I recently met a fabulous new blogger. I’ve checked out her blog and she has an easy-to-read, eye-catching layout with fair reviews. She’s also on other forms of social media–being enthusiastic and supportive of her favorite books and authors. She’s active in the blogging community and seems like a genuinely nice person. We’ve had a couple email and twitter exchanges and we’ve really hit it off. Additionally, she’s  a writer just like me, trying to figure out the best way to put her words on the page. We have a lot in common.

BUT in the amount of time it took you to read that paragraph, we could have had a twilight zone moment where we became the characters in Mean Girls. Very quickly, very easily, things could have gone to h-e-double hockey stick.

Here’s what happened…

I was sitting on the couch revising, periodically checking my email and social media. As I flipped through my messages, I got excited because I had an email from someone contacting me through my website and those are usually the best messages. Maybe someone has read TOUCHING THE SURFACE and liked it. Or maybe they want to read it, or they’re interested in becoming a Hot Spot, wanting to help spread the word about TTS. So of course I jumped a few emails and clicked on that one. I almost choked when I read the message from the blogger I just described to you above. (Now I can’t stress enough, there was nothing inappropriate about this message. It wasn’t rude or unprofessional, but even so, I was sick to my stomach when I read it.) This blogger wanted to know why I’d blocked her on Twitter. We’d never engaged with each other, she hadn’t reviewed my book and she was upset and concerned and a little angry. She wanted to know why on earth I had done such an extreme thing. Had she inadvertently said something rude to offend me?

My jaw hit the floor and I said, “WHAT?????”

Yup–because I’ve never blocked anyone on twitter unless they’re spam. I try to follow most people back, but sometimes my emails get too overwhelming and I’ve been known to hit the delete button on the “new followers” email if it meant avoiding a mental break down. So I repeat…”WHAT????”

I immediately wrote back to this blogger, trying to clear up what was obviously some kind of misunderstanding. I quickly hopped on Twitter to try and rectify the situation and nearly pulled my hair out trying to figure out how to unblock someone. Gahhhh!!!!  And all the while I’m thinking, what if she doesn’t believe that I didn’t do this on purpose??? After looking all over, the help button told me that I needed to type in her Twitter handle to unblock. I didn’t know her handle, so I typed in her name and a zillion (yes, it felt like that) people with her name popped up. While I searched, I refreshed my email, hoping the note asking for her handle had come through. Phew, it did and she didn’t sound crazy-mad at me, she sounded relieved that I hadn’t intended to block her–that she hadn’t done or said something wrong to cause my behavior. With a deep love for a button that I’ve never felt before, I unblocked her. We continued to dance around each other a little bit as we processed the whole thing, chatting on Twitter and email. I’m sure if you listened you could hear both of us giving a huge sigh of relief. We’d dodged a bullet, but it wasn’t far from either of our minds, how something innocent could have blown up in our faces, becoming the next author/blogger internet freak show. It could have easily become ugly.

So how did it happen? I have three theories. The first is that a raunchy piece of spam that I got the other day came in at about that same time as one of this blogger’s tweets. Perhaps as I clicked the button, the feed jumped and I didn’t look closely enough at what I was doing. *head thunk* The second theory is that the Twitter gremlins that often unfollow people (LIKE MY AGENT!!!!) we’re causing trouble. Really? I LOVE my agent!!!! My third guess is that it’s George, my inner holiday elf. He got a taste of being in the spot light the other day and now he can’t get enough LOL! But in truth, how it happened isn’t really the important thing, what matters is how we handled it. While both of us were initially shocked and a little upset in the beginning, we did a couple of good things to prevent an out-of-control issue. I could make you a list of things like–ask questions first, don’t assume the worst (even when you’re thinking it) and act like professionals. But you can figure that out on your own. But it does bring to mind that saying about making assumptions…

Making quick assumptions can make an ASS out of U and ME!

So glad this situation didn’t make us both look like asses. Phew! But…those two donkeys are kinda on the cute side. And if you’d like to find out more about good stuff for donkeys–clicking on their smiling faces will send you to the Donkey Sanctuary. And if you’d like to share some stories about assuming–I’m sure I can dig up a few more of my own to share. When’s the last time you’ve made an ass of yourself? Any close calls? Tips on avoiding social media scandals? Social media’s lack of face-to-face interactions can often empower us to spout off without thinking things through. Any tips for staying out of the muck?