17 - my post got into the trending page and I'm.... Not scared for once?
I should have anticipated that this would happen considering I was writing about the "discourse of the day", but it still is a little jarring that my post this morning managed to get into the Trending page.
I used to be anxious about this, after a long involvement with the Discourse on multiple social media platforms. I'm one of those people that find that I'm braver about voicing my opinions online than I do in real life - whether you find that cowardly or you can understand the reasoning behind it, that's up to your interpretation. That doesn't take away the fact that it's scary — and honestly online discourse on social media would absolutely do that to you, I think. The possibility of saying something and being greeted back with a lot of slurs and scathing opinions, the risk of becoming the "main character of the day" and having entire strangers assume things about you from a singular post gets rather anxiety-inducing (and I'm saying this as someone who has been forged from the fires of Twitterjaya - what we called Malaysian twitter - and fandom).
However, I'm almost surprised to find that I don't feel that anxiety when I saw my post up there in the Trending page later today. The inherent risk of putting your thoughts out there to a hostile online world is always great, but I guess I felt safer to write what I genuinely think here because at least here, it's a lot easier to filter out the noise. It's easier because at least with a blog like this, you have a choice to just not look at the Discover pages.
That's not to say I don't appreciate how many people resonate with that post, however. I'm glad it did strike a chord with so many people.
May you have a wonderful week ahead! (And do look at my art page while you're here maybe?)