Or so they tell you to approach things with. How much truth is actually to be found under that mountain of “easier-said-than-done” is beyond me, but nevertheless, I’ve been trying hard to keep the mantra in mind lately.

See, I’ve recently picked up rollerblading. I think it looks incredibly cool, and growing up begging my parents to take me to the ice skating rink each winter, I’ve come to realize nothing feels more fun than gliding on the ground like you’ve got magic on your shoes.

I’ve been going at it for a few months now. And not to brag, but I’ve fallen maybe three times total.

However, I still very much look like a beginner when skating, and that presents some problems. To people who have become comfortable with themselves and don’t heed others’ opinions, these problems seem minimal. But to my childish, still-developing mind, they take priority.

I can’t stand embarrassing myself in front of others. Most times I find it even hard to laugh at myself when friends poke fun at me. So what am I to do if I want to rollerblade but don’t want (supposedly) judgmental college students seeing me stumble while doing it?

You are absolutely correct if you answered, “Get up at 7am on the weekends to skate around campus while everybody else is still weaning off their hangover from last night.”

Oh, the commitment.

Even then, I still have my fellow early birds to deal with. Yesterday morning when I was skating on my merry way, I could feel a group of people watching me, and shocker, I stumbled in front of them. The wave of self-consciousness that came crashing over me then was overpowering. In the grand scheme of things, me almost tripping over a rock was probably forgotten in their minds after about two seconds. Whenever I see somebody rollerblading on campus, I pay them no heed, even if they look a tad wobbly going down the sidewalk.

I must be one sexy beast if everybody always wants to watch me.

But, no shame, right? How do those people do it? Disregarding everybody else’s opinion seems so daunting, and impossible, really. I can repeat in my head over and over that I don’t care, and yet, I know that I do.

It’s a cycle. I have to skate more in order to improve, but the more I skate, the more opportunities I present to embarrass myself.

I’m determined, though. I’ve watched so many videos of skaters racing across city streets or performing rad tricks, and I want to be just like them. So catch me outside practicing, and practicing.

Just at 7am on weekends. Exclusively on weekends.

With FIFA dominating the world stage at the moment, it’s no surprise that every day I check up on stats and game results in between classes, at lunch, or right after I know a team I liked has played a game and I wanted to see how they did. For the record, I’m a Croatia fan, and with my top team (let’s go USA) out of the tournament, I’m on my hands and knees begging for a Croatian redemption arc. Either that, or let Argentina take home the win. I know I’m jumping on the bandwagon here, but Messi deserves it.

I’ve watched far too many clips on various soccer (not football) players chatting about their love for the game, and how they started out young with a ball by their side knowing they would pursue a career in the sport later on in life.

And each and every time I watch such a clip, I’m struck by how differently they must feel from me towards any particular thing in life. Soccer is their passion, and I’m sure they go into every match wholly loving what they do despite the insane stress it can bring, especially on the world stage like FIFA. There was a clip about the Croatian goalkeeper who, upon not performing well, was benched before FIFA qualifiers a few years ago. The man was devastated. He thought it was the worst thing not being able to play.

I, on the other hand, would be relieved if a tennis match or two was cancelled back in high school because I simply never held a true love for the sport. I was trapped by the stress it’d bring me, not knowing if I would win going into each match. Instead of turning that into my motivation like these soccer players did, I let it consume me, and ruin my fondness for tennis.

I never did quite catch the competing bug.

And I never quite caught the anything else-bug either. I have no passion. Not that I know of. I go with the flow, trying out things that interest me, but nothing ever sticks.

I’ve tried collecting miniatures, I’ve tried drawing, I’ve tried creating my own movies with silly plastic toys and simple editing apps on the iPad, I’ve tried piano and violin, I’ve tried clay sculpting, I’ve tried badminton, tennis, ping pong, basketball, swimming, ice skating.

The closest thing to a passion I can call upon is writing, but even that I’ve stalled in lately because of reasons I can’t explain. I used to love writing. I scribbled out juvenile tales in wide-ruled notebooks. I have documents upon documents of unfinished stories in my Google Docs. I have a flash drive somewhere in my room containing a 500-something page story I wrote years ago. If you peek on my laptop, you’ll see stories that were edited hours, days, a week ago. I’m still trying to keep my writing passion alive, but it’s getting harder and harder. I’ll open a document, scrape out a couple sentences, then scrap them because they don’t carry the same ring to them like my old lines do. They say your writing gets better with time, but I’ve only noticed it getting worse.

If I lose that, what do I have? I don’t have anything even remotely close to what these FIFA soccer players call their passion. I don’t possess a love for anything.

I’m jealous, sometimes, because of that. I want to know what having a passion feels like. I want to feel the rush of adrenaline or the overwhelming sense of satisfaction after I do something, simply because I love what I do. I want to feel how these soccer players feel towards their sport, because it’s exhausting flitting through life not having anything anchoring you down. It’s harder to define yourself. It’s harder to feel happiness because you don’t know what makes you happy.

They say if you have a dream, nothing is impossible.

But what if you don’t have a dream to start with? What becomes of you?

I am incredibly narcissistic.

How can you tell?

“I’m a writer.”

No, no, that’s not it.

(At least for me it’s not, but you? Hard to tell where you draw the line in wielding your authorship when it comes to feeding that ego.)

Instead, the telling point lies in my stubbornness in casting my main character for each story.

You see, I refuse to cast anybody but myself.

I would say “let me explain myself”, but frankly, I can’t. I don’t know why I’m stuck in the pattern of writing myself into stories, and into the starring role, no less.

Perhaps it’s because I live through my stories. On one document I’m a spy, torn between my alliance to two different countries. On another document I’m the mysterious transfer student at a preppy foreign university. On yet another document I’m an ancient Chinese princess who must travel with an English knight to avoid being captured by ruthless mercenaries.

I’m like Barbie. I flit between roles and occupations, able to do everything in this Solar System and the next while still looking cute enough for the reader to cheer me on.

I just can’t bring myself to write an original character as the lead. There’s no fun in that, to me. I can’t imagine myself in their position, because they don’t look like me, they’re not me.

I suppose I’m just wishful. I want to experience being all the things I am in my stories, and the avenue to achieving that is reading over tales with me as the star.

I never publish these stories, of course. I’d rather not subject others to my curious fantasies. They are my own escape, my little haven of guilty pleasures and self-indulgence.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to be held hostage by an enemy spy and questioned until I confess everything I know…

I hear all the time from frustrated college students that they hate people who walk slow.

I too, when in a hurry, get slightly agitated when there’s somebody in front of me ambling their way without a care in the world.

But y’all lose me when we move to any place that’s wider than a standard sidewalk.

It makes sense to me, of course, that you’d get annoyed if somebody is blocking your way.

But these people on my college campus seem to get angry whenever they even so much as see somebody else walking slow in the vicinity. Doesn’t matter if they’re ten feet away, walking the opposite direction, or on the other side of the sidewalk, people will see a slow stroller and immediately go up in arms.

In fact, it’s become a personality trait of some people to proclaim proudly that “Yea, I’m a fast walker, I can’t stand slow walkers.”

Please, stop. It makes you all look like impatient jerks. Why does it matter to you if somebody else walks slow, if they’re not directly in your way? Why do you go out of your way to become angry at somebody just minding their own business? I know they’re not affecting you, because 90% of the campus is wide enough for ten people to walk together in a group no problem, and the other 10% of sidewalks are wide enough for you to just walk past.

The past week I had a stomachache, and the pain was so bad I walked half my usual speed and had to sit and rest several times to and from class. The entire time, I was aware that people might find my slow walking (more like hobbling) annoying, but then I realized it’s not my fault for making them feel that way.

People often forget others walk slowly for a reason- maybe their leg hurts, their stomach hurts, they’re recovering from something, or they’re just enjoying the damn weather. It could be anything. And for somebody else to then believe they’re superior just because they walk faster is insane to me.

(Did I have to search up exactly what that meant so I didn’t use it incorrectly?)

(Yes.)

I have… a dilemma on my hands.

I live with one roommate in a tiny two-person college dorm that’s barely 11 feet across. It’s cramped, and if one person gets sick… the other person will inevitably feel concerned for their own health.

That is what I have to face now. My roommate has been sick for the past week, stuffy nose, coughing violently at times, and she’s almost downed a whole bottle of DayQuil (which concerns me?? It’s only been a week, how long are those things supposed to last?). I’m not sure if she’s tested herself for Covid, maybe I’ll ask soon if this carries on.

The dilemma I’m facing is how to feel about this situation.

On one hand, I’m concerned for her, this is a girl who normally goes to bed after 1am but since getting sick has fallen asleep at 10pm. I suppose it’s normal to sleep more when you’re sick, but it doesn’t make your roommate worry less about you.

But, I’m also a little frustrated at her, and that’s where I think I’m in the wrong. See, because our room is so small, there’s a huge chance of sickness spreading between the two of us, so you can’t blame me for wishing she’d stay out of the room as much as she could while she was sick. Yes, I could leave myself, but my logic was, since we both need to be in the room at some point (sleeping), the most strategic way to lessen the sickness in the air was for the source to leave, instead of the other person. Am I wrong for thinking that? (Or am I just completely clueless on how spreading sickness works, and the amount of time a source is in a room doesn’t matter?)

I completely understand she needs to rest, take naps, and it’d be a danger to everybody else if she spread her sickness in public, but the selfish part of me wished she would, to spare myself.

I feel so conflicted on this, like I’m a bad friend for hoping my sick roommate would leave the room and only come back if necessary. For the record, there’s no way I’m going to suggest that to her face; that’s just rude.

What do you think? I haven’t asked my other friends for their opinions because I don’t think I’m completely justified in my beliefs. To an outsider, I do think I look like the bad guy. For the public good, my roommate needs to stay in our room.

But for my own good…

I’m learning about narcissism in a personality psychology course right now. Apart from learning how to spell it every new time I try to, I’ve also learned a bit about what makes a narcissist. All the classic traits: self-centered, entitled, lacks empathy, surrounds themselves with “fans”, and becomes defensive and hostile when challenged.

*NOTE: I’m talking about somebody possessing traits of narcissism, NOT actual narcissistic personality disorder (which is a diagnosed clinical personality disorder).

Initially, I would’ve never even considered I had signs of narcissism. Somebody as sweet and friendly as myself couldn’t have a narcissistic bone in my body, right?

But personality also never comes packaged in a box, never is static, and is different in everybody. Even if you might stray from the typical definition of being a narcissist, that doesn’t mean you don’t still possess one or two traits under the umbrella. In fact, I would say most people are narcissistic to a degree. It’s only the people who let it show that get the flack.

But back to me! I have a curious, very specific case here.

It’s that I’ve never had any idols. And I still don’t, by the way. I admire certain things people have done, but nobody reigns all-supreme in my mind, and when asked, I can’t produce any individual whom I’d consider as my “idol”. I couldn’t even give you my top five.

Along the same vein I suppose, I don’t have a favorite celebrity, musical artist, actor, athlete, anybody in the public sphere. In fact, to me, the mere thought of being a fan of someone, of clearly showing you admire someone, is…

Revolting.

It applies to mostly only fans of people who I believe don’t deserve their fame, but I’m going to admit, at times, I’ve definitely thought of all fans- especially hardcore fans- as just a little bit pitiful. I can’t fathom why you’d dedicate so much of your love to someone who will never know you exist.

(What do you mean I’m just being a nasty, negative person? What do you know? I’m infinitely most justified in my opinion than you are. You’re insignificant compared to me.)

I also hate knowing that there are some people in this world who know they’re admired by others and who may very well think they’re better than the rest of us. I hate paparazzi, I think they’re pathetic. Always clamoring after a celebrity and feeding their egos, showing them they’re worthier of attention than a normal person. And fine, yes, there are reasons why some are celebs and others are… not, but it doesn’t make me dislike them any less.

It’s not that I think of myself as the best person on the planet. It’s that I loathe giving others the satisfaction of knowing they’re better than me. And, true to the definition of narcissism, that could very well stem from my own low self-esteem. It’s not a trash fire, but it could be higher, and my rejecting of anybody remotely famous could reflect that.

I follow zero famous people on Instagram. In fact, I only follow people who follow me back, as narrow-minded and stingy as that sounds. I see no reason to support somebody who, again, will never acknowledge your existence.

And for the majority of fans- who have valid reasons for loving who they love- that’s totally okay. They don’t follow their idol for the sake of being recognized by them; there are a million other reasons under the sun and I won’t shame any of them. I also recognize that many famous people are hugely justified in their fame, whose hard work and talent I’ve just swept right under the rug with this blog post, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with admiring them.

It’s just not for me.

It’s a magical thing. No matter how old you get, you can’t deny your excitement when it snows. Sure, that excitement might be dampened by all the added difficulties like driving, but everybody stops and stares for a little while at snowfall. It comes only a few months a year for people like me who live in the Midwest, and when it does come, I’m all smiles.

I always tell people I could never move down south or to California because I’d miss the snow too much. It’s true! I don’t want to go any winters without the stuff. I daresay I wouldn’t even move to Hawaii because they get no snow down there.

I think it’s because people act different when there’s a huge snowstorm (like there is now in Indiana where I am). Several inches of snow on the ground currently, and it’s still going. It’s basically a snow day for college kids since most of our classes were moved online.

I’ve seen so many of my peers today act like little children. Some are going down the hill on makeshift sleds, others are building snowmen; I saw one girl flop down on the ground right then and there and make a snow angel. A group of people started a snowball fight. Two others made a giant heart with their feet. And yes, the obligatory penis was also traced onto a sign. You can’t go any snowfall here at college without seeing at least one phallic joke.

Despite that, I simply adore seeing people act like this. There is something so charming and cute about college-age people, adults, bundled up and taking time to enjoy the little things that come with snowfall. I would never trade the beauty of it all- the white landscape and people in it- for anything.

That is me.

I’m afraid to grow up.

I wouldn’t label myself as a coward, but as a child I sure was one. I’d avoid the playground until all other kids left, at which point I’d hesitantly venture out to play (by myself). I would cry at every little thing. I didn’t have many friends because I was scared to make them. All trivial little-kid stuff that parents were told their child would grow out of.

I did, sorta. As I got older, middle school, high school, I got better. But still, I was reserved and quiet. I still didn’t have many friends. And I still often cried. I was never somebody who dared to venture beyond bounds and try new things. This was hugely evident in my hesitancy to go on any sort of overnight trips that my high school offered us. I never took part in any Spring Break trips, where other students would go to have fun and volunteer. I was never part of a club that traveled occasionally, like orchestra or band for a competition out of state. The furthest I got was a bus ride to another high school in the area for a tennis match.

At the time, I had been having some sleeping problems, so I chalked it up to that and not wanting to stress myself out even more by trying to get to sleep in a room full of other high schoolers, but the truth is, I was just scared to be away from my comfort zone, away from my family and my home. I was scared I’d mess something up with my luggage, miss the bus, or not know what to do with myself once I arrived at the destination because I no longer had my parents by my side.

But mostly, I didn’t want to leave my routine. I am a stickler for routine. If it’s messed up for even one night I try my hardest to get back on it as quickly as possible. I love normalcy. And I hate change. I’ve accepted this about myself. I’ve always been resistant to change, which has hindered me in more ways than one.

I’m back on campus for my spring semester of college now. I left home yesterday. In the week leading up to my departure I found myself becoming more and more stressed. I hated the thought of leaving my routine that I’d established over Winter Break- biking, watching Netflix, doing puzzles, and writing stories- in favor of going back to school. I was going to be away from my parents and my home again, and that thought made me unreasonably upset. Last year was worse; I was stressed to the point of having a heart rate consistently over 120bpm for a couple of days. It was bad.

On the car ride out of St. Louis I envied those who I saw in their homes, who could stay at home when I had to leave and go two states away. I envied those who already had an established life and who didn’t need to upheave themselves every few months to leave for college. It sounds silly, but I truly was jealous. I saw a woman walking her dog in my neighborhood before we left, and I was jealous of her because I knew she was sticking to routine and I couldn’t.

I told myself earlier today, when my dad dropped me off at my dorm, that I always was like this every time there was change in my life. It always went away once I settled into my college routine. But that doesn’t mean the days leading up to it aren’t painful.

I don’t want to grow up. I’ve never been someone who longed for it, but as the years go by I’m realizing more and more that I’m scared of it. I don’t want more responsibilities on my plate; I just want to relax at home with my family and my cats. I want to waste my time on puzzles and sort through my old Pokemon cards, not have to deal with the stresses of school. If I’m this concerned about starting a new semester of college, what will I be like when I have to move out and find a job? I’m worried for my future.

Everyone is like this, I know. Most everyone, at least. Growing up is hard. All the adults I see, who I’m jealous of for being able to stay home now while I go to college, have gone through immense change before. College. Their first job. Wedding. First baby. Immigration to a new country (hats off to my parents for that!) I’m 19 now, but I don’t feel like an adult. I feel like a child. I feel like a scared, little girl. Any sort of change has always been hard, no matter how many times I go through it.

I can only wish now that I start to do better once the semester starts. Wish me luck.

You are ridiculous.

In times of peril, if you’ve been hiding an ugly interior, well, sorry, the gig’s up. You’re going to be exposed by something that the naked eye can’t even see, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

COVID-19 is invisible unless it’s expelled by aerosol. It’s hard to believe something exists when you can’t see it, right? Like gravity. And yet, gravity does provide us some solid evidence- throw a ball and you’ll see it. COVID-19 has also been kind enough to let us see clear proof of its existence.

In the form of the dead and dying.

Death is a universal monster. Everyone who lives, will die. No one can cheat death in the end.

So why?

Why?

Do you think you can? With that mentality, if a bear were charging at you, you would probably say, “I will act like this is a normal day! This threat cannot kill me!”

That bear will pummel you and you will be lucky if you escape with your life.

Let’s say you don’t care for your own life at all, but you do care about the lives of others. You know if you went camping you’d probably go adventure by yourself, and since you have nothing but disdain for your own life you will end up doing something reckless. You’ve run into a bear and now the bear is charging at you. Do you expect others to help? Do you want others to risk their lives and their roasting marshmallows to save you? Of course you don’t, so you stay home and skip out camping, and if you do go, you’d make sure to stay out of harm’s way.

Last scenario. You are a lunatic who hates being disrupted in life and not having things go your way. You are stuck in the woods with your two camping comrades trying to find some blueberries to eat, and a bear charges at you. Instead of reacting in a way to save your life, you continue waltzing forward in search of that yummy blueberry bush your friend saw earlier. But wait! The other two have put their arms up and started yelling at the bear to scare it off. “You look like idiots!” You scold them. “A bear doesn’t eat humans!” You’re insulting your friends for trying to save their lives, all because you firmly believe to the very end that the bear will swerve at the last second and ram right into that blueberry bush from earlier because bears eat blueberries, not humans.

WRONG, MORON. If your friends listened to you and stopped defending themselves, you’d all die. No blueberry in the world is more tantalizing than three stupid humans.

Out of the three scenarios, there’s only one that ends with your life being saved. That one would be-

Oh, what’s this? Think you’ll never get charged by a bear so none of the three are realistic? Fine. Let me present to you a much more realistic scenario. This one you can’t squirm your way out of unless you’ve recently landed on Earth from Mars.

Scenario one: COVID-19, a highly contagious strain of coronavirus, is ravaging the world. You are a happily carefree individual who doesn’t notice any clear change in your surroundings so you say, “This is a totally normal day! I honestly feel like I could be walking to school right now with a couple of friends. And we didn’t wear masks when we were walking to school! That illness they’re talking about? False! It can’t kill me! Look, there are still cars on the road and lights on at night!”

Remember how scenario one ended with the bear? That’s right, by doing nothing to combat the threat you probably died um I mean you were lucky if you escaped unscathed.

Scenario two: You think you’re invincible to COVID-19 but others are obviously not, so instead of walking about with no mask on in public places, you choose to stay home, and when you do go out, you make sure to wear a mask.

Good job! Don’t expect any more prizes to come your way, though, because you’re doing the bare minimum of what our current predicament demands.

Last scenario: Bottom line is, you’re an asshole.

Oh, sorry, you wanted me to explain it to you? I thought you already knew everything so.. you know.. you didn’t need anybody else’s opinion. Especially when that opinion is a negative one.

Okay, here goes. Last scenario: You’re a loon who has encapsulated yourself within a bubble that conveniently lets you ignore a global pandemic that’s killed more than 700K people around the world. One day, you decide you need to go grocery shopping, which is inside an enclosed space. You join the throng of people entering the store. But wait! They’re… wearing masks?! “You look like idiots!” You scoff. To yourself, you mutter, “There’s no way I’m going to cover up my beautiful smile! Besides, I can’t breathe with a mask on! Give me freedom from masks or give me death!” (Spoiler, you’ll probably get both.) You thought COVID-19 couldn’t possibly be in your grocery store anyway; besides, you still need that carton of blueberries. Since you basically died on your last camping trip you never managed to find some in the woods.

If you, you maskless villain, had been a carrier of COVID-19 in that grocery store, even with zero symptoms or symptoms you chose to ignore, you were a threat to everybody else there. If everybody in that store had listened to your manifesto and taken off their masks, you’d all have risked your lives. For a carton of blueberries. Blueberries!

In conclusion, sir, ma’am, you are an asshole if you’ve aligned yourself with my third scenario. Why is it so hard to budge your opinion? Is it because you believe it’s not possible to kill someone without whacking their head with an ax or something of the like? People like you who refuse to wear a mask are killers. Carriers of the virus don’t know they’re a carrier, and that’s why everyone needs to think of others at all times. No, you can’t say you don’t have the virus unless you’ve tested negative, and even then you may catch the virus the next day-

If you refuse a mask because you hate blending in and following the orders like everyone else, I’m sorry to tell you this but you look like a fool. People are no longer laughing at those who follow the rules during a pandemic, unless you’re a young hot influencer in Los Angeles going to five parties a week because you “want to live your life.” The audacity. The absolute, complete audacity to say such a thing. It is because of people like you that recovery for United States has been so bleak. Everybody else who knows their place in society will know that social distancing and wearing a mask will help slow the spread of COVID-19. The ones who disobey are the ones ridiculed. Have you ever heard of any sane person wishing ill will on someone else? Well, now you’ll be shocked to know that many are wishing those who defy the rules pay the price. An act of defiance will only get you as far as the eyes of the foolish can see.

Do you think it’s bad to drink and drive? It is. It’s a terrible thing that shouldn’t be a thing. You’d never be caught drinking and driving, right? You’d be putting your own life and the lives of others at risk. If you never imagined you would say, “Actually, I will drink and drive, because I’ll only have good luck and drive home safely every single time!” Guess what? Now you have said it! Just in a different form, of course. “Actually, I will not put on a mask, because I’ll only have good luck and escape the sickness every single time.”

What you haven’t taken into account is if and when things go wrong. If you drink and drive, and crash, you automatically put your life and other lives at serious risk, which is why you wouldn’t be caught dead promoting drinking and driving. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you’re doing just that with masks. If you don’t follow the rules, you put others at risk of infection and death.

Okay. If you’re really as set in your anti-mask beliefs as the rest of us are set in our pro-mask beliefs, there’s no changing your mind. You truly believe you are doing no harm to yourself or to others. I applaud that you have no intention to harm (and for those who wear a mask to purposefully infect others, please, somebody cough on their poor souls), but that is what you are doing in the end. You’re setting yourself up to kill. No amount of excuses you hurl at me can amply defend your case. No symptoms? You might be a carrier, so wait fourteen days and/or take a test. Can’t breathe in a mask? Stay home, you’re probably part of those in greater danger once infected. You look ugly with a mask?

Your ignorance is far uglier than any mask can make you.

After this post, some may think of me as an emotionless stone. But what I’m about to explain will prove- and has proved- to be extremely hard for some people this day and age, interestingly. Everybody thinks they’re capable of this secret but if you just look around, that’s not true at all.

If you dislike- or, shucks, if you hate- somebody, you shouldn’t tell them that. You shouldn’t insult them, or yell at them, or call them out on whatever social media platform you desire.

The secret is that you should pretend like they’re nothing. If it’s one thing I hate doing, it’s giving people what they want. I absolutely loathe somebody managing to get a rise out of me.

Let’s say you don’t like somebody. If you go around telling people you hate somebody, then that means you’re paying attention to them. That means you’re investing your own time and effort to cultivate ill feelings towards them, while they’re probably off doing whatever it is that makes you hate them. It’s like an annoying toddler who won’t shut up. The more you hiss at them, the funnier they think it is and the more they’re going to try to annoy you. Some people like attention. I’m even guilty of this- if I discover that somebody doesn’t like me, I’d probably do things I know will ruffle their feathers. It’s fun to get a rise out of people, but it’s the opposite when you’re the one being messed with. Solution? Act unbothered. If you’re as cold as me sometimes, this is plenty easy. I love to play it cool. Act like the person you actually hate is just a nobody to you and that nothing they do matters or can matter to you. I’ll say it- I would rather somebody hate me then think me a nobody.

People post wack stuff online all the time. I’m going to focus on the app TikTok. It’s basically an app where you can post quick videos of dancing, singing, or anything, really. The most controversial videos are most often of the political or sexual manner, or one in which a person or a group of people get insulted. An example, then, would be somebody making a video insulting a religion or a body type.

Woo, the backlash on these kinds of videos are astonishing and amazing. But everybody responds the wrong way. They just won’t let it go- after insulting a person, they’ll insult them some more. And some more, and some more. A good example of this would be of one particular girl on TikTok who danced with a friend to a recording of the Quran, when neither of them were affiliated with the religion. Don’t ask me where she got the recording, what was going on in her head, or how she watched it over and then still posted it. But, as you can imagine, the backlash was fast and furious. People began insulting her, threatening her, and “canceling” her (which I think is just useless; you say somebody’s cancelled but you still tiptoe back to their account to insult them some more.) While I’m sure this girl lost tons of followers, she garnered tons of attention as well, no matter that it was mostly negative. She was the talk of TikTok for quite a while; everybody knew her. I can’t speak for this girl, but I can guess that she enjoyed at least 1% of that attention. The attention she doesn’t deserve. Some people purposefully act a certain way to get a rise out of people. Don’t be another Paris Hilton, please.

So if it were up to me, what would I do?

If I could control how people responded, I would make them not respond at all. Sure, for those who did something clearly wrong, I want to see them get a scolding, but after that? Nothing. Silence. No comments, no views, no likes, no shares. Post after post they gets no response. Make them feel like they’re dropped off the face of the earth and that nobody cares. At this point I’m cackling. Mwah! Chef’s kiss! But of course, with the millions of people online today, that feat is impossible.

Am I a cold-blooded fool? You could call me that. I find the beauty of ignorance far too valuable to… well, ignore. There is no harsher insult than telling someone they mean nothing to you and they never will.

When will people get it these days?