The private made public

That's what this whole online community does to people. It's all there for everyone to read and become involved - things that shouldn't be for anyone to read but those it concerns directly. People that don't know half of what went on butt in, give their opinion, defile one side and applaud the other (and yes I'm talking about my friends just as much as his here). It's all about taking sides. Everyone feels they have to side with someone and whoever doesn't earns suspicious looks from both sides because after all, how dare they talk to those people still after what they did. I've been through this before, it's always the same, stupidly alienating people who never had a serious problem with each other.

Yes yes I'm aware this happens in "real life" feuds too. But online makes it all oh so much more complicated - so much more fake too. It's all about show, isn't it - there's not much honesty left. The honest bits go on behind the scenes, if at all, but the public nature of the debate on blogs makes all of that impossible. A theoretically (or ideally) private discord develops its own dynamics, innumerable factors come into play and influence it and, well, make people say and do things differently than they would in private, or things are said in the heat of the moment, and then people can't go back on what they said and did cuz they would look like fools, and they have to live up to expectations, and they have other people putting pressure on them and bla and ugh and it all seems oh so familiar and why do I even bother.

I wasn't aware of any outright hostility between Miss Streetwalker and myself (unlike of course me and some other people) - ok we were never best buddies but now we are scratching each other's eyes out for no other reason than she's on that side and I'm on this side, and everything that's being said is being evaluated in light of this issue of which neither of us has the full picture. The whole online culture of flaming and proving your point and not giving in and whatever creates such a hostile and aggressive atmosphere... how could objectivity ever stand a chance?

So why do I even bother? My first reaction after thinking this over was to close my diary for a while until all of this had calmed down, but fact is my diary isn't all about Ally and my readers aren't all involved in this (tho many are, unfortunately), so that would be overreacting and there would be no real point. So I guess the "right thing" for me to do is to truly cut all ties, stop reading his journal to avoid getting worked up by "the other side" and stop writing about it to prevent uninvolved (but biased) people from commenting and getting me upset and consequently influencing my opinion of him (and since according to what I've just said I cannot be honest in what I say anyway there is no reason for me to write about it.)

I have a strange habit of finding explanations and excuses for people's behaviour, of feeling compassion instead of hate (or changing my mind after hating them for a short while), of trying to give them another chance and finding a middle way, a solution, of starting anew. It's gotten me into trouble numerous times before, setting myself up for so much more abuse and eventually renewed hurt & heartbreak...

... this is obviously my problem and I have to work on it and get over it. But it doesn't really have anything to do with the subject of this entry. Which was.. what? Ah yes, the private made public. I'll be the last person to demonize the whole online thing, but, well, yeah. This sucks.

Why are people oh so complicated? I think I want to be a wolf...