Recently I got a little annoyed about something. It wasn't a big thing, but somehow it hit a nerve for me and I wrote a comment about it on Facebook. It was about disrespect of one's peers and involved a sports player. I don't usually give a shit about the antics of celebrities but the lack of respect shown somehow hit on one of my core values and it meant enough for me to do something I don't often do, which is make a remark about it.
Then, one of my brothers decided to diss me on Facebook and say: Who Cares? And the other brother joined in the chorus.
Now they are right, who really cares about what a celebrity says or does, but the fact remains that I cared enough to make a specific comment about it. So in reality, they were saying: who cares about your opinion?
That hurt. It hurt a lot. It didn't hurt because it was obviously a quick off hand comment from the brother concerned, but because there was likely to have been a whole lot more baggage behind my hurt. It's just likely that this wasn't the first time I might have been treated to that type of comment from my sibling/s.
What my brother said was: I don't respect your opinion.
What my brother should have done, and what I do when I don't care for the person's comment, is ignore it, don't comment at all, just move on. I mean who on earth has got time to comment on everyone's FB posts, especially the inane ridiculous ones. If their comments really start to annoy me, I just remove them from my news feed, and occasionally I'll unfriend them. I do this in real life too.
When one makes the effort to comment - just like in a normal conversation one can choose to participate or not - then what you say matters. And when those comments come from people you care about, it's highly likely they just might carry a bit more weight (and a little baggage).
So don't tell people that their opinion doesn't matter - that's called disrespect. And it's pretty downright rude too.
Just walk on by.....
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