So I had put up a post in this Facebook group of breast cancer patients and survivors where I had volunteered to help run it with the group owner because she needed help as her life was really busy right now and a little bit complicated. I offered to help not for some self aggrandizing glory. I stupidly presumed that this was a group of adults.

Apparently not.

My post was about anonymous posts in breast cancer groups that don’t really need to be anonymous. What had made me think about this as someone helping moderate a group is someone had posted about having extra stuff from like basically a breast cancer swag bag that you get when you’re newly diagnosed and you’re getting ready to go through treatment, etc. etc. So if you’re looking to give this stuff away and you’re posting anonymously, how does that happen? And why is that a post that needs to be anonymous?

My post was not mean and it was not unkind. It was just basically if being a member of a breast cancer and breast cancer survivors group is supposed to be about support and fellowship how does that happen when everyone is posting anonymously and then as a result you have less connection to people?

Well, I sure stepped in it and it wasn’t part of the approved group think that I didn’t know existed until today in this group. (Note I had been in the group for a few years.)

When I saw the way the comments were going about what I had posted, and then realizing there was a distinct lack of reading comprehension about what I had actually written, I shut the comments down. You can do that and when you moderate a Facebook group a lot of times it will help take the temperature down on an issue.

But although I’m supposed to be kind to everyone, then people start posting other comments in the group about me. That includes the screenshot I have shared above. The comments then started at a fast and furious pace on that post. I stopped looking when it was 30+ comments about what a horrible terrible human being I was.

Pack mentality.

I will spare my readership the screenshots of inanity of the comments, which kind of makes all of them very hypocritical doesn’t it ? I’m supposed to be kind yet they are allowed to be unkind to me and how does that work? But I can tell you that this is exactly the kind of stuff I saw in real in-person support groups when I was newly diagnosed almost 14 years ago. It’s why I literally went to two meetings and decided it wasn’t my cup of tea and I started to write this breast cancer blog actually as a result.

I needed a place to go with my thoughts and very mixed feelings that were then very new and tumultuous concerning breast cancer. I wasn’t putting myself one foot in the grave, and I wasn’t going to be dishonest about things. Back then I veered away from in person support groups because they were like one giant popularity contest, and it had been a long time since middle school and the lunch tables. And I understand the fear and being scared, but I looked at all of these women in these rooms that I checked out at first, and I didn’t understand what planet they lived on. They were acting like they were already dead. Maybe the difference between them and myself was I made a conscious decision back then not only to be honest about how I was feeling about things, but to work really hard to remain positive because I felt that was the best thing to help fight cancer.

It’s much like how I have been always very honest about how I felt about the commercialism of Pinktober. You still won’t find me buying pink plastic crap or things like pumpkins painted pink because it’s October. So I guess in the minds of a lot of breast cancer people that either makes me a bad breast cancer survivor and patient or a foreign country. I can’t decide which. I also know that I am as a human being and an acquired taste. It does not make me wrong or bad. It just makes me different and I am never someone who is going to subscribe to group think.

Of course, then I received a message privately from the group owner:

So yeah, again kindness is the number one rule? Then why were all the disparaging nasty comments about me allowed? and the comments of those people made sense to her, but not what I said or how that might make me feel to read all of those comments. When all I was trying to do was have people see things slightly differently. For those in the back if you’re in a private social media group, and it’s supposed to be a fellowship of sorts because we had or have a commonality in a disease called breast cancer how do you trust the fellowship when you don’t even know whom you’re addressing half of the time? and then there is just the basic practicality of people put up a lot of anonymous posts that don’t have to be anonymous.

I wasn’t removing a choice from group members, I was trying to get them to consider another perspective. And the comments on my post before I shut it down were attacking me and I didn’t attack back. I did say that they were missing the point of what I was saying. It did come down to basic reading comprehension. And then there is the whole thing about social media in general that I have never gotten to and it’s how people pile on if someone didn’t say something they were expecting. Not that it was mean, not that it was inappropriate, not that it was using profanity… it was just different.

And I have to tell you right or wrong the woman who owns the group struck a very negative chord in me. So I told her I was leaving the group. I didn’t really care that she removed me as a moderator, but to basically say she doesn’t value my opinion, and I was being unkind…. yet it was OK for those other women to leave 30 or more comments before I stopped looking that were definitely unkind towards me? That was honestly a little offensive.

I actually did leave the group. And I unfriended the group owner. I don’t want her to have to explain to people why she’s Facebook friends with me after I left her group and was no longer a moderator. And I did send her a message back to tell her exactly how I felt. And I didn’t color it. I was straight about it.

I also sent her screenshots of just one of the private messages I received that were unsolicited about my opinion.

That was just one of the messages I received. I’m not sharing any of the others because some of them contained profanity which was completely unnecessary.

I’m disappointed because this was a group that I thought was decent. But I’ve discovered that a shocking as it may seem, these breast cancer groups are often a community where people are extraordinarily judgmental and not necessarily supportive if you don’t share their complete worldview.

And you know it’s funny when I was in the shower last night for a second I thought I felt another lump. Instead, I realized it’s just part of the density and dead breast tissue that I’ve lived with since I finished treatment.

Now that’s something I probably would’ve shared, but I’m glad I didn’t because they all are hypocritical. They want to post without judgment yet they want to judge with someone else posts.

Not the people I want supporting me through any breast cancer journey.

What I appreciate is honesty and not platitudes. Maybe that makes me strange to them?

But at the end of the day it doesn’t matter, so they can enjoy their little pyrrhic victory of actual pettiness and hypocrisy.

I have been a cancer patient and survivor for 14 years, soon to be 15 and I have never looked to a group to post anonymously, I looked for the fellowship and a place to be honest without feeling judged. So what do I get? Tons of judgement and posts talking about me like I can’t see it which makes them all a giant collective of hypocrites.

I don’t think these groups are made for me. I know I’m not made for them. And that’s OK. But I don’t and never will believe in dumbing down.