{"id":17980,"date":"2016-11-15T18:13:30","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T18:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=17980"},"modified":"2016-11-15T18:13:30","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T18:13:30","slug":"total-strangers-become-foes-even-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=17980","title":{"rendered":"Total strangers become foes, even enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/social-media-icon-signs-ss-1920.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-17981\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/social-media-icon-signs-ss-1920-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"social-media-icon-signs-ss-1920\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/social-media-icon-signs-ss-1920-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/social-media-icon-signs-ss-1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/social-media-icon-signs-ss-1920-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/social-media-icon-signs-ss-1920.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>One of the downsides &#8212; and there aren&#8217;t many of them &#8212; of writing a blog is that I might be guilty of turning total strangers into enemies.<\/p>\n<p>I post these musings on my High Plains Blogger website. I then transmit them via several social media outlets: Twitter, Facebook, Google and LinkedIn. My aim, of course, it to maximize exposure for this blog with the hope of getting those with whom I&#8217;m connected on all those sites to share these messages with <em>their<\/em> friends and social media acquaintances.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s straightforward enough, don&#8217;t you think?<\/p>\n<p>But then something happens. My friends\/&#8221;friends&#8221; on Facebook start tangling with each other. They read what is circulated on that social medium and respond to it. Then someone else reads the response and responds to that; it&#8217;s quite often &#8212; if not mostly &#8212; a negative response. That draws a rebuttal, which then attracts another reply.<\/p>\n<p>On and on it goes, too often to no good end.<\/p>\n<p>I do not like getting ensnared in this back-and-forth. I prefer to stay &#8212; if you&#8217;ll pardon the high-minded tone &#8212; &#8220;above the fray.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I put the stuff out there, having stated my piece. Then I let others have at it.<\/p>\n<p>Now, if someone asks me a direct question that requires a direct answer, I&#8217;m inclined to answer it. But I don&#8217;t <em>always<\/em> respond. I also might respond to an insult, which I do get occasionally.<\/p>\n<p>The upshot of this is that while I <em>(more or less)<\/em> regret the hard feelings that erupt on occasion from those who respond to my blog spewage, I won&#8217;t back off from sending this stuff out there.<\/p>\n<p>It provides great therapy, even if it comes on occasion with a bit of angst over the anger that boils up.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p>I made what some might consider to be a strange reference in this blog post. I describe my Facebook\u00a0contacts thusly: friends\/&#8221;friends.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I do that to delineate between actual friends and those who I know only through Facebook. I have a number of folks out there who I consider to be &#8212; if not <em>friends<\/em> in the classic sense &#8212; friendly acquaintances. Truth be told, my actual friends amount to a tiny fraction of those with whom I have a friendly relationship.<\/p>\n<p>There are others I know only because we&#8217;ve connected on social media. Those are the <em>&#8220;friends&#8221;<\/em> to whom I refer.<\/p>\n<p>So, there you have it. To my many friends\/&#8221;friends,&#8221; I say: Peace be with you.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the downsides &#8212; and there aren&#8217;t many of them &#8212; of writing a blog is that I might be guilty of turning total strangers into enemies. I post these musings on my High Plains Blogger website. I then transmit them via several social media outlets: Twitter, Facebook, Google and LinkedIn. My aim, of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=17980\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Total strangers become foes, even enemies<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1676,1940,2122,2799,4300,4932],"class_list":["post-17980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-news","tag-facebook","tag-google","tag-high-plains-blogger","tag-linkedin","tag-social-media","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17982,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17980\/revisions\/17982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}