Taylor+R's+OpEd+Article

Todays society is so caught up on the lives of other people, mostly as entertainment, and it has socially affected the way children today grow up. One of the most common conversation topics in High Schools today is other people. Whether it’s good or bad, teens today can’t stop talking and talking and talking, and ya maybe I’m guilty of it too, but at least I understand that it is getting out of control.
 * “I heard he killed a man!” “Well I heard he was a German spy.”**

Teens always exaggerate, and that’s the truth of it, but rumors are the worst. Rumors start off with an easy little “Hey, guess what I heard today” and they turn into massive “Oh my god did you hear that this person did that!!” and after however long it takes it grows out of proportion. I know one person specifically who I honestly don’t know at all, sure we may on a rare occasion actually speak to each other, but other than that we don’t talk. The thing is that so much Shitty talk goes around about him that before I even get to know the person I feel as if they are the biggest douche bag I’ve ever met. Why should I ever feel that about someone I don’t know, especially if this person has only ever been nice to me? I know I don’t spread rumors about him, and if anyone asks if I think he’s a dick, I just say that I don’t know him and that he has only been nice to me.

So how do we combat rumoring? In order to stop this overgrown addiction to the entertainment of socially torturing people, we need to simply use something I like to call confirming. Is it that hard to confirm if what you heard was right with someone, The point is that rumors don’t happen if everyone already knows. O ya and if you want to make the argument that it was supposed to stay a secret, well its your fault for trusting the wrong people, or not keeping it secret to YOURSELF. I know a few rumors that have spread around about me and I can say that a few of them are completely true, and some are only kind of true while others are not true at all. But what’s so hard about asking me?! Why can’t these blabbing, and ill informed strangers just grow a pair and ask me? O ya and asking anonymously online makes me have even less respect for you.

No one likes rumors about them, especially not me. Rumors today are a way for people who have little in common to have something entertaining to talk about, but people don't think about others when they rumor. Rumors can ruin a persons self pride, make them more socially absent, and can lead to depression and even suicide. When I first heard that a rumor was going around about me I immediately thought "why are people talking about me, out of all the things they have to talk about?" At first I blew it off as if it was nothing, it wouldn't grow, but sure enough the next week it had reached two schools! I was freaking out, the rumor that I had just blew off was now everywhere, and I didn't know who had heard it. Now I have to just assume that everyone thinks that I have done a certain thing or am a certain way, and it makes me become more defensive and less prominent in a social aspect. The thing that was a rumor was something true about me and I didn't want people to know, and this time someone just miss heard someone and thats how it began. Now that a whole bunch of people assume things about me, I just don't trust people that much, so like I have been advocating, just ask me and I will tell you. Sweet and simple, I don't want to deal with it anymore, I want to go back to the old me, pre-rumor me. So next time you feel the need to start gobbling your head off, DON’T, because guess what your just being part of the problem.