Everybody has a right to an opinion (even at a wedding)
SINGAPORE — We’ve all been there before: We’re at some social event that we have to attend such as, oh I don’t know, a company event, or a wedding; and guess what, we’re bored. So what do we do, we whip out that mobile device of ours and we start doing what everybody seems to be doing these days: We tell the world about what’s happening to us on social media.
Which was what someone called Juli, who runs the Bun Bun Makeup Tips blog (bunbunmakeuptips.com) did over the weekend when she live blogged a wedding she attended. In the blog post, she critiqued and criticised the goings-on, from what the bride was wearing to what sort of flowers the bridesmaids were carrying to how long the wedding dinner lasted.
Thing is, most of it was pretty negative and perhaps, a little rude or catty. Such as the bit about the bridal car: “Look at the bridal car. I mean it’s not that I have sky high expectations (just a bit high but not sky high lol) but this…what’s that chunk of grass doing there huh? The staff were at it for one whole hour.”
Needless to day, the tone of her remarks was probably what made the blog post go viral, such that even websites in the United Kingdom and United States picked up the story.
“Woman critiques friend’s wedding via live blog and it’s pretty brutal” ran the headlines for Metro UK.
“Read wedding guest’s scathing account of friend’s big day in shocking blog post which went viral”, was The Mirror’s headline.
“Beauty blogger sparks fury after scathing account of friend’s big day” reads the New York Daily News.
Needless to say, it invited a lot of backlash, some of it which were harsher than the comments made by Juli in the first place, with some calling her a “spiteful wretch”, amongst other colourful descriptors.
Needless to say, amid the negative feedback, Juli eventually took the post down hinting that it was taken out of context. Although it wasn’t quick enough for people to screen grab sections of it and keep it online (you’ll probably be able to find snippets floating in the webisphere somewhere.)
Still, it’s not all bad news for her. Some have applauded her frank opinions. “Juli … has since taken the posts down. The world can’t handle the #RealTalk, I guess,” ran one website. “I want to invite her to all my parties. Seriously. She’s not wrong!”
This incident, of course, has shown how much the public love, or perhaps, love to hate on, such people. Even if they don’t know them. But it also served to show how brutal the Internet can be. Some people can be harsh. Others can be harsher.
And if you want to put something out there for others to see, you’re going to invite comments – both positive and negative - from friends, strangers and everybody in-bewteen.
If you don’t want to invite any backlash, don’t post anything online. As my PE teacher once told me: “If you want to play football, you better get used to being tackled.”
Or perhaps the late comedian George Carlin said it best when he opined: “Personally, when it comes to rights, I think one of two things is true: I think either we have unlimited rights, or we have no rights at all. Personally, I lean toward unlimited rights. I feel, for instance, I have the right to do anything I please. But, if I do something you don’t like, I think you have the right to kill me. So where you going to find a fairer (expletive) deal than that? So the next time some (expletive) says to you, ‘I have a right to my opinion’, you say, ‘Oh yeah? Well, I have a right to my opinion, and my opinion is that you have no right to your opinion.’ Then (expletive) the (expletive) and walk away!”
Okay, so perhaps George Carlin isn’t the best representative to campaign for free speech. But he does have a point: We all say the wrong thing sometimes. The important thing isn’t what we’ve said but what we do once we’ve realised the consequences of what we have said.
Everything else is by the way.
