Implications Of The Written Word...

Twitter can be like texting.  Texts (SMS) are limited to 160 characters per message and Twitter is limited to 140 characters per tweet.  There's only so much you can type within those constraints to get your message across.  Of course there's the long message option which lets you type as much as you want and get it sent in several messages and TwitLonger which is the equivalent for Twitter (which unfortunately is not supported by Echofon and the Twitter website).

Anyways, the thing about the written word (like books and other printed publications) is what you say can easily be taken out of context.  Depending on how the reader phrases the sentences, what you type/write can be misconstrued and thought to have malicious intent even if those intentions were never there.

A few months back I was tweeting about how Carly (Hanh's bestfriend who'd just gotten started with YouTube videos at the time) had 8,000+ subscribers on her channel in a month.  I got a mention from a girl who was an aspiring vlogger and beauty enthusiast on YouTube stating her amazement at the numbers.  She seemed like a nice person so we both subbed each others channels and followed one another on Twitter.

She'd tweeted before that she wished that she could buy MAC products and recently she did at her local CCO and put up a haul video sharing her finds.  It's always nice to see people being able to buy things they've been wanting to get and that's among the reasons I love watching haul videos despite the bad rep they get sometimes.  Anyways, while watching the video, I kept getting distracted with her head movements and I felt annoyed that I was distracted by it.

Let me clarify.  I've always been comfortable with calling myself weird because I have odd quirks that my friends so lovingly joke about.  I have mild OCD (although not clinically proven) but there are things that completely annoys me and to most, they might not even be anything at all.  I used to arrange my books a certain way in my hostel room while I was still studying and get irritated when my things aren't put back where it should be.  For me, everything has a place and I live off organization products (organizers, multiple shelves, containers, boxes, plastic drawers, dividers, etc) and I love having my things in it's own space and compartment.  I like my clothes hung with the hangers facing the same way and preferably with the same type and coloured hangers, shirts according to colour and sleeve length and type and same goes for dresses too.  If you've read my previous post, you can probably tell how excited I was to install the 2 boxed shelves in my wardrobe cupboard to segregate my polo t-shirts, skirts, shorts, home pants, home t-shirts, sports pants and leggings. I was also excited to have my makeup brushes and long chain necklaces organized. I enjoy filing and can get a little too meticulous doing it and can go through several different designs/fonts for the labels before being fully satisfied.  I can't stand repetitive gestures (but am more tolerable if I know it's related to a disorder like spasms and other gestures/movements - i.e. blinking, nose scrunching, face twitching, muscle spasms).

Come one, I even use a mug holder to hold sticky tapes (various sizes) on my desk in the office. My colleague at work always make light hearted jokes about the way I eat, saying it's too systematic.  When I eat, I make a general assessment of the amount of food on my plate before I begin so I know how much I should have on my spoon when I eat.  If I'm eating meat, I'll spend the first few minutes slowly and carefully removing all (and I do mean ALL) the meat from the bones, separating any skin, fat, tendons and other non-meat parts as well as chilli flakes, parsley (I can't eat parsley, it overwhelms my tastebuds and I can't taste the rest of the food), chilli seeds, etc before I start eating.  The eating part on its own is a pretty quick process.  I always try to scoop a balance amount of veggies and meat and rice/noodles/potatoes with every bite as well.

OK, so now that you're acquinted with my quirky weird side (which is far more obvious when I'm eating. Haha), let's get back to the post.

After the Twitter comment, I proceeded to watch another video of hers prior to the haul video where she explains her eye condition.  I thought it was great that she was bringing to light and creating awareness on Congenital Nystagmus and talking about how she lives with it.  She also prides herself in being able to overcome her disabilities to come out as a straight "A" student and accomplish all that she has accomplished so far as should anyone her condition should.  It's always an inspiration to hear stories like hers, unfortunately even in her video/vlog talking about the subject, she stated that she wasn't comfortable discussing the subject and seemed rather insecure about it (which I suppose explains her high sensitivity to the matter).  After finding out about her condition and sensing her insecurities on the matter, I quickly switched to my Echofon and deleted my comment on her 'head bobbling' being a bit distracting before she could read it.  Now, turns out in my thread it was deleted but somehow she still got the comment.  Her response (read from the bottom up):

I was caught by surprise and tried clearing things up with her.  I also apologized for the misunderstanding.  If you know me, you would know that I had never meant it to be rude and that I never judge anyone.  In fact, I always remind my siblings to not judge people because you never know what they're going through.  My comment was simply honest feedback which I thought she would have appreciated to improve her videos.  Again I'd like to reiterate, I wasn't aware of her condition prior to the tweet.  Here are a few more comments we exchanged on her YouTube video:

I didn't have a problem with her eyes moving, I merely suggested that since I noticed her head moved far less when she looks at the camera than when she has her head down.  I also noticed that her head movement is fine when she turns to the side.  It's only when her head is down.  Looks like my suggestion was again misintepreted as offensive.  I'd even commended her on enjoying doing YouTube videos which I believe to be a good thing.  She claims that I judge her when she contradicts herself by judging me and attacking me when my comments were based on my own OCD condition.  Like I said, guess everyone gets misunderstood.  She tweets on her page that I didn't get that she's not taking rude comments from anyone and that apparently I wasn't getting it.  Ironically she also tweets that it was just the wrong topic and the wrong day (she doesn't like Mondays?) and I suppose that coupled with her fear of being ridiculed spurred some sort of retaliation on an innocent and harmless suggestion and honest feedback.

Here's her nice little summary about me (read from the bottom up):

With reference to the middle tweet, this is what I had tweeted prior:

I know it might not have been necessary to have even composed this post on this particular subject but I felt compelled to illustrate the impacts of the written word.  It's like poetry.  The poet creates his/her poem based on his/her emotion at the time and does it with words.  The same poem read by someone else going through a different set of emotions can see different meaning in those same words.  Although I may not have a lot of readers on this blog and I do it because of my love for writing, I thought that it would also be good to spread the awareness on her condition since it is not something one would come by often.  I have no hard feelings towards her even though she thinks I'm a jerk and blocked me on both YouTube and Twitter and propagated my "jerk-ness" to her followers.  I got misunderstood and my words misintepreted, c'est la vie.