I was on Twitter the other day (fine, I’m on Twitter every day) and I saw a status from someone where they seemed to be complaining about something. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this person jokingly complain about this situation. It’s something they’ve brought up many times over several YEARS (though to be fair, I only started noticing it a few months ago). And yet when solutions were offered, the person either rejected or ignored them.

It can be frustrating from the other end to keep seeing this happen. You think surely if someone is that unhappy or irritated with the current situation then wouldn’t you want a solution?  Why do you want to stay grumpy and complain all the time? I mean why keep bringing it up especially after someone gave you a possible out to the solution?

It baffles me trying to figure out why anyone would want to live like this. Am I the weird one who doesn’t want to be like this? Because I know for me, when I do vent or legitimately complain to someone, I try to make sure that 1) I’ve exhausted all resources I can to find a solution, 2) unless it’s something that can’t be fixed, I try not to keep bringing it up and 3) I don’t let the person who offered me the solution see me keep complaining because I don’t want to hurt their feelings.

So I took to Google to help me find out the reason why. It took me several attempts to come up with the right combination of words.

A “help-rejecting complainer” complains as a way to seek help and support, but then rejects any help that’s offered. Whenever anyone tries to make a constructive suggestion
– “Why don’t you try…?” or “Could you…?” — the help-rejecter insists that the advice is useless. In fact, help-rejecting complainers sometimes seem proud to be beyond help. http://www.gretchenrubin.com/happiness_project/2011/01/assay-a-useful-term-the-help-rejecting-complainer-why-dont-you-try-no-that-wont-help/

After doing more research, it seems that people do this because they get attention. And social media is the best place to for this to thrive. Because now you have the entire world to listen to you.

And in the scenario I described, it makes sense. I don’t know if the person thrives on the attention they get from these joking complaints, but obviously they want to share it with the world if they are posting it on Twitter. I guess I just notice it more because it hits too close at home when I did offer a possible solution only to have it ignored/turned down. And every time I see a complaint/comment related to this, I wonder if they realize I can see this and just don’t care that it feels like a slap in my face or if they never connected the two together and are completely clueless. I don’t understand people.

For most people, they would say just ignore them or block them. Don’t let it bother you if it doesn’t have to. And yes, I realize that I do have that choice. And it may come to that eventually. There’s not really any emotional ties making me have to stay connected to them. They may or may not even notice that I’ve disappeared. When I put it like that, it seems like a no-brainer right?

I think at least for me, I just want to know why. I want to understand why you keep complaining, why you rejected the help, or at the very least or why do want to keep publicly flaunting it where you know I’ll see it. I want to help. But sometimes help isn’t wanted and you need to just let go and walk away from someone who is either that toxic or just plain clueless.

There’s a difference between needing to vent once or having really big struggles that you’re trying to work through. It’s another to just keep complaining for attention’s sake.

And this is the last time you’ll hear me publicly complain about this 🙂