Don’t forget to vote for me for the Black Weblog Awards! All the info you need is right here.
In this day and age of casual sex, unrelationships, and random hook-ups, the need to keep our business quiet is greater than ever. Twitter, Facebook, and the always-watching streets can blow up your spot in an instant if you’re not careful. And while it’s one thing for us to do dirt, it’s quite another thing to have the whole world know about it.
The obvious solution of course is to hold down the information that you don’t want spread; whether it’s your own dirt or someone else’s. So if your bestie confided in you that she swallowed the seeds of her ex’s ace-boon-coon, you just put that info in the same vault that houses that time you got a little tipsy and went muff-diving with your college roommate. You just lock those little secrets up and throw away the key and your secrets are safe forever, right? Wrong.
Keeping secrets is all well and good, but it is possible to blow up a spot without spilling a secret, and that is by talking reckless. Reckless talk is basically the “everything but” of secret-keeping; you’re not coming out and spilling; but you’re dancing as closely to it as possible and it’s a real problem; especially because a lot of people don’t know they’re doing it.
Not sure whether you’ve ever been guilty of reckless talk? Check out the top four sins of the reckless talker:
1. Veiled hints, random jokes and “subtle” digs
This is a pretty common way to recklessly reveal a secret; but it’s used more often by the trusted confidante of the dirt-doer than by the dirt-doer himself. This is the signature move of frenemies.
Say for example you slammed the man your good-good-girlfriend has been lusting after for years and were dumb enough to confide in her about it. Then the next time you are all out together she starts dropping hints, cracking jokes, and making little sarcastic comments. You’re looking at her extra sideways like – are you trying to bait me out? Yep she is.
2. Bringing inside jokes outside
I have uncovered more than one twitter hook up romance just by watching the “private” jokes fly back and forth between tweeters. Yeah that little bit you guys do about where you call him "Ron" and he calls you "Freddie" may seem like an unbreakable code when your brain has been addled by lust, but it only took me 0.02 seconds to get the reference and conclude that you're playing hide the banana, so you may want to save that for pillow talk.
3. Suspect tweets
Let’s say one of my favourite bloggers is visiting my city for a long weekend. We make plans to hang out and it turns into a hook-up. We decide to just keep it between us and not tell anyone. But the next thing you know I’m on twitter talking about “The bed in @streetztalk’s hotel room is really comfortable”. That’s reckless talk and it deserves a hard slap.
4. Offering of extraneous information
This is another one that is most often perpetrated by an innocent party rather than the person trying to keep secrets. Let me give you an example of what it looks like:
One night a mostly platonic male friend and I were out at a party. We bumped into an old acquaintance of his and he stopped to chat. After a few minutes she says something along the lines of "Oh is this your girlfriend? I'm so excited to finally meet you! I can't believe you guys have been together for almost 10 years and this is the first time I'm seeing you".
Reckless talk! What if I was the jump-off or the next side piece? That woman and her lose lips would have effed the whole flex up for him. There is no need for anyone to be offering up all that information unprompted...that's just reckless.
I’m sure that at least one of you is going to say that there’s no reason to be concerned about reckless talk if you’re not doing anything wrong and I guess that is partly true. At the same time, the same way that you wouldn’t come out and tell the world the name, rank, and serial number of the last dude that visited your honey box is the same way you don’t need to subtly allude to the identity of the last woman who choked on your seeds. There are a lot of people out there who just go around looking for clues so they can gather dirt on people. Govern yourself accordingly.
What about you guys? Have you ever been exposed by a reckless talker? Ever blown up your own spot with reckless talk? Speak on it in the comments.
