It’s day 12 of Blogvent, where I blog every day in December!

A not so Hallmark-y moment

A few years ago (and most holiday seasons), it was trendy on TikTok to do mock Hallmark movies where some woman moves from the big city to her small town where her childhood friend works at a lumber yard and they fall in love and he’s Santa Claus. Or something. It’s pretty funny every time, so one year I joined in and made it very tech-oriented.

I don’t have the video anymore, but here’s the script I wrote for it:

I’ll have a black coffee, no sweets for me. The only cookies I care about… are browser cookies.

I’m a coder from the big city in Silicon Valley, I don’t have time for these small town shenanigans. I’ve been working for this promotion for far too long.

Wait, Joseph, is that you? The boy next door? No, you can’t buy me a coffee, I don’t have time for love. I only have time for speeding up my website, before Christmas!

You’re a single dad? I… forgot to have kids, I got so distracted writing parent components that I never considered being a parent myself.

You don’t want to be with me, I’m complicated! Wait, you know how to properly load balance a website for the holidays?

Wait… Joseph? You’re… Santa??

Ha ha ha, jokes all around.

But, little did I know, someone on TikTok thought I stole their content, specifically, because they also made a lot of “Hallmark movie” jokes.

I had shared the video, and then went to some work meetings, not really thinking about what was going on in my notifications, and came back to a FLOOD on TikTok of people threatening me, calling me a thief, and trying to pinpoint my location. I deleted the video quickly on all the platforms, and found that there was a person who thought I stole from them, and had made a video on Instagram saying to “go after me” because I stole lines that they worked hard to write.

I didn’t steal from them, of course, but I did see where they were coming from, purely because… Hallmark movies do all sound the same, heh. But at the same time, it was just so scary. I didn’t know how serious people were with their threats, and I didn’t know how to make it stop. I sent an apology DM to them, telling them I didn’t mean to take anything from them, and they took down their video about me.

I don’t join pile-ons

After that experience, gosh, I was just afraid of the internet. I got over it eventually, but comment after comment of someone yelling at you, saying that you suck in some way, feels like you’re being yelled at it real life. And as a woman, there’s an added level of being afraid for your own safety, too.

From then on, even when I disagree with the way someone approached something online, if there’s a large number of comments already yelling at them… I just don’t get involved. Until you’ve been on the other side of it, even when you’re in the wrong, you don’t know the stress that you’re contributing to.

It’s been good for me mentally and emotionally to just let things go more, in that regard. I do think it’s important to call out injustices and stuff, of course, and I still do, but if it’s a pile-on in someone’s comments, my one voice amongst hundreds or thousands is not going to be the one that changes things. It just becomes bullying, in passing. And it’s more of a burden on me than on them, at that point, thinking about what I contribute to.

There was a happy ending!

All this being said, the other creator eventually DMed me an apology, a few months later! They said that they realized that they were in the wrong when they saw that TikTok was all about remixing and riffing off of ideas, and that I was the first one who had ever made something similar to them.

It was really such a relief to get that message. I had gotten over it at that point, but it still felt like… a “lie” about me was undone.

Anyway. All this being said, the world is stressful enough: Be kind on the internet.

See you tomorrow!