A woman I know said to me the other day “women will never learn to simply lift each other up.”

I should add especially on social media.

Sad but true.

I am a blogger which already puts the bull’s eye on my back. If I was a compensated mommy blogger who stuck to product placement, favorite diapers, clothes, make-up, Disney I would probably be left alone. Or if I just even wrote whatever and was consistently fluffy, I would be fine. But while those bloggers have their place in the blogosphere, I will never be that blogger.

I know I make a lot of women uncomfortable and plenty don’t like me. I am pretty much a straight shooter and you know how I feel. Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention to my mother’s attempts to finesse my mouthiness, but whatever, I am who I am.

So many women feel they can’t exist without artifice, or they should all just be followers. I am not saying I am either some super charged leader or trailblazer or a yes-woman, but I like to think I am real.

But when it comes to women and social media I am seriously short on patience these days.

The mean girls from the middle school lunch room have gravitated to social media. I don’t understand why they have to be this way. It’s like a control or attention thing. And Lordy if they still want to be prom queen or student body president, they can knock themselves out, but allow that others maybe just maybe have grown past that point, right?

These women will tear people to shreds over the dumbest things. Take for example a group I am an administrator of. Woman A asked a question. Woman B replied and asked if she had tried to Google for a solution. That was it. And it was off to the races. How rude was Woman B, how awful, how not helpful. I waded in because soon others were piling on. Woman B just asked a reasonable question.

Woman A said “Yeah, nice. Ask opinions of people who actually live near me and get snark in return.” (direct quote)

Next Woman A turned on me. How dare I not agree with her essentially. What was the page there for if she couldn’t ask a question. But hello? All Woman B did was try to gauge what Woman A had done before she asked her question. Not rude, trying to be helpful.

Woman A said (to me) “What is the purpose of this group, then? I thought it was to connect with real people in an area who have experience as an ADDITION to googling. Not sure why you and your dear friend assume someone asking a question has not already googled it? Not to mention most people are very very nice and helpful and these days it’s really nice to connect with human beings rather than just googling. I don’t appreciate your dressing me down here.”

Up to that point, I hadn’t dressed her down, but at that point I did truthfully . And put her on mute which is something group administrators will and can do to put people and certain tones or veins of conversation in a time out for lack of a better description. That and close a post to comments. (Being rude towards an admin and page owner of any group is also generally speaking a giant faux pas.)

I have always been pretty self-sufficient. When I need to know something I actually research it first and if that doesn’t get me what I need or completely understand, I ask. But I do not just crowdsource everything.

And so many just crowdsource. They do zero research, they kind of expect everyone else to do it for them. I don’t think you can learn and grow without a little doing on your own. You need to be able to think on your feet.

In this situation Woman B didn’t give bad advice, wasn’t snarky, she gave a practical suggestion or asked a practical question . Only Woman A didn’t like that answer and decided to interpret it as an attack, instead of putting on her big girl pants and saying “hmmm maybe I should take a peek at what I might find on Google.“

When Woman A came off of mute, she was on post approval and essentially tried to stir up the whole hornet’s nest again. I removed her at that point from the group. I gave her a courtesy notice that I had done so.

Meanwhile in another group, Woman A reintroduced the topic there plus added running commentary about the group she had been booted from and well, me.

As is the nature of women on social media, like a pack of jackals some piled on there as well. This other group was begun by women removed from my group ( I will note that there are a few of these groups out there much to my amusement as I did not realize I was such an influencer LOL.) Problem children and opportunists who essentially always have some sort of personal agenda. But hey different strokes for different folks, just keep that to your own group, right?

However this group has a rule they list over and over: “be kind”. Do they know the definition?

Doubtful.

This is but the latest example of this behavior. We all see it all of the time. I don’t expect us to all hold hands around the virtual campfire and sing kumbaya, but I really wish some of these women would just cut the crap. They aren’t auditioning for a Bravo housewives franchise, this is the real world.

Are they going to hurt me? Hell no. I am reminded of something one of my grandmothers always said which is consider the source.

These people don’t influence my life except to make me strive to be a better person and not put up with crap like this. However, sometimes I will just ignore them, and sometimes I won’t. That’s human nature and I am unapologetic, except I know that women like that love the attention, so when I tell them off I am actually giving them the attention they crave.

Life is too short and life in COVID-19 is difficult enough without people like this polluting how we connect in the days of stay at home orders. And I tire of crowdsourcing.

“Should I use blue tampons?”

“Should I buy this skirt?”

“What color should I paint my house?”

“Here is my life, how should I live it?”

Yes I am sort of being sarcastic, but people actually ask questions like this plus they crowdsource things that are so intensely personal you simply marvel.

The crowdsourcing thing can truly be ridiculous and seem endless. Where would these women be without social media? How did they make decisions before social media? Do they ever go out in the real world? It’s like why do anything for yourself?

I don’t get it. Never will. But that’s O.K. too.