Self-published authorship is a hard row to hoe. Even if you wrap yourself in glittery lights, wave your arms, and yell, “Look at me! Over here!” 99.99% of the world will reply, “Why? I’ve never even heard of you. Leave me alone, loser. I’m watching The Real Housewives.” But you must soldier on and keep hope alive, believing that one day, someone not connected by blood or friendship will give a crap about your work.

Several months back, I posted Aret’s book trailer on my Facebook page. A few minutes later, I got a notice from Facebook offering a $10 voucher for a sponsored post. I figured, what the hell? I’d never found their ads effective, but for ten free dollars? Sure. So I turned the trailer post into an ad, chose an audience of fantasy-focused book lovers, and cast it into the interwebs.

I check Facebook once a day (a sanity-preservation deal I made with myself a couple years ago), so it wasn’t until the next morning that I logged in and discovered that, unsurprisingly, the trailer had gotten minimal attention. It had, however, received a comment from someone I didn’t know! Hurrah, such a boon for the self-published writer! I experienced about 2 seconds of happiness before clicking over to the comment to find this:

“A movie trailer for a book? I’m too old for this shit.” – Joe the Shmoe from Idaho* [*not his real name or state of origin, but the rebrand comforts me]

That was it – the only comment. Joe the Shmoe had taken it upon himself to stand alone, boldly sharing his brilliant observations with the world.

When you delete a comment (which I did immediately, in this case), Facebook asks if you’re sure you want to delete it. I wish there were also an option to generate a private message to the commenter, timed to arrive the moment the comment is obliterated. If there were such an option, I’d send this picture of myself:

But this irritating incident wasn’t really about Aret’s book trailer or my futile attempts at marketing. It was about communication choices. As I read and deleted Joe’s comment, I recalled a helpful and easy-to-remember model, posted in pretty much every school counselor’s office across our nation:

I love the THINK model, hokey as it may seem. Can you imagine if people used this framework when choosing whether or not to communicate? Incidents of getting butt-hurt for no good reason would be driven to near-extinction, and internet commentary would decrease by about 98%. In short, the world would be a much better place.

Unfortunately, the framework people seem to choose instead is something I’ve come to call the SO model:

S = Is it Stupid?
O = Is it Obnoxious?

If SO...you should definitely say it!

Joe the Shmoe, and millions of other trolls just like him, are big supporters of the SO model. Some dumb idea flits through their heads, and they promptly carve it into the universe. From a professional standpoint, I suppose I should be happy about this, as people’s prevalent use of the SO model provides an ongoing stream of clients for mental health workers like me. But I am not happy about it. I would much rather have people think for two seconds before spewing their nonsense into the world. I believe our species is approaching max capacity for nonsense, and you know what happens when we hit that threshold, right?

The robots take over. 🤖 ☠️

So please, folks – choose THINK over SO. I can find another line of work, and I’d like to have the option to choose it myself, rather than being forced into servitude by android overlords.