhood and shout it to everyone within hearing distance, odds are, it's word vomit. If you wouldn't tell it to your Bible Study group? It's word vomit. If you wouldn't say it at the next family gathering? It's word vomit. If you won't actually text the person who you are eluding to on facebook and tell them, personally? It's word vomit. Almost all of us have people on our facebook who are mere acquaintances. If you wouldn't tell them this stuff on the street when you happen to meet up, it's word vomit.
And honestly, if sometime in the future, you get a response from me on one of your statuses that says "buck up!", it's because I care enough to stop patting you on the head and instead I'm encouraging you to move on and make things better.
No comments:
Post a Comment