To Share or Not to Share
QUICK NOTES – TO SHARE OR NOT TO SHARE:
Do you ever feel uncomfortable sharing your opinions online?
Do you feel like the cost of sharing your story is not as high as the effects of the (potentially) negative feedback you will receive?
Are you unsure — especially in these times — about whether or not it’s even worth the time and effort to be visible?
In this session of Next Level Mondays, I share the conflict I have experienced, and a plea for how to handle opinions which may be different from yours online.
Remember: Everyone is not you. Other peoples’ opinions and backgrounds will be different. However, rather than berate or send hate to people whose opinions differ, I encourage you to offer education on your opinion OR simply stay quiet. No one deserves to have hate on their profile — you, me OR others.
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TRANSCRIPTION:
Transcription not yet cleaned up, but thanks for checking it out!
Welcome to another session of Next Level Mondays. This is your host, Kim Sutton, and today…
I didn’t even know if I really wanted to talk about this topic, but I think that’s the point of talking about this topic is to share or not to share.
2020 has been interesting, hasn’t it? First we have COVID. Then we have all the race stuff. And now it’s back to COVID again. But I’m thinking about even the past four years. I’m not going to share my affiliations, but in the past four years, I’ve seen a lot of people who kept their mouth shut for fear of being judged, for fear of backlash about — and especially in America — who did we vote for in the 2016 election.
I know I have personally felt a little bit of resistance over the years talking about my faith, which I finally grown out of, because I realized that my faith is super important to me. And that by not sharing it, you know, I’m dishonouring myself and, and my god so you know, I become more open to sharing my faith. But talking about politics talking about our stance on COVID talking about our stance on all the the riots and the protests that are going out there. I find it really frustrating because we deserve to be able to share our opinions and let others know that they’re not alone and maybe feeling that way. But on the flip side, there’s so many of us who feel like we have to not, because if we do, there could be extreme backlash. In 2019, actually, on my 40th birthday, I spoke up in my virtual assistant job Facebook group, because there was a little bit of meanness going on a big portion of the virtual assistant Don’t Rob Facebook group is from the Philippines and their rate as a VA in the Philippines is considerably lower than it is for American. Or should I say North American, maybe Western European vas. And there were some people who are getting really upset because there are clients who were looking for VA s for three to $5 an hour and some people were just scoffing and being really crude and rude about it. So I got into the conversation and I I shut it down. I said, if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I also said if this isn’t the right job for you, move on. Right? So you don’t need to comment on everything. And I feel like that’s Oh, and let me finish that story. When I commented like that I ended up getting death threats. I had seven death threats come in on that day. against me, against my kids against my whole family. Really gruesome death threats because I had stood up I’ve been really reserved ever since then when I see people talking about politics, religion COVID, any of the above, I’m really reserved because of my family. And I think that’s really unfortunate. And I don’t think it should have to be that way. So I guess my plea to all of us out there, all of you in the positive productivity family is realize that we are all people, we all have opinions. They may not be the same opinions as ours. But the last thing that we possibly need to do is threaten harm against somebody else. The last thing we need to do is spew words of hate, or cruelty on somebody else posts because we don’t agree with their comments. I can tell you that when those death threats came in against me and my children, and my husband, that kept me up for a week, at least, the FBI and the local police were involved. And it really unnerved me it happened again about seven months later. So Same thing, same group, same, you know, me standing up for people and saying, hey, if you don’t have anything nice to say, move on. But we shouldn’t have to feel bad for sharing our opinions. I’m going to let you know as far as COVID related. I’m excited about my kids going back to school, I realize that COVID affects a certain portion of the population really bad. And I understand that. But I’m of the mind, Stan, of the mind stance, mindset, that if we’re going to get it, we’re going to get it and we need to deal with it when that time comes. But I personally am not equipped to educate to kindergarteners and a first grader at home. And I would hate to see what happens to my husband’s sanity if he has to send him back to school. You know, we’ll deal we’ll deal with it if we have to deal with it. I know I could get some hate in response to this. But I’m going to challenge you. If you don’t agree. You don’t need to respond. You Don’t need to make me or anybody else feel
be little too or like their opinions don’t matter by telling us so. So if you want your opinions to be out there, then share them just respect when other people share theirs as well. I shouldn’t have to worry about sharing and neither should you. We should know that people out there respect us in our opinions. So today I challenge you to go forth and when you’re on social media, except what other people’s opinions are, and if you can debate kindly then do so but don’t threaten, don’t use foul language. And don’t be offensive. I’ll be back on Wednesday with another episode of work smarter not harder Wednesdays but I invite you to leave your comments down below. Nice comments. Please click like if you like this video and turn on notifications so that you find out the next time a video goes live or the next time I post a video. Now with all this said go forth Make it a positive and a productive day.
