I'm Judging You: The Do-Better Manual

by Luvvie Ajayi Jones

We were condemned to pain in childbirth, Aunt Flo, and to be ruled by men. It’s not our fault that Adam didn’t know how to make decisions for himself. In fact, if we were able to trick Adam into eating the forbidden fruit, why should he be trusted to lead us? NAWL. He couldn’t lead a Skype meeting.

That's an interesting argument I never heard before.

Why do people hashtag complete sentences? #IWonderWhyTheyDoItBecauseItsCompletelyUnnecessary, and they are clearly hell-bent on making my blood pressure go sky high. First of all, that is no longer a random aside. Second of all, doing this makes your words so much harder to read, and what I wrote above isn’t even as bad as it gets. I capitalized the first letter of each word, but people who hashtag whole sentences often do not. So you’re playing Riddle That Line to decipher what they’re trying to say. You, hashtagger, have taken the random aside too far. That’s just a sentence you should have written out normally.

You just posted a picture and then decided to use eleventy hashtags in the caption. I want Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Vine, and LinkedIn to have a special forum about you where they suspend your ability to use hashtags and the only way it can be reinstated is if you promise to get your eLife together and never do that again. We have all seen that person who posts a picture of the sky on Instagram with the caption: #sky #blue #clouds #day #peace #love #hope #yup #picture #followme #ITookThis #ForReal #beautiful #lovely #DontDoThis #IBegOfYou #YouAreBetterThanThis #STOPITNOW. I hope those people go to the market and their favorite fruit is the only thing NOT on sale. I know why people use so many hashtags in their pictures: some terrible social-media strategist has told them that hashtags make their pictures easier to find. But who on Yahweh’s earth is searching for #day to find new people to follow? Please stop with this overuse. It makes you look desperate for followers. I know we all are, and whoever says they’re not is lying like good baby hair. But try to at least hide it better by not vomiting hashtags over everything.

I love my fellow writers, and I get that we need people to read our words, but one thing I hate is people posting a piece and tagging fifty-five of their friends to it. This is like going up to fifty-five people, tapping their shoulders, and saying “HEY, READ WHAT I WROTE.” That’s not cute. First of all, again, our friends can support our work, but they are not obligated to. When we do the tagging thing, we’re basically pulling them into a crowded room and interrogating them about whether or not they’ve seen what we did. Don’t put folks in that position. If you’re in their social-media family, trust that they will see it. And in case you REALLY want that person to read what you wrote, send them a message and say “Hey, it’d mean a lot if you read this.” But do not tag fifty-eleven people to your writing. It’s pushy and unprofessional.

Maybe I’m just a weird, superstitious Nigerian, but I believe that telling people about something you have brewing jinxes it. Until I sign on a dotted line, I usually keep mum. Some people find joy in your failures. Don’t give those folks satisfaction. If you do wanna share your failures, share a lesson too. Not just “OMG, I’m so sad. I didn’t get it.” Don’t mistake your audience for being only well-wishers and friends. Everyone who is connected to you, on your friends list, or as your fan is not necessarily a genuine cheerleader. So pull back a bit.

I was having a conversation with a producer who used to work for a major reality show and had quit his job. I asked why. He said, “One day, after sitting through a two-hour production meeting where we strategized on how to make one of the women hate the other so they could get into a fight on camera, I came home and asked myself what I was doing for a living.” Let that sink in. There was a strategy meeting to create situations that would make two people actively despise each other.

On Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, we got to see the daily lives of a poor country family and their husky daughter with pageant dreams. When the matriarch lets the kids eat Cheetos for breakfast and ours just had cereal (full of marshmallows and sugar), we feel good about our decisions. We’ve fed our kids different poison in a somewhat more acceptable package, but they got paid $1,500 per episode for their fails.

Even our political process feels like a reality TV show; debates are playing out like reunion specials, and the person whose zinger against their opponent lands the best usually wins. We got dudes in raggedy squirrel hairhats running for president of the United States while acting like characters on the worst competition show you’ve ever seen.