“What can come of someone like her?”
Said a neighbor in the neighborhood where I grew up when I was failing out of school.
My father and he didn’t get along, and that neighbor chose to badmouth me.
His words got to me through the ‘goodwill’ of other neighbors. I didn’t know at the time that I could ask what reaction they, the neighbours, had, the ones who were even so intrigued that they came to tell me, but when they participated in the discussion they didn’t support me.
The child at the time didn’t know that when someone takes part in such conversations without firmly disassociating themselves from such opinions, they are just as guilty as the one who started the discussion. On the contrary, the child was at that time affected, hurt, angry.
Gossip, mud-slinging have long been a favourite sport of many. Some even claim a good cause for indulging in such practices. To publicly pillory others, to throw stones, to accuse others of various things seems to give them pleasure. “Let he who has never done wrong throw the first stone” is an exhortation that does not touch them. On the contrary, since their belief is that hell is only with others, they point the finger.
Unfortunately, these practices, which are worthy of a marginal district of the capital before the ’89 revolution, are exacerbated on social platforms. We no longer say it at the gate, on the street corner, we now say what is on our minds not to the individual, but publicly, as if we were speaking into a megaphone that amplifies the voice, propagates it to the world.
A little self-censorship doesn’t hurt, though. Scripta manent, the Latins used to say, and this proverb has endured for thousands of years.
Verba volant, can end up doing some irreparable damage.