My hands are shaking so hard right now it’s difficult to type.
I had to use the backspace three times to hammer out that sentence.
One of the most memorable things my mom taught us as children was:
The two worse things you can do are lie and be mean.
It stuck with me. In my little kid head, I took that to mean that the absolute worst thing you could do is lie – because that’s mean, too. Double whammy.
I am a lot of things. I’m selfish and narcissistic and vain. I over analyze and tend to be melodramatic. I’m not proud of any of those things, but I’m aware of them.
What I am not, is a liar.
In any fucking form.
If you ask me if those jeans make your ass looks big, I will tell you. Whether that’s right or kind or a being a good friend – the only thing I know to do is be honest.
It’s not always easy to uphold that principle.
I make no secret about the fact that I’m willing to monetize this blog, or blogging in general. I run ads here, I’ve done reviews, I started a fucking review site for the sole purpose of developing a second income stream. I like money.
But I am still not a fucking liar.
My word, my reputation, my integrity – none of those things are for sale.
I got paid $200 to write about dolphins blowing bubbles – and I wrote a lengthy post about whether or not it was humane, because that was my honest opinion. I got paid $250 to write about a Florida travel web site – and I said the free portion sucked, because that was my honest opinion.
I’ve emailed PR people and told them that I couldn’t give a positive review of a free product I received because the product was crap.
Every decision I make, every word I write, everything I do is anchored in the fact that I value honesty.
So to be accused of lying – publically, by a long time friend – it knocks the wind out of me.
The backstory…
Magpie is a service to monetize your twitter stream. I signed up for it months ago because, hello! I like money! Let’s check this shit out! I figured, I tweet about products and web sites all the damn time, if someone wants to throw me a couple bucks for doing it – why not? ESPECIALLY if it comes with full disclosure.
Unfortunately, most of the crap that magpie gives you to promote is crap. It took me about 2 minutes to figure that out.
Ah well, I moved on.
Of course, I still get emails letting me know what campaigns are available, blah blah blah. 99.9% of them get deleted.
Yesterday I got an email about skype being available on the iPhone. With Jared having just recently gotten an iPhone and us having to take over his cell phone plan from work and him using 2100 fucking minutes in about 2 days… I was intrigued.
I went to twitter and asked if anyone used Skype to call landlines. Obviously only being able to use skype to skype wouldn’t fix my cell phone problem. A few people responded with some helpful info, a few other people had questions about how I wanted to use it.
I sent out a tweet letting people know I was going to twitter the link via magpie that I was looking at.
It was an affiliate link. Meaning, I get paid if someone buys something. You know, like the fucking $2.95/month subscription to Skype. OOOOH – fucking money maker. Or not. Not only that – but it didn’t occur to me that me saying “is this even worth a shit?” would be considered a strong promotional tactic.
Silly me.
Unfortunately, magpie is retarded – or I am – and the link didn’t go out until this morning. Hours after the conversation on twitter had moved and long before I’d even logged in myself for the morning.
So, out of nowhere, anyone following me on Twitter this morning got a tweet about “skype with iphone! awesome! blah blah blah! affiliate link here! #magpie!”
Does that look like tweet spam bullshit? Of course it does. I got a few replies from people asking me what the hell was up with the spam.
I responded and attempted to explain what had happened by basically saying “oh fuck, that was supposed to go out yesterday – it would have made sense if you were talking to me then.”
And then the proverbial shit hit the fan.
Well, maybe that’s being over dramatic.
One person took me to task for being a spammer. One person who has known me for a long fucking time.
I tried to explain further.
And then the accusations came out that made me said red…
“not being honest”
“followers have gone to your head”
“pretending”
The logical, reasonable part of my brain shut down.
It’s still down. Logic and reason have been replaced with raw, hot anger, racing heart, shaking hands and furious tears.
I am not a fucking liar.
If you don’t agree with something I did, fine. If you don’t think my explanation is good enough, fine. But if you can know me at all and can still truly believe that I would be anything less than 100% honest?
I don’t know what to do with that.
I don’t even know how to process that.
I’m used to people who don’t know me questioning my motives. I’ve seen the comments around the Internet where people say my readers are “followers” or “customers” or “buyers”. And I feel the need to defend that for about 2 seconds before rolling my eyes and reminding myself that anyone who knows me knows that at the very least I am genuine. I’m not always the most likable girl in the room, but at least I’m sincere.
I know that about myself. I know that because it’s a conscious decision I made years ago – to be sincere and let the chips fall where they may. I know that because it’s a conscious decision I make every single day – to be true to who I am, regardless of the consequences.
I’m prepared for people not to like me all the time.
I’m prepared for people to question me.
I’m prepared for people to call me materialistic and a shitty mom and a bad wife and an attention whore and a whole lot of things.
I am not prepared for my friends to question my honesty.
I feel like Baby in Dirty Dancing right now, pacing the room and crying, “I did it for nothing!” I clung to my honesty, my sincerity, my openness – and it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter with the people who matter. Not with some random internet troll, not with some stranger, but with someone who should – if I’d been doing it right – know me.
And maybe that doesn’t make sense to anyone else.
Maybe that sounds stupid.
And maybe I shouldn’t care. But I do. I care about what the people closest to me think. I care about being perceived as a liar, because that is a quality I find reprehensible and one I refuse to tolerate in myself.
I don’t have any idea how to close this post. I think Internet drama is stupid and from the outside, that’s what this looks like. My instincts are screaming do not hit publish! This will not end well for you! But puking onto a post is the only way I know to stem the shakes at least long enough to get through the rest of the work day.
So fuck it.
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Miss Britt Reply:
April 10th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
@Dave2, I think I know that’s a possibility, and I kind of just hope that with enough consistency people will see it’s more than that. But maybe that’s ME being naive…
Hm. Now I have to think about that. Especially because I can see it being jarring (remembering a particular instance where I saw that somewhere. Hmmm….)