Yesterday evening, I was reading an emotional and heartfelt apology from a woman who was literarily sobbing her regrets. She had posted nasty thoughts about a (former) friend in an online forum, and she wishes she could take it all back.
Two thoughts immediately came to mind:
1) Why the heck is she posting this in a movie forum?
2) What a moron!
I’ve done some pretty dumb things, but I’d never be that stupid, I chuckled to myself.
—
This afternoon I was chatting with an old acquaintance over instant messages, and he asked if I had contact info for a fellow dancer.
Sure, I said, I know Lolli and I have her e-mail address. I don’t know her well, but yeah, she seems nice and all, yadda yadda.
“Uh, Adam,” he wrote, after a long pause, “She’s not exactly one of your fans.”
It took a reminder from my acquaintance and several minutes for stuff to sink in to recall exactly why this woman was not particularly fond of me.
About a year ago, I had posted a public note about a clique’ish group of friends who met at a venue I used to frequent. Though not scathingly nasty, I wasn’t exactly kind, either. I pride myself on being honest, after all!
But what did it matter? I knew everyone posting on this particular online message board, and they were either my friends or generally people I couldn’t care less about.
That was the rub, of course. As any person with half-a-megabyte of brain power knows… for every one person who posts on a board, there are at least twenty lurkers. Lolli is one of those lurkers. So are her friends. So are some of my acquaintances that were now all-too-aware of my petty side.
Let’s just say that I’m sure not to be very welcomed back at that “clique’ish” venue, even a year later.
“Women have long memories,” I grumbled to my instant messenger acquaintance.
“It’s not about women,” he corrected. “The Internet has a long memory, Adam.”
That it does.
And what a painful lesson to have hit home.
What do you think?