Loretta the Drama Llama

Original image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/glenbowman/

Okay folks. There’s this thing called society. The internet is not protected against it. It also doesn’t let you impede someone else’s free speech. But I’m jumping the gun, here. Let’s go back.

I’ve been studying for a new job while working from home. The new job involves working from home, too, but with a lot more education needed. To facilitate my education (and drum up some extra work while I study), I’ve been working in several online groups. Job boards, community boards, and discussion groups on Facebook, email, and forums. It’s been pretty cool. Until yesterday. When I logged into one of my pages, I found that I had been banned!

As always, I assumed both the best and the worst. The best was that I was removed accidentally, because I hadn’t broken any rules. The worst was that someone on the board had found my blog and decided to take some sort of passive-aggressive stand against my craziness. Operating on the best assumptions possible, I reached out to the moderator, Loretta.

After a short exchange of emails, I find out that I had been banned from her group for being part of another group, because she thought the other group was too full of drama. I had to sit back and let that sink in. The most junior-high bullshit conversation I’d ever had was happening on a board where I connected with contractors. Now, this is a job board. Not a discussion board, nor even a board where conversation was allowed. It’s literally just a place to put up an ad. “Experienced schmuck looking for xoxoxo work, 3 years experience.” That kind of stuff.

Now, this “other” board was a community site. Just a place for people to ask questions about software, and learn the thousands of minutia of our program. Sometimes, people would start discussions that I wasn’t interested in having. Whatever. This board, in no way had anything to do with the job board Loretta had banned me from. She just took exception to the entire community over there as being “too dramatic.”

When I told her I used that other board with my mentor, and that I wouldn’t be leaving it, Loretta told me I was making a “big mistake” by leaving her group. I was like, “Whatever.” I deactivated the account I had created just to use her board, and called it a night.

Shortly thereafter, Loretta hit Jenny up. No shit. She vented what she was feeling, and said that I had blocked her. Jenny told her, “No, Rory deactivated his account, since he can’t use it anymore.” Loretta kept this up for an hour, or so, before Jenny just went to bed. She re-iterated that all I had to do was close my membership with an unrelated group, and she’d let me back on her super-limited job board.

Um, no. Screw this noise. I hate when the drama comes from the person claiming someone else is being dramatic. Mostly ’cause all the drama comes from the drama llama in the first place, and that stuff’s toxic. Good riddance.