Fringeville #197: Impulse Control

For the second time, I’ve taken a “social media vacation.” I don’t know what else to call it.

Last time, it was a Facebook vacation. I disabled my profile for several months. I started another with a far lower friend list just to keep in touch with family and friends. I still used Twitter and Instagram.

This time, I’ve disabled nothing. I’ve simply made the decision to passively observe. I won’t post or comment (with the exception of links to new Fringeville segments). I might also do some food posts on Instagram, because people seem to like those.

Why have I don’t this?

Impulse control.

Apparently, I have none. I sure as hell used to. I would read something carefully before posting an opinion or response. Whether folks agreed or disagreed, I believe that most of the time I was coming from a place where I was reading, comprehending, and responding.

Maybe it’s age, my health slipping, the frustration of my daily life, gamma rays …I don’t know what, exactly …but twice in the last month or so I’ve had a knee-jerk response to something I read on social media and posted before thinking. In each case, it was the title sentence that set me off. In each case, after igniting a small firestorm, I went back and read in-depth.

In one case on Facebook, a lack of clarity in the post I’d read was partly to blame. But I went off the rails a bit just the same. I caught myself and withdrew from the discussion as gracefully as possible. (Think: blind elephant backing out of a china shop.)

In the other case, I simply failed to read an entire Twitter thread. Had I done that it would have made the context of the author’s leading sentence perfectly clear. That was all on me, and it stings because I made a complete ass out of myself. In fact, I became exactly the type of idiot the author was writing about. The more I wrote, the worse I looked. Each character I typed just added to the damage. But I couldn’t stop. It was as if I was in the heat of the Vulcan plak tow. I would not stop until I’d killed my enemy …and the enemy was me. I finally took my hands off the keyboard when someone said, in effect, “…this post wasn’t about you. But now it is.”

...please...let me type just one more word...

(Note to the uninitiated:  Twitter is not a place to lose your impulse control. It is perhaps the most vicious of social media. While some folks there will offer a thoughtful rebuttal to what one posts, far too many others only know one mode: attack, attack, and attack again while allies pile one.)

It is not like me to shoot from the hip.

Or …and here is a frightening thought … perhaps it is these days.

If that’s the case, I realized recently I either need a break to work on impulse control or to work on things in my life that are broken and need fixing. I chose to take a break for both reasons.

If my lack of impulse control continues, or starts to worsen, then there is something else going on. I don’t think that’s the case, but I’m not getting any younger kids. Maybe I’m just on the verge becoming the mean old man who sits on his porch yelling at kids to stay the hell off his lawn. I’m already yelling and cussing at the vast number of drivers who treat the four-way stop sign on the corner as an optional intersection feature to be ignored at will.

(Plains Township wouldn’t need casino dough if they just went on a ticket binge at the corner of Ridgewood and Union. We could fill our potholes with gold.)

The only place I’m doing anything for the foreseeable future is Fringeville. I will post random thoughts. I will post fiction bits. Both of those activities force me to be a tad more disciplined. I will also share those new Fringe bits on social media.

Poop. I have to end this particular Fringeville post. Someone just ran the stop sign.

“…hey, jackass. Yeah, you with the massive, giant pickup truck and tiny little penis!  That’s a frigging stop sign, jackass! Oh …sorry ma’am. Well, you do have a beard. Watch where you’re swinging that purse! Hey, you’re on my lawn! Get off my (WHACK)…Medic...medic...”

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Be good to each other. 

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