I don't think that means what you think that means

I know people that work really hard at being relevant on the internet. They retweet the latest gossip, the latest news, the latest trend; they have thousands of followers and admirers and fans. They are the elite. They blip and twitpic and status update; rehash every single minutia that everyone else has already presented to the unwashed masses in hopes of gaining fame, however small.

There's something you need to know about me.

The term "social media" makes my skin crawl in *most* cases. I grew up "social by circumstance, not by choice," which is a lot longer phrase than that which you may be familiar with. So long, in fact, that it never really caught on with the rest of the world. I'm sure you'd probably NOT be surprised with the number of people like me out there on the internet virtually patting your back. It's not that people like myself are so few in number, but I believe we've just adapted. We are the Darwin Fish of the ethernet, swimming through the bits that gain us legs and voices and .. perhaps, guts. Who knows?

It's not that I am anti-social.. well, in most cases. I thought for a long time that I really just didn't like people, and that was that. But it turns out that I DO like people... the ones that have the courage to be genuine, to reach out, to speak their minds fearlessly, to wear their heart on their sleeve; the ones that aren't trying to sell me their product, whether it be their idea or their body. It's not real if you have nothing to lose by exposing it, yes? And yes. If you have nothing to lose by my gaining it, it's not worth having, and I give you the same.

 

And that's it, really. I'm not a special little temperamental snowflake, not if you know me. Because if you know me, then you know a lot more like me, too ~ my fellow speakers of the heart. We aren't casting our nets into the murky depths of "maybe"; we have a definitive opinion, like it or not, and we aren't odd for voicing it. Liked or disliked, accepted or not, we are the "oddballs" that are courageously speaking our minds with little to lose. We are "scary" and "hypersensitive" and "mental" and "intsense". Only insofar as you are "scared" and "numb" and "unthinking" and "superficial."

That you could be so free in being yourself, and speaking your own mind; how I wish that for us all.