I’ve been thinking a lot about lies recently - blatant lies and lies by omission. Everyone lies sometimes and although we say we don’t, we know we do. Little white lies, maybe, but lies all the same. It’s the human in us.
Lies by omission and intent are pervasive in our society by media and our leaders. I can’t help but think how stupid they are to lie when it’s so easy now for people to do their own research online. All it takes is a few taps on the keyboard. All it takes is to read a variety of news outlets and opinion pieces and to watch actual video and not rely on curated sound bites.
A lot of people’s reputations have been ruined by lies. Average people have been targeted, blind-sided, shamed by lies pushed by cliques on social media and in their own communities where they live. It’s gone on since man formed communities but I feel like it’s much more in your face for those on social media. For years cancel culture was rampant on Twitter - it was disgraceful and mean and I felt like I couldn’t get away from it no matter how much I curated my stream. People piled on with relish like they were in a virtual Circus Maximus.
Fortunately, I haven’t seen it since the change in ownership and (apparently) the mass exodus of those who want to control others. My stream is calm, civil. Oh, I know there’s still discourse but it’s not in my stream now. I know plenty of people have left in protest over the change in ownership and that’s their perogative, just like it’s mine to stay. I’m not interested in following a crowd that lectures, shames, and cancels for fun or designates people with differing opinions as garbage or Nazis. (Yes, I recently read that sentiment in the proclaimed “safe” SM platform.)
This has been on my mind since the cancel culture days of Twitter. I expect to lose some subscribers now but I hope you will give some thought to how others feel and their right to express their feeling. Just like you have that right.
A while ago I wrote a short nonfiction piece about lies and their effect. Situations like this tend to make one skeptical of group-think and cliques. This short piece was published in Emerge Literary Journal. With thanks to Diane Gottlieb and Ariana Den Bleyker. (The first rough draft was posted here.)
What Cool Girls Believe
Somewhere in time a girl is walking down a school hallway on the first day of seventh grade in a swirling river of hormone-awakening bodies, books held tightly against her chest. The girl is happy to be back in school, to be away from the red clay hill in the back country where she spent a lonely summer. She’s surprised when a gaggle of cool girls approach her in the hallway, when she hears them sing-songing her name like cool girls do. Their voices echo like sneaky distant thunder. She’s almost lulled into thinking they want her to join them but her stomach says no. The blonde with the ice chip eyes gets to the point. “Hey, we heard what you and Alex did this summer.” Giggles. “Did it feel good?” Heat rises from her heart, that’s in her mouth, to her scalp. Alex has lied and the cool girls believe him because he’s cool, too. They prance away giggling, flipping their daisy-fresh tresses. A buzzing in her head drowns the voices of all the kids around her as the blood drains from her face. She feels like an old, crumbly cicada shell stuck to a tree, like she felt after Alex walked away with a smirk.
Even after she is a grown woman the girl never forgets this incident. The girl-now-woman thinks about those cool girls, how they believed that lie and laughed. About how someone can tell a lie about anyone and the lied-about can never prove it’s a lie. How the lie lives forever and is almost as bad as the truth.
Thank you, so much for this much needed post! I am so with you on it all! And your piece--it really shows the pain lies cause. I'm so grateful that you sent it our way!
I left Twitter shortly after Musk took over. If you are managing to keep your stream calm, that’s great. Somehow I never could, and I was following mostly writers 🤷🏼♀️ As with almost all social media, I get tired of the ads, the extra steps I have to take to see only what I want to see. Yes, I know it’s all free (although I guess with X you can pay for a privileged status?) so (supposedly) I shouldn’t complain. In the early days of SM, I was naive enough to think that people could have discourse, actually discuss issues. No more. I got flamed a couple of times (and I’ll take full responsibility for one of those times because I let my anger get the better of me (I lost the argument, by the way 😉), and now I tend to move on when I see something that upsets me and only respond when I see something that makes me smile. I have to be careful because I didn’t get a thicker skin by being bullied at school. I think it got thinner so I have to tread lightly in SM.