Letter to a Friend on 7 Febuary 2020

Dear friend,

Have you had such experience when you have strong feelings for something and you want to shout it out so you share the posts that you found legit with other people. You didn’t comment on it because you want them to read and generate their own point of view, but to be honest at the same time you secretly hope they share your feelings because you expect your friends to be like-minded people of yours.

And then a moment later, you got their replies, which seemed nice but worrying, somehow gave out a feeling that for a minute made you think “oh am I just being paranoid, did I turn out to be a cranky cynical person, what I just did is spreading negative energy and fear to people around me?

They tried to talk you into believing that this is a complicated world, and the government has its priority. Things have to be fixed step by step. Mostly importantly, voicing yourself at this moment is pointless. Work your work and be your best self, that’s making contributions. They told you not to share the posts publicly. That’s for you own good, is what they said.

And you were struggling in you mind. You’re desperately wanting them to understand you didn’t expect them to fully agree with you, the fact is you love to argue with them (based on well thought logic of course), you want to hear what they think, to know about their perspectives, you are the least person who wants to believe that the world is such a fucked up place.

But what can you do? They don’t argue with you with their opinions on the issues. They just told you to shut up.

Later in the day, they sent you a message, oh I just wanted to take a look at the articles you sent but just found half of them have been deleted.

And you were like, wait what? You told me to shut up but you didn’t even know what they are talking about? You’ve censored them yourselves simply by reading the titles?

Oh and by the way, freedom of expression, that’s my job. I’m doing my job, with solid belief in what I’m doing.

Told you I’m the worst at arguing.