Friday Extra: The Mystery Of Insulting Yourself Online

Rookie

We have all done it. At least once in your life, you have written a Facebook status saying "I'm so ugly" or posted on tumblr "My life sucks". The usual results of writing something like this is a couple people complimenting the crap out of you reassuring you that you are gorgeous and you are the coolest person in the world.
You guys have heard me make fun of myself. I do it in about everything I write! The difference between the situation above and and my self depraving jokes is that my writing is for comedy purposes. I don't want to put myself above everyone and therefor I will jokingly write that I'm dumb or have no life. I don't actually mean the insults that I throw at myself but use them to put a smile on my reader's face. With these two very different topics getting mixed up for some people, I wanted to clear this whole thing up for you guys.
I was probably the worst sixth grader in the entire world. I would seriously go on Google Plus (it was cool back then), take a billion pictures of myself, write the caption above it saying "I am so ugly", then wait for everyone to tell me that I was the prettiest person they know and some other crap about how special I am. How did my friends put up with me? This right here is an example of attention seeking online. I didn't completely mean that I was ugly, I just wanted to be told I was pretty. There are many reasons for why people do this. My reasoning for calling myself ugly online to get compliments was because I was insecure of myself and needed just the temporary feeling of security from my friends. Another reason a person could feel the need to write insults towards themselves online is because they actually feel these things about themselves. Many people my age (give or take a couple years) are insecure and uncomfortable with themselves. We all know the feeling of wanting to be anyone but yourself. As my friend ARo puts it "Something that's cool about getting older is that the more you live inside your own skin, the easier it gets to just let that shit go and stop caring." a lot young teenagers I know including myself, aren't exactly the most comfortable with themselves and that can lead to insecurities. Come on, don't you enjoy being called amazing and beautiful? I have heard a few of my friends call these people "attention whores". My response to this is immediate anger. There are no words that I hate more than bitch, slut, and whore and when somebody would ever dare to call another person an attention whore, I immediately become defensive towards myself and others.

Tumblr

My style of writing is far from the putting yourself down for compliments way of writing. I will sometimes say that I'm a freak or have no life for comedy purposes. I hate sounding as if I'm above everyone else and through this form of writing, I can take myself down a couple notches while still putting a smile on my reader's faces.



Even though when a friend of yours says that they suck it can be annoying, you have to always keep at the back of your mind that this is just an insecurity of theirs. We all have to deal with each other's insecurities.
-Ann