You’ve probably seen those memes that advocate eliminating negativity, or banning negative thoughts from your life, or putting negative people in concentration camps. Okay I made up that last one until a reader goes to meme generator…
What I don’t like about the concept is that it doesn’t make a distinction between Negativity and simply being critical or challenging. Conceptually it shouldn’t have to, one should know the difference.
Scenario 1: your team is trying to solidify the date for a new annual event the company will sponsor. Someone suggests the 3rd week in April. Person says “it will probably rain.”
Scenario 2: same thing except someone suggests the 2nd weekend in May. Person says “well every few years it will conflict with Mother’s Day.”
I’m all for mitigating and insulating against negative drama. Unfortunately many weak minded people don’t differentiate between the two. And sometimes a conniving or Machiavellian-esque person will define negativity so fluidly so as an excuse to kick someone out of their social circle.
I’ve seen this movie before, it goes like this:
Step one: communicate to world/friends in common OMG did you see what so-and-so did/wrote/said?
response: No what was it?
step two: I cannot even repeat it but trust me, it was awful so trust me when I deem it too harsh for human eyes.
Now you have two choices: conform or be cast out.
I’ve never been accused of being overly optimistic. Or regularly optimistic either. Or confident. But I have been accused of making pointlessly derisive remarks. While one person’s pointlessly derisive remark is another person’s merely challenging comment, whatever I allegedly said got me unfriended.
I don’t recall the comment. It is possible that I wrote something that just wasn’t bursting with sunshine and kittens but we’ll never know because she went all FoodBabe on me and deleted the comment.
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