“That’s It. You’re Dead to Me” Questions:

1. The author quotes the influencer Lindy Ford as posting on her Twitter account, “Here’s your reminder that unless someone explicitly told you with their words they are upset with you, there is no need for you to worry yourself sick. You have no mental or emotional obligation to people who do not communicate with you. No matter how much you love them.” Do you agree with Lindy? Why or why not? Maybe you agree ‘somewhat’ with Lindy. Explore the validity of her claim that a person has ‘no mental or emotional obligation to people who do not communicate with you.’

I think in some ways, I agree with her. The issue I have with what she said is that I think you do have an obligation to communicate with people if you want to continue that relationship with them, otherwise, the relationship will simply end. I do, however, understand the intent of her tweet. I, myself, struggle with overthinking, and always assuming that my friends are angry with me, even when they have never expressed that they were. So I think that what she meant by this tweet was that she also has this issue and she is encouraging other people to work on letting go of this anxiety until somebody actually expresses their discomfort or anger at you. Going back to when she said that “you have no mental or emotional obligation to people who do not communicate with you”, I don’t believe that this claim is valid simply from personal experience. I have had friends in the past that stopped talking to me without telling me why, claiming that “I knew what I did”, even though I had no recollection of doing anything towards them that would warrant them to stop talking to me. I think that a lot of these conflicts and issues with people could have simply been fixed by just communicating our feelings with each other. I think that to say you don’t have obligation to talk it out with people who abused you, or did something really awful to you so much so that you can’t bear to speak to them anymore is a fair claim because the relationship isn’t worth saving at that point regardless of what the other person had to say. So, long story short, I mostly agree with the intent of her tweet, but I think it could have been worded in a much different way.

2. The author Kaitlyn Tiffany opens this article with a personal anecdote–an account of a silly argument her boyfriend and their relatively new roommate were having about some music. In this anecdote, she describes how, it being late at night, the argument was starting to devolve and she was tired of listening to it. So, she said, ‘This conversation is dumb and I don’t want to keep having it.’ This, apparently, was enough for the roommate to declare her as ‘toxic.’

What grounds does a person have in declaring someone as ‘toxic’? In other words, is there a definitive criteria for measuring the toxicity of someone’s behavior? If so, describe that criteria. Has anyone ever called you toxic? Have you named someone else toxic? If so, what were the circumstances? Do you think the roommate in Tiffany’s story had a valid reason for ‘never speaking to her again’? Explore another option the roommate could have taken, IF you think his reaction was overblown. (no word limit but a minimum of 100 words).

While I have seen many tweets and TikTok’s, declaring the “red flags” in a relationship or “what makes someone toxic“, I personally can’t say that I have a criteria for measuring toxicity in people. I may have referred to someone as toxic simply based on other peoples definitions of the word, but especially recently I’ve come to think that the word doesn’t really hold any particular meaning. It has kind of turned into an Internet buzzword that people use to describe anyone they don’t like or anyone who has traits they don’t agree with. I think one sign of toxicity that was mentioned in the article is interesting: “they cross your boundaries, even though your boundaries are non-negotiable“. I feel like this is a very valid reason to get angry with somebody, but I still think it’s important to talk it over with this person, rather than label them as toxic and cut them out of your life. I don’t believe that the roommate in Tiffany’s story was valid in his reason for “never speaking to her again“. I think that Tiffany definitely could have been nicer in her delivery of what she said, but I don’t think it was something that constituted that big of a reaction. The roommate could have expressed his feelings to Tiffany by telling her that by saying their conversation was dumb, he felt belittled, or something of the sort. Basically, I don’t feel that there’s a specific criteria for labeling someone as toxic because people just kind of use the word as they please.

“That’s It. You’re Dead to Me” Summary:

To me, I think that the theme of this article is that the new age of “self-care” that the internet has perpetuated is pretty selfish and doesn’t actually try to help the relationships you have with other people. Much of the article talks about “toxic” people and relationships and how the internet has used this term to convince people that their relationships with friends and family aren’t worth working on if they don’t make them happy. While it is obvious that if someone is constantly making you feel awful, then maybe you should stop being friends with them, the internet has convinced people that the way to stop being friends is to just cut them off without an explanation. This could be somewhat helpful in abusive relationships, but for relationships with some minor or even a major conflict, the first thing you should be doing is communicating your feelings with the other person rather than cutting them out of your life without an explanation. This article shows that “putting yourself first” doesn’t always mean ghosting every person in your life you deem “toxic”. The internet has pushed this phrase into the heads of teenagers and young adults and it has had consequences on the ways they deal with relationship conflicts, and it’s made it much harder to just talk about our feelings when something is bothering us in a relationship.

“That’s It. You’re Dead to Me” Annotations:

(There wasn’t a lot of space for notes in the margins to I apologize for them not looking great or being very long)

HW-3-itrombley@une.edu_Download

hw-3 pdf version.