Okay, so don't judge me, but... I kind of love reading the AITA (Am I The A**hole) thread of Reddit, even when I'm just lurking and not commenting. It's been something of a guilty pleasure for a while, like a version of Post Secret, but somehow far more fun, even if it's a bit obvious sometimes that some of the stories are utter fiction. It's probably the interactive element and the thought that suddenly everyone can be an agony aunt. I love seeing the different perceptions of a situation that people chime in with, although I do hate that it sometimes seems to highlight how many a**holes are in the world.
One of the things I did to try and get back to being okay with people reading things I had been writing was writing comments on these threads and others, because it's interaction with people, but it's easier than writing something personal to me. Giving my opinion on someone else's situation is definitely a lot easier than putting something of my own out into the world, though I'm thankfully getting past that fear, it seems.
Now, I don't want this blog to become one of those places that recycles AITA content into videos, blogs, articles and the like, listing the comments, or speaking through situations, and I'm certainly not going to use it as a springboard for everything I ever write which is a piece about having an opinion - Lord only knows that if you've come across me on a day where I feel 'awake' and 'normal' (caveat: normal, for me) that I have enough of my own - but I do think that periodically it might creep in, because sometimes talking about current events or celebrities is just too much and I would rather discuss something that an anonymous internet stranger posted, because at least it was their choice to put it out there, in their own words.
And here's the point I was coming to in a round about way...
On AITA, it can be clear that there is at least a bit of fibby going on even when it's not clear that the story is an out and out lie, but it's also clear that each story is the Original Poster's perception of events, and it's possible to advise them on where they've gone wrong, or where their interpretation of a situation might be a bit faulty, even if they don't want to hear it. In the media, you get a second, third or fourth hand story often cooked up to sell newspapers or gain clicks on the article. Very often there is a vague quote from a source and in order to understand what is actually going on from the whole article you have to read between the lines and accept that the headline is probably a mile or so from the truth with only a vague relationship betwixt the two. People will think what they think anyway, because there is too much that is said that's not believed, too much that isn't said or isn't answered and, the worst part of it for me, there is absolutely no understanding of the fact that there is very often a person or a few people behind the article, and they are people with family, friends and people that care about that person who are going to be hurt in the process. At the end of the day there is more than one truth, because everyone is going to have a different version of events, and there is the truth that people believe, and then there is the more elusive truth. There is a truth of what happened and why people did certain things and sometimes they might not even know why they did something themselves, but this is the sort of truth that can never really be found, much less read online or in a newspaper.
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