Here’s a way to frame this, GS:
For all of us who were and continue to be attacked for not having kids by those who did, this is the same thing writ large on social media. YOUR choice to be or feel differently is taken as an implicit slam on their choice to be googoo eyes about a righteous thief, sham, fraud and public jerk.
It is the same thing that the Dumpfers feel when you (for damned good reason) call bullshit on Trump.
When you call out the crap that you see, they are so insecure, so utterly boundary-less that they take it personally.
This is hardly limited to celeb worship. Happens with sports teams, heroes and sheroes. If we are that insecure that we place that much of our own self worth into false idols (yep, you got it) then you and I can expect to be dragged across the hot coals. Because you are, in effect, pointing out how foolish they were to have idolized said celeb. Not what you intended. But it’s how they choose to see it. You have no control over that.
It is a sad statement about our society that we stoop to such things, but it’s always been this way. Social media simply gave us a worldwide megaphone to demonstrate publicly what assholes we can be about others’ right to have an opinion.
That’s the price you pay for being an outlier, Gillian. Stand on your own? Have your own opinion? We pay for that.
Please see:
“Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things. Knows not the vivid loneliness of fear nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings. How can life grant us boon of living, compensate for dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate, unless we dare the soul’s dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay with courage to behold the restless day and count it fair.”
Amelia Earhart.
This poem lives in my Daytimer, and has since 1983. Ankle biters are the “little things.”
Those women are ankle biters.
The job of the ankle biter is to teach you to pay no attention to them. You can’t do their work. They don’t care about fair, they clearly don’t care about morality or legal issues or much else. Fine. That’s their journey.
Why do you take the high road?
I didn’t know there was any other.