Shelly Don't Play Dat!

In today's world, with today's technology, where people can share 'what's on your mind' with anyone and everyone, from anywhere in the entire world - be it on Twitter, Myspace, Facebook or some other social networking forum. How does it not occur that you should stop and ask yourself 'how will this information be perceived?' before pressing that "Share" button?

And if you post updates that could be construed as insensitive, disrespectful or vulgar. How is it that you're surprised when people respond negatively or remove you from their friends list or, worse yet, you get fired?

If you're on my friends list, there are certain things you should know about me:

First and foremost, I make no pretenses.

You know if I like you and you know if I don't. If you're not sure, neither am I.

I am strong minded and opinionated - and it's okay to disagree with me. I understand that not everyone is going to see things the same way I do. And although I may not necessarily agree with you, I'm completely comfortable with agreeing to disagree.

When I'm right, I'm right and I will remain right until you prove to me that I'm not; at which time I will admit I was wrong and apologize - if necessary.

I know what I like and what I don't. And if you don't want my opinion, don't ask for it.

So, when is enough, enough?

Here's my philosophy:

If I don't like you, I will ignore you - feel free to do the same to me.

If you post about topics that don't really interest me, I'll hide you - feel free to do the same to me.

If your negativity begins to have an impact to my mental well being, I will remove you - feel free to do the same to me.

If I don't want you involved in my life at all, I will remove and/or block you - feel free to do the same to me.

Last night, I came to the conclusion that someone on my friends list was negatively impacting my mental well being. I could have just as easily hidden this person, but after giving way too much thought to some of the comments that were made I decided instead to remove all temptation to respond in kind and deleted her from my list.

Now, at the time, I did not realize how important it was for some to have you remain a "friend", as I would rather you remove me from your list than put on false airs and honestly, unless you're someone whom I stalk regularly (you know who you are), I probably wouldn't even notice if you were no longer in my list.

Well, today I learned just how important that 'friendship' status is to some very sad and lonely people as this was the message I received...

Subject: thanks

"I noticed today that you deleted me from your friends list... Hopefully that was an error but n e way... Thanks A lot!!"

I thought long and hard as to whether or not I would even bother with a response; but taking all things into consideration, I was unable to just let it go. After all, anyone who knows me knows that Shelly don't play dat!