Granted, I'm not a very nice person. I once wrote a mean, mean entry about my old coworkers, and one of them later found it, and I didn't apologize. Mainly because I stuck to the facts, and partly because the things I wrote about that they did, they clearly had control over. I don't know if they did those things to get attention or just to annoy me, or what, and I didn't speculate. I just reported their weird habits.

But lately I've been seeing people writing really, really mean things. About people they hardly know. And most of it is their own projection, and it just bothers me. Are we all armchair psychologists now? And if we are, is it our place to use what we think to hurt someone else for no good reason?

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Answers

I have seen what you're talking about. It's definitely a matter of whether or not your personal journal can be absolved from the responsibility of ripping someone's feelings apart just because it's your personal journal, or whether or not you should be careful about what you write.

Our online journals have no commitment to truth. No one promised to research their opinions or claims before stating them. Unfortunately, people are reading them and believing that it's truth anyway. That stinks of abuse. Of manipulation.

The only people I have shredded in my journal have been my exhusband and my exfriend. When she saw it, she was livid and protested to me. I told her that I had absolutely no responsibility to show her side of the story, because it's my journal. My feelings mattered, not hers.

But after we talked, I realized that some of the things I assumed were actually wrong. I pulled that entry, because it made me a liar.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Links?

I felt like dog shit the other day when I wrote that entry about people who patronize me, because I meant someone in particular, and later I came to realize that even though this woman is patronizing, she doesn't do it with malicious intent. And she's nice, in general. And she asked for my email address, and I gave it to her and then ran home and deleted the entry before she could see it (I hope.) But then there were like 3 other people who'd seen it and thought it was about them.

Good for you for not apologizing, though, Hannah. I have to believe that it's good for people to hear about their annoying behavior sometimes.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2001

And I almost feel like if I did something that annoying, I'd want to be clued in. So I could either say, "Yes, I suck for clipping my toenails at work" (made up example, obviously, I would never do that, but it is a gross habit) and stop; or if it was something that I couldn't help or was really the other person's problem, at least I'd know.

But that's different between writing something and saying you hate someone for something they'd done that you didn't even get the facts about, you know?

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2001

I wonder about people who post passive-aggressive messages in forums without directly asking the person who they feel is being mean what's going on.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

Perhaps I don't really know that person. And perhaps the person they are (passive-aggressively, as well) being mean to, did write to confront the mean person, and received no response.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

Then perhaps that person should butt out, especially since that person says they don't know the person they are accussing of being mean...

Jesus Christ, this is getting stupid.

Look Hannah, you don't know what I was writing about. MANY people don't know what I was writing about, and many people have no goddamn clue as to what we're even talking in veiled terms about right now. But since I wrote what I wrote, I've heard some crazy shit about someone who is your friend and someone that I thought was an okay person. Now? I don't know.

But for you to say on the one hand that you don't know me and wouldn't write to me to ask me what I was talking about, and in another breath say that I'm playing armchair psychologist and projecting is well, nuts.

And I'm not going to talk about it here anymore than I just did now. If you have something else to say, feel free to email me. Because I'm direct like that.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

I didn't know that this was about any specific journal/entry until Keli spoke up. I've read the journal entry that I think you all are talking about, and I am pretty sure I know who it was about. But I assumed it was sort of an amalgam of things, because some things didn't match up.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

I'm confused and...oh, hell. I think I lack the energy to care about any of the interpersonal angst and the time to go scan through a bajillion journal entries to try and suss it all out.

I'm sorry. :(

Hope y'all have a nice weekend anyway.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001