The ‘friend’ referenced in the featured screenshot above is apparently me, which came as a complete surprise. It seems that a certain writer at the Times Union thinks I ended our ‘friendship’ because of Chick-fil-A, and she sent out a newsletter to her readers describing as much. What the point might have been for this flashy headline hyping the ‘dead friendship’ and the baseless description in the newsletter of how I supposedly ended it is anyone’s guess. I reached out to her privately with a couple of simple questions on how it came to be, but after confirming I was the one she had written about, she never answered anything else.
Right now, I’m confused and wondering why she did it. Was it for an uptick in subscriptions to her newsletter? Was she genuinely interested in having a dialogue about such a divisive subject? It raised more questions than it answered, and they were about deeper things like the true meaning of friendship, the effect that posting some things on social media has on our lives, and, quite frankly, basic journalistic integrity.
By sending out a newsletter and then refusing to answer my questions about it, she was able to voice her take on it, without allowing me, even privately, to challenge her characterization of events. It went entirely against her purported stance of always being open to discussion, and leads me to the current dilemma of whether or not I should write my own blog post on what really happened.
Andy thinks I should do just that: post a blog detailing how it went down, showing all the receipts, and getting my side out there, and he usually has sound and reasonable advice. Part of me agrees, if only to clear up the very questionable perceptions that the newsletter contains, as well as the resulting comments on FaceBook that question my values as a friend. Another part of me thinks it’s so silly I can’t even be bothered, as simple as it would be to put it all on public blast. For now, however, I’m simply going to put my thoughts down in a draft and file them away for a bit, confident that at least one person will be checking this blog regularly to see if it’s about them. Stay tuned…
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