I had a big blowout with one of my friends on Facebook last week. Briefly, my friend, whose name is not Charles, thought it would be funny to share a post on his wall that was basically, "Ha ha, Christians are so stupid!" I got a bit annoyed, because I'm Irish Catholic, and I don't like people implying that being Christian automatically makes you evil and/or stupid, but I especially don't like it when it's coming from someone who is supposed to be my friend. So I left what I thought was a fairly restrained comment.
ME: Christians are stupid, huh? Guess I'm too stupid to be your friend.(Okay, not restrained, but a reasonable reaction, I thought)
NOT CHARLES: Whoah, don't take everything so personally! I'm actually making fun of the church I used to go to.
Sorry, what? When you openly mock my religion, something that is a huge part of my identity, guess what, I take it personally. And it's not like he posted any sort of explination that the post was about his old church, he just posted it. There was literally no indication that he was referring to a specific church, or even a specific denomination.
ME: Where does it say you're referring to one church in particular? You posted an anti-church post, the obvious conclusion is that you're anti-church. You have to take responsibility for opinions you share here, because that's how social media works. You effectively said something that was really hurtful to me. I can take iot from people in general, butit really hurts when it's coming from a friend.
Not Charles then went on this long tangent about how, basically, everything was actually about him.. He said he was sorry that I was offended, (not hurt, offended), and he knew I was going through some stuff and that was prolly why I was being so unreasonable (he all but speculated that I was PMSing), but I should be able to laugh at myself a bit, the post was actually for the amusement of other people, not me, and HE was really hurt that I would accuse him of being intentionally offensive.
So here we have the witty, intelligent male explaining to the little lady that he is witty and intelligent and the center of the freaking universe and SHE shouldn't be so damn emotional. The fact that he completely disregarded my feelings and made the whole thing about himself speaks volumes about his personality. He expects me to be his sidekick who just stands by and watches while he does his own thing. Bullshit. When I saw the post, all I could think about was the conversations we had back when we were freshmen. He would talk on and on about all the high fantasy stuff he was into. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I would try and contribute to the conversation and talk about school and stuff. He would wait for my lips to stop moving and then he’d start talking about high fantasy crap again. That was literally all of our conversations. When we’d hang out at the library, he’d do things he wanted to do. He was always wanting to play chess. I hate chess, but I played anyway, for hours. His idea of a good time was for him to play a game on Steam, and I could watch. Well you know what, we’re through. I unfriended him on Facebook, and I haven’t spoken to him in over a week. If he genuinely values our friendship, he can come back and apologise. If he doesn’t, well, I’m only sorry I wasted so much time on him. I’ve lost hours upon hours humoring him and pretending we were having a great time. I once spent six straight hours watching him and his creepy friends play fighting games. That’s an entire Saturday, just gone, and you know how many times they let me play? Twice. I got to play twice. Well, I’m through. I’m never watching a boy play a video game ever again. Good riddance.
(ps sorry for ranting but this has been bothering me and I wanted to get it off my chest. If you read this entire post, you get a box full of rainbow kittens.)
