Rant of the Day

 Dear Diary,

My insecurity was triggered again today. The story went like this: I decided to close my Facebook account due to privacy reasons, but it was not until the recent party meeting which required each of us to promote activities online that I had to re-activate it again. The new duty includes staying connected to the Internet and making use of social networks to inform new students about university events. Anyway, once I logged in Facebook, my news feed was heavily spilt with fake news, garbage information and blatant dramas with endless lines of comment from the so-called netizens. While I was scrolling through the pages, I came across this Facebook user whose post was shaming an infamous person who ignored COVID-19. 

The content was basically like this: The girl uploaded a story on her Instagram, paying respect to COVID-19 workers. This, to many people, was completely opposite of what she did in Vietnam (She was contaged, but refused to quarantine herself, and went to local pubs instead). This irony caused an outrage among Internet users, so the Facebook influencer decided to write a post to reproach her grammar, followed by a chain of passages in one of which he confidently claimed to obtained 9.0 in IELTS Writing.  Guess what would be in the comment section? Lots of applause, praise and compliments for this guy because he "did justice to the Internet", "Grammar Police" for sure. He received more than a thousand of likes, positive reactions and was admired. This was the point that concerned me. 

Looking at his perfect public profile, positive images, embellished with eye-catching, effect-filtered photos, I feel my self so helpless and doubtful about myself. As an insecure person, I tend to compare myself to others, then self-criticize and wonder why I was so imperfect. Low self-esteem, I know. I would exaggerate all the negative traits of mine instead of focusing on positive ones (which I should have done). I spent the whole afternoon drowning myself into the pool of overthinking, then my sister came to save the day. I shared my viewpoint with her, and she asked me why I had to seek for perfection, which is totally meaningless if I looked deep into it. She went on to say: "what matters in this life is to complete something, not to perfect something."

I admitted having it as one of my personalities, but it was this sentence that I had to read between the lines. She had a good point. Though there were still hatred within me, I felt much better and passed that drama away. I realized I had tons of other things to do, and skills to be honed, not wasting time tracking whether who was right or wrong.

Something else came up while I was keying the words for the blog. It was the "cancel culture", or "outrage culture", which is the situation when people united to boycott somebody/something due to their rebel actions. I did not understand it completely until I saw it and it was definitely a form of cyber-bullying by harshly criticizing her grammar on her personal story, and some influencers allowed themselves to have the "rights to publicly humiliate" the girl because she deserved it.  I wonder why this is the case? In retrospect, it was her personal story, where she could write whatever she wants. It is our choice whether we want to see her story or not. Do you like it when someone judge every step that you make, so that people would then laugh on you? It was not even an assignment in English linguistics or grammar whatsoever, so what was the point of analyzing her writing? Nothing but putting her to shame. I feel that we are going quite too far with this trend. As a language learner, I feel that it is normal to express yourself, as long as the message is conveyed. I'd prefer a reading text with a mixture of B1 to C1 words instead of a wordy passage with contrived, complex language. One writes for people to read and comprehend, not to baffle them unless he or she wants to be another version of Charles Strickland. For those who don't know, he is the main character, also known as a painter in "The Moon and Sixpence" by Maugham. 

Alright, enough ranting, let's call it a day.