Dear Innanets

Dear Innanets,*

My favorite artist, Prince (may he rest in eternal peace) once said, “Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called…life.” I felt that. But how do we do this? How do we get through this thing called life? In all my (limited) wisdom, I’ll venture to say that it is to find a way to connect with the people around us by sharing our experiences, our thoughts, our hopes, our dreams. And as cliché as that may sound, if we explore the depths of each of those things, I think we will find that there is a magnificent force that will bind us together and allow us to experience a universal love that will truly allow us to get through this life thing. This blog is my attempt at engaging that force in a meaningful way.

With that being said, please be kind to me. I’ve seen the way you invite people to tell their stories or present their perspective, and ravish them like vultures to a carcass on the side of the road…all because their views don’t coincide with the normative stream of (un)conscious rhetoric spouted off by a small percentage of persons who have nothing left to do with their time other than bring others down to their pits of low self-esteem and cynicism.

I don’t ask that you agree that I’m smart, nor do I request any sort of validation. All I ask is that you take my thoughts, not as mandates or directives or as a stamp of approval of the things that I believe are true, but as an offering of a different perspective on the things that many (or maybe just some) experience as we all trudge through this thing called life.

So Innanets I’ll ask once more…hold me to my words but please be thoughtful with your critiques, and your disapproval and your skepticism…until I have spoken my last piece.

Signed, 

Yours Truly

*The Innanet(s) — not to be confused with the global computer network providing seemingly indefinite information and communication facilities — is the digital embodiment of the world’s harshest, most savage and innovative critics. As a term arguably coined by Black Twitter, “The Innanets” is the harsh extension of that awful “yo mama/you so ugly” joke battle kids use to participate in during lunch time just to see who was more ruthless. It is a culture compiled of username-protected trolls who are ready at a moment’s notice to drag, praise, critique, poke fun at, or publicly humiliate to the point of digital exile, any individual solely on authority that it has the ability to.