[Insert cryptic passive-aggressive status update here, addressed to… Well, you know who you are.]
Yes, they’ll know who they are… Except they probably won’t, and a bunch of other people your update isn’t about will think it is, or else they’ll wonder just enough to feel uneasy.
Maybe, just maybe, a cryptic passive-aggressive status update isn’t the most constructive method of dealing with interpersonal conflict. Full disclosure: I think I’ve posted them myself a time or two, but it was a mistake which experience and further consideration have since taught me to think better of.
A reminder for everyone, myself included, for not if but when you have beef with someone – contact them directly and privately, explain your case patiently and carefully, and try to win them over. That’s the biblical prescription for conflict resolution. And we should be about open and direct conflict resolution, not about indirect jabs and secret resentment and grudges.
If it’s not worth approaching the other person directly and confronting them in what you feel they sinned against you by doing, it’s not worth being upset about in the first place.
May God help us to be a patient people, quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry; humble and ready to admit when we’re wrong, but brave and bold enough to address a wrong-doing in an honest and straightforward manner, not writing vague rebukes to everyone in the hope the person we’re targeting is reached and wecan enjoy plausible deniability when they get offended.
Also, please forgive me, as I realize this is not my first post in less than a week regarding social media habits. It’s just that the subject has been on my mind a lot lately, and this is one on which I could write 2,000 words and only after publishing them realize I could easily have written another 2,000 more without having drained the well dry.
Instead of bombarding you with another 2,000 words on social media dysfunctionality, however, I think I’ll leave you with a catchy, upbeat song that came to mind as I was writing this. Perhaps you’ll remember the tune and lyrics the next time you’re tempted to write a cryptic passive-aggressive status update.
