Snark Week

This blog is brought to you by the letter S. In fairness we all have a bit of snarkiness in us, I guess the reason it seems so prevalent in my current life, is that I can only understand the language in a small handful of people. Therefore the ratio of snarky comments to non snarky comments seems rather high. 

In this new age of social media, people tend to leave the common courtesy in the closet and just say whatever they want from behind the keyboard. Social media can be wonderfully helpful, and when we first moved to Ecuador, and I found there were Expat Facebook pages, I literally slapped my head, and said "why didn't I think to look earlier?" Well, I'm thinking now, the reason is because I may not have wanted to come and live with these people...

I realize, getting older brings some freedoms, people tend to do only what they want to, after they've lived a certain number of years, like they've earned the right. In some cases I believe this, if you're over 80 years old and don't want to fly anymore, don't fly. If you don't want to eat salad anymore...go ahead, boycott salad, it's not going to save your life now anyway. But when you choose not to use a filter on your tongue...well you sometimes turn into someone that nobody wants to listen to, thus is the case here.

There are 100 members in the local Facebook Expat page, in fairness only a dozen keep the page going, everybody else sits quietly, gleening what useful information is posted and going on about their day...but those twelve, my goodness...they ripped some poor blogger apart the other day just because in her personal blog stated her opinion that San Clemente was not her favorite beach on the Ecuador coast. Not only did they go on and on about how wrong she was on their Facebook page, someone actually went on her blog and posted a scathing comment. Neither helpful or useful, but from behind the keyboard manners go out the window, and opinions are to be torn to shreds.

Likewise, I got a comment here on this blog the other day. I don't get many, and I'm glad...this one I chose not to publish, it was, I felt mean spirited and am bringing it up here, just because it is part of our lives, being expats. The comment was sent anonymously, but I knew from the content that it was a local expat, the comment was about the dog I call Patsy. If you recall, my post was a raving review about how a little TLC can make or break a street dog, the picture posted was me and dog smiling, and a heartwarming reunion with a dog I'm particularly fond of. The comment I got, was "this dog follows all gringos, and has cancer, with not long to live". Wow! Why would someone rain on someone else's parade like that? 

There was another post on the Expat residents page not long ago, that made me laugh, not in a good way. This Expat actually posted a "Close Americas borders" poster, while living in a foreign country! Does anybody else see what's wrong with this? C'mon! Really? Some of it, you just have to shrug off, and then turn off the computer and go for a walk...because when one is around too much snark, one may become snarky.

So, with that being said, this is the end of my rant. Ecuador is not unique, I'm sure. Wherever there are people, there are problems. You choose if you want to be a problem, or free yourself from problems. As for me, I'm making another cup of coffee and heading to the beach, my adventure continues... so stay tuned!