Maybe We Should Be Slightly More Careful About What We Say… (And/Or What We Hear)

April 25, 2015

(This is one of those posts where I half know what I’m saying and half don’t. So, read if you want, or not. And feel free to help me crystalize my thoughts better in the comments. ;))

Also, this is mainly about Selfie getting cancelled, which is going to be the oldest of old news once this finally posts. But uh, I’m leaving it in the rotation anyway! Without further ado, this post:

Being opinionated is fun. (And it’s a part of me I don’t ever see going away.)

And having opinions is great.

But sometimes I sort of forget how much people might be listening to our opinions – how they can affect other things. Basically, I write this because of this specific example:

My favorite blogger wrote for a show called Selfie. But another blogger whom I really enjoy reading wrote a post bemoaning Selfie. Plenty of other people were speaking poorly about it too. So, with a lot of other things I could watch/do, I chose to just let that show fall off my radar.

(I will readily admit here that I should’ve at least watched one episode to make my own opinion – especially when one of the writers is someone I love reading! But alas, I didn’t.)

Then, Selfie was cancelled.

And then, people started coming out in droves saying what a shame it was, and how we all missed something great with the show being cancelled.

I watched a clip from one of those articles. (It’s the one where Eliza sings Chandelier at karaoke.) It seemed incredible! I haven’t watched any more, because I don’t want to fall in love with a show that’s never coming back. But, I believe it easily could’ve been a show I enjoyed.

Obviously Irwin Handleman (pen name of my favorite blogger) was upset the show was cancelled. And I thought about how real people working very hard are affected by basically my laziness in not checking out their work. (Obviously I don’t mean specifically my laziness. I just mean as a whole, all of us together. Did you give Selfie a chance?)

Basically, I think all I’m saying here is that opinions are great. Sure, we should all have them. But I want to possibly consider being a little more careful of negative opinions I shout from the rooftops. I don’t know that I actually ever will temper down the way I talk about things. But it was just a nice (and sad and too-late) reminder when Selfie was cancelled that there are real people behind things being made.

That show deserved a chance before I totally wrote it off.

So, I don’t know if the lesson is to be more careful about opinions I share (as I wouldn’t have wanted to be a part of this show’s cancellation), or to be more careful about taking people’s opinions as gospel… Probably some of both.

I'd love to hear from you! So whaddya say?