Dear haters

I have recently acquired an annoying ability, I say annoying because it is through no concerted effort of mine. For the past month I have been getting all sorts of hate on Facebook, which is so bizarre because I am delightful on Facebook; nothing like my real life persona.
 

Last week my parents and I went to Durban to attend my sister’s second graduation and she surprised even herself when she graduated Cum Laude, like the boss that she is. So in my usual over sharing manner I updated about it and uploaded pictures with witty captions and basically did my own version of “halala Mshengu Tshabalala” via the internet. My bad! Someone was quick to inbox me and tell me that I had absolutely no reason to be posting so incessantly about Anele’s graduation ceremony because she was not the first person in the world to graduate Cum Laude. Okay.

A few days later when I was at my place trying to figure out the most innovative and energy-saving way to feed myself without actually getting off the couch and touching the pots or even looking at my kitchen I updated this “When I chose to study Journalism over Law my Dad said to me ‘I can’t force you Shengu, job satisfaction is more important that monetary gain’. Now however I wish that I had studied law so I could make a ton of money overnight and be able to afford to have someone cook for me everyday. *hums Senzeni na*” Someone’s daughter took offence at that but to my surprise she wasn’t offended with my laziness and consequent hunger strike but she was annoyed that I spoke about having options for my tertiary education. She told me that I wasn’t the only one with a high profile family, She reminded me that I did not own the world and that she wondered how people put up with me because I thought I was Khanyi Mbau.

See now that hurt, how dare she use Khanyi Mbau as a barometer of successful women. I let her have it about owning the world because of course I don’t own the world nor do I want to because if I did I imagine I’d end up having to cook for it which was the entire problem and the reason she had now found herself in a war of words with someone with more sophisticated artillery than her own.

Someone also recently told me that I am ugly and old. People are terrible at listening to reason I explained to her that she obviously caught me on a bad day because if she had seen me with the face that I made in my father’s shed and not the one God gave me she would change her mind. As for the age jab maybe it was me speaking in a baby voice that did it but I told her that of course 24 years old seems ancient to someone who has just passed the legal drinking age. I really don’t know what is happening with people.

But I can’t put all the blame at their feet, I chastised my family for being too high profile right after asking what it was exactly that they all did for a living and why they haven’t made me a tenderpreneur yet. I have also resolved to be less witty because who needs wit when we can all just find people on social networks who manage to make even the most difficult times of their lives sound like poetry and tell them how much I wish someone would just eat sushi off their body already. No wait, wrong story.

I will also stop being friendly to strangers because they may just be planning a Facebook status assassination and if I have learnt anything from JFK it is that if I die at the hands of an assassin I will make sure that I will be survived by a beautiful and stylish wife and the Torso has a long way to go before anyone calls him ‘wife’.

People will hate you for the most inane things, they will be deliberately disrespectful and slanderous and cuss out every single thing in your family tree and believe that it is okay. Perhaps it is because I am a writer that I understand how harmful words can be and I use mine carefully as a way to defend myself and to spread love (‘cause it’s the Brooklyn way) yes I just referenced BIG because he was awesome and I’m sure he had haters too.

But how do you guys do it? (only the haters respond) How do you spend so much time focussing on how much someone else’s existence pisses you off without unfriending them because it’s not even like you people know me in real life?

Anyway I guess now we’re even, you have made me spend all this energy that I had saved by NOT cooking to address you. I hate you back.

PS I have so much more for you to be mad at. Just wait.

PSS Family, you are only high profile in my writing.