Tag: troll

Image: chanpipat / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

After a small confused conversation with a fellow tweeter a couple of days ago, I was hurled back into my insecure on the Internet space.   There is nothing wrong in that as I find myself here regularly.

I love blogging, and I love tweeting.  Actually, I just love the Internet, but I also know there is a dark side to the light and fluffy uses that I tend to spend most of my time reading and acting on.  Yes, I know I occasionally leave myself wide open to huge criticism when I post some controversial content, but that is freedom of speech isn’t it?

Do we have freedom of speech?  We are supposed to have it, but we don’t in reality.  We can’t say negative things, we can make a fool of anyone and we can’t use some perfectly good nouns and adjectives in case we offend whichever part of society has decided to take offence at a new word or gesture.

I have over 3500 followers on Twitter and several hundred directly subscribed to my blog through the different ways that they can get access to my stories life.

When we talk to each other, how do you know it’s me?  How do I know you are you?

In truth, we don’t.

We have to trust.

Should we trust?

I have trusted.

I have met many Tweeters and Bloggers now.  I went all the way down to London to meet a massive group of women that I have spent hours talking to on the Internet.

Am I more comfortable with my Internet followers?  Yes I am.

I have only met 5 Tweeters from Aberdeen.   I know of a few who are acquainted with those 5.

Do I still worry – yes.

Should we still worry?  I don’t know.

We trust that when we go onto the Internet, that the 32 year old woman with two children who is struggling to get by is real, and is not actually a sleazebag tweeting / commenting from a dingy basement in disguise.

Social Media is addictive, and thinking about the possibilities that my information, pictures and stories life could get me into does at times give me pangs of panic.  Then at times, I think I should just pack it all in and stay safe in my cocooned world around my family and blot out the world.

Then I begin to think of the good that social media does, and how charities that are suffering manage to secure the necessary funding they are short of.

I see acts of compassion and kindness.

I see people I have never met asking about someone who is struggling to get by and giving an ear to help out.

I remember the time that we got pulled along by charities to install water pumps in Africa.

I remember how there is always someone to share a worry with, or talk over an issue, or boast about something fabulous that we’ve seen, heard or done.

Sometimes the potential makes me feel sick.

Pre-children, I doubt it would have had the potential to make me feel sick.

Sometimes the potential makes me look on in awe.

We look out for each other.

Sometimes a troll wanders in.

We survive, we move on, and we grow.

Scottish Mum Blog