Grown Ups? I think not....

Right and Wrong
Sometimes, I think we, as adults, can act more like children than our actual children. There have been two separate issues this week that have brought this to the forefront of my thoughts.

First off, we all know how I feel about slander. I live by the belief that if you have some kind of personal attack to make on a person, you need to do as my daddy always told me and "man-up" or "woman up" and confront them.

We all know what the elephant in the room is that I am speaking of so I will just say it; mainly internet trash sites, but really, any kind of pointless, hurtful and untruthful gossip. Where I live, there is a fairly popular site. Honestly, I think the popularity is fading and I couldn't be happier. On that particular "forum", anonymous posters get on board and post untruths and exaggerations about members of the community. Some of it gets downright vicious.

If it were a larger town (of more than 10,000), it probably wouldn't be such a big deal but when you go to the grocery store and half the town is there, and they have all read that garbage, it can hurt. Bad.

I have personally been hurt by this type of behavior and a number of my friends and acquaintances have also. The point is, that this is grade school behavior if not worse.

I have literally gotten to the point that I don't even look at the filth that is written on that trash site. I think it should be illegal. Anyone can put whatever they want out there for the world to see and have no backing at all to it, and to make matters worse, they use a "screen" name to do it. Juvenile? You bet. The way to fix it? The way I see it, we have two options, either pray for people to grow up and develop some sort of a conscious, or just stop even looking at the exaggerations and lies. If we don't pay any attention, the site will not get any more advertisers because it will lose any popularity that it once had. With popularity should come vadility, which that site severly lacks.

There will always be "gossip mongers" that exaggerate the truth but doing it the old fashioned way, over the phone or in person, at least leads to an eventual source to sometimes confront or disbelieve.

While I am on a roll, let's go to the second example of child like behavior, favortisim.

Living in a small town, I know it is often done, but that doesn't make it right. This week, I personally encountered an act of it. The sad part was it involved children. One got what they wanted, and the other didn't. Hmmm, may be a good idea for a story in up-coming weeks. Let's just see how it all plays out. Until next week, let's all try to live in a manner that improves the world, if not, someone needs to put in a giant "adults only" playground to give a stomping ground for a bunch of over-grown second graders.