By Helene Wingens of Figuring it out…
A local woman was dragged kicking and screaming from her home yesterday. The woman, Pam (not her real name) became heavily involved in social media a few months ago when she began to blog. What began as a hobby quickly turned into something far more corrosive and insidious.
After several months of humoring Pam’s obsession, her family realized that she was no longer able to articulate anything except in platitudes, truisms and clichés. Not only was everything she uttered trite, but Pam’s entire world had come to revolve around the “likes” and “shares” which people politely (and just to keep her out of their hair) bestowed upon her blog posts.
As Pam was carted off to a local institution, which specializes in the ten-step treatment of an unnatural predilection for oversharing on social media, neighbors overheard her weeping, “But that post got 14,000 shares! I just started getting good at this. Just give me another chance!” Her cries went unanswered.
The final step, which involved calling in professional help, became necessary when Pam exhibited delusional behavior and started to mistake her virtual life for the real thing. By speaking to the press, the family hopes their story can serve as a cautionary tale for other families who find themselves in a similar situation.
What at first blush seemed to be writing for the sheer joy of writing soon morphed into a full-blown obsession. Pam’s daughter became emotional as she stated that “Mom could no longer have an experience without saying, ‘I feel a blog post coming on.’ She could no longer speak a sentence without referencing her blog in some manner, but perhaps most devastating of all was Mom’s admission that she attended life cycle events such as graduations and weddings exclusively to get material for her blog.”
All of these developments were deeply disturbing to Pam’s family, but the final straw came when they noticed that others were reticent to speak around Pam for fear of being quoted in her material. Not only were people mum around Pam, they gave her such wide berth that it was clear they were avoiding interacting with her altogether.
When asked how his mother was doing, Pam’s son replied, “Well, the first step is recognizing that there is a problem, so we’ve certainly got a long road ahead of us. Mom still seems to think that blogging was a passing fancy that would have disappeared in time without intervention.”
Fortunately, Pam’s family saw the problem for what it was, and we wish them all strength as they continue battling this challenging affliction.
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About the Author
Mother of 3 boys. Wife, daughter, friend, sometimes writer, and retired lawyer. 50 is in the rear view mirror… trying to figure out if there is a second act and if so, what is it? Part of that effort includes blogging at https://helenew123.wordpress.com. Her writing can be found on a number of online publications including scarymommy.com, The Forward, betterafter50.com, Club Mid, bonbonbreak.com, tentotwenty.com, midlifeboulevard.com, grownandflown.com, blogher.com and the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop (humorwriters.org.) Friend me on Facebook.