Laying it on thick

There are people you consider friends. There are people who are more acquaintances.

Then there are the wolves in sheep’s clothing, the “friends” who will publicly shame you on social media for not accepting their hashtag “challenge.”

Just tagging me in that post is a form of bullying, of laying on the peer pressure to achieve your desired agenda.

Well guess what?

I ain’t playing that game.

That’s right. I’m not going to post this ridiculous hashtag because someone decided to tag me in their post. What do I have to prove, anyway? And WHY did this person decide I needed to prove it? Are they trying to insinuate that if I don’t do their challenge then I’m automatically a terrible person? Because I’ll tell you, regardless of my personal political, moral, or ethical stance, my primary reaction to being pressured into something, to being pushed, is to push back.

I won’t post the hashtag. Not here, not on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. I have nothing to prove. If you think that lowly of me, then you clearly don’t know me.

I’m trying not to let my knee-jerk anger goad me into something more heated than this post. I want to call out the bully, to share the shame, but I won’t. I simply untagged myself and hid it from my timeline.

I have had a bad day. The last thing I need is to be accused, directly or not, of being a bad person on top of my shitty day.

I’m not posting that hashtag. Make of it what you will.

I didn’t ask for the tag. I never have asked to be dragged into political agendas.

You can claim it’s a human rights issue, you can claim whatever you want, but pressuring and shaming people to elicit a desired response is damn near as despicable as the one they’re condemning. (And that’s saying a LOT.)