EPBOT had a great post recently on unfriending on Facebook; namely, people who tell people to unfriend them due to their beliefs.  As in, “Feel free to unfriend me if you’re going to vote for Trump.”

EPBOT asks an important question:

When did we become so intolerant of opposing viewpoints that we feel the need to sever all ties  – with casual acquaintances OR our closest friends – over things like GMO crops and health care reform? When did agreement on ALL issues become a prerequisite for friendship?

It’s not just challenging others to unfriend us, or begging others to unfriend us if they support or believe in x, y, or z.  It’s also the rabid unfriending that goes hand in hand with emotionally charged events like elections.  Unfriending (or blocking) the people who negatively impact your life, of course, but I’m talking about unfriending simply because you don’t share the same beliefs when it comes to emotionally-charged issues.

I think the vast majority of us don’t have to worry too much about Internet Mob Justice, but everyone on social media needs to deal with the slights and fights that occur on the personal level such as the unfriending, which feels akin to a shunning, simply because someone expressed their beliefs. It makes you think before you post, wondering if speaking aloud is worth it. It means that sometimes really good points aren’t going to be made because someone just doesn’t feel like dealing with the fallout from their friends or followers list.

Internet Mob Justice is the extreme — like a big, gaping wound — but that doesn’t mean that the paper cuts that occur within our small social media streams don’t sting.

We’re in election season again. It will only ramp up and become more intense by the fall.

I think EPBOT’s post is an important reminder that we don’t have to curate our streams so the only people left mirror our ideas. That we can listen. We can stop the name calling. We don’t have to belittle in order to make our point. And we don’t have to unfriend people along the way. If we disagree, we can think for a moment whether it is worth having a calm discussion, or whether it is better to scroll away.

What I’m trying to say is that I’m going to continue to be your friend and listen to what you have to say, even if we disagree on political candidates, religion, or a host of hot-button issues.

I have a soft spot in my heart for monsters.  For vampires and werewolves and things that lurk in the dark.

But every once in a while, a realistic scary story gets accidentally thrown into the mix.  And then I freak myself out.

The first one was Silence of the Lambs.  I regret reading that.  While I don’t worry about cannibalistic serial killers, the Jame Gumb part hit close to home.  Real women are abducted.  Real women are held hostage.  The scene where Starling is being stalked in the basement gave me nightmares.

I usually avoid crime scene shows or thrillers.  But this summer, I’ve been lulled into a false sense of okayness.  It started with The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.  That wasn’t that scary.  Then I read Her by Harriet Lane.  That was okay, too.  Then I read The Luckiest Girl Alive which wasn’t scary at all.  And then I picked up Mary Kubica’s The Good Girl.

And I am officially freaked out.

I was reading the book while out, leaning against a counter.  A man came up and softly told me that he needed to reach past me to grab something, and I jumped a mile into the air.  He looked alarmed that I looked so alarmed, and I explained that I was reading a scary, scary, scary book and this was a bad, bad, bad idea.

He insisted that I should keep reading because I was clearly so engrossed in it that I didn’t even hear him come up beside me.  But, well, I’m not sure that’s such a good thing.

If I do get to the end of this, I’m going to need something like a Princess Bride chaser to slow down my heart.

Has anyone read Gillian Flynn’s other books besides Gone Girl.  Are they very scary?  Know any other authors that write things that are interesting vs. terrifying?

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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The New York Times ran a story about a guy who gets paid to write books that will never be published.  He is hired by families looking to have a memoir written to preserve their family history.  So no accolades, no fame, no royalties — just working on a long piece of work that will only be read by a few individuals… if any.  It’s totally possible that the author will do all that work, and the final book will be put in a box in someone’s attic, never to be read.

Oh, and the books are all confidential, so the author also can’t leak any of the juicy details of their client’s life.

It was a fun question to consider: Would you dedicate years working intensely on a book that would — without a doubt — never be published?  Or do you need to have, at least, the hope of publication to have the energy to work on the project day in and day out?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored posts.

I’m waiting on a lot of things right now.  You know how in Coraline, the man upstairs is made out of rats?  I feel like that squirming man, except that I’m constructed out of questions.

The situation was worse a few weeks ago when the list was longer, and I was waiting to hear an answer on 50 things instead of 33 things.  But still, you know, 33 things.  That’s a lot of things.

I’ve been obsessively cataloguing everything I’m waiting on in my brain like it’s an accounts outstanding folder.  I picture all of these questions like the last, thin paper in a triplicate carbon copy.  I mentally shuffle through all the receipts I’m holding.  Which people or places will pay up so I can move these papers to another folder.  Account closed.

There is no difference in my brain between the questions that have a due date (“You’ll have your answer by Friday at the latest”) and the ones that linger about, noncommittal to when they’ll pay up (“Soon!”).  They’re all just receipts I have to hold onto until I have an answer and can place them aside.

Until the unknowns are known, or at least at a more manageable level.

I started to write out the list, thinking that if I could take it out of my brain, I would feel better.  But I don’t.  Not really.

I’m not very good with the waiting game.

Side note: Tomorrow is #MicroblogMondays.  Get writing.

I love this story about the 13-year-old girl who did a balloon release on her father’s grave, drove 25 miles home, and found the balloon entwined in her fence.

I love the thought that we can still connect with people after they’re gone. I’m not willing to consider any other possible explanation in regards to this story.

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I also love that this Welsh town has appointed a town jester.  I love the three tasks he had to complete in order to get the job.  I want to live in a town that has a jester.

I served last year as a badchan — a jester for a Jewish wedding — and it was hard work.  I only got to be a jester for a single day, though I wonder if I had mad blindfolded dagger juggling skillz if I could have parlayed it into fulltime work.

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• No posts from last week.  What did you read this week?

Okay, now my choices this week.

Persnickety Chickadee writes about all the ways we try to control a cycle despite knowing all the people who get pregnant while eating sushi and doing hot yoga.  I love her point that it’s a form of making a deal with the universe: “Those of us in the TTC circle of hell spend so much time being told what to do and what to avoid, to the extent that it shrivels up some of our life.  But how much of that is needed and how much of it is a form of bargaining?”  Go over and read the whole post.

Today’s the Day I Lose has a great post about coming in last in a race.  While it was about running, it made me think about family building where we use race terminology (“she lapped me”) to describe our feelings of being left behind.  So, yeah, I really loved the message in this post, especially point #10.

No Way to Say It has an impassioned post about Planned Parenthood that is a must-read, especially if you don’t know what percentage of federal dollars goes toward abortions.  A post that sets the record straight.

Lastly, Family Building with a Twist has a post about a friend who wrote a memoir.  It’s such an interesting (er… and nail biting) situation.  She writes: “I realize that she is telling her story, and in telling a story, you whittle and shape it into its tightest, most concise form. I can’t decide what bothers me more: will I be included? Did I make the cut? Did I matter at all in her story? Or will all of the peripheral details, people and ugliness be left out?”  She goes on to ask a lot of interesting questions about who owns a memory more, who gets to shape the way everyone else knows the memory.

The roundup to the Roundup: A message in a balloon.  Welsh town brings back the jester.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 31st and August 7th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.