Do You Have a Clue?

Taking a photo of a wood orchid a few years ago.

One of the real problems that I (and most of us) have is understanding each other. It is hard to see the big picture when you know the people involved only somewhat superficially. Just because you work with them and see them maybe monthly at meetings or because you run into others three times a year at one of your daughter's project events, or you chat with someone on a regular shopping trip to a retail outlet, this does not mean you have even a clue about them, about their challenges, beliefs, prejudices, history and/or motivations.  This is because the yardstick by which you measure these encounters is YOUR yardstick.  The nicks and faded numbers on it are from your experiences and your wins and losses.

Our current cultural shift has seemed to drain the swamp of empathy as we are told that most people do not deserve anything they have not earned.  So, I try to work harder at this understanding of people and not come into relationships with pre-conceived opinions of where they get their opinions...

But I do need some help on this one:

I post my photos regularly on Facebook.  I post my photos (the ones that I am most pleased with) on a less regular basis on an Australian website that sells digital art.  I have sold maybe two dozen items and made enough money on all of them for dinner out for two at a nice restaurant.  Clearly, I would have starved as a digital artist.  I only mention this to illustrate that I do take this a little seriously.  As the year progresses I may have hundreds of photos on Facebook.  These go into albums such as family, trips, and my yard, etc.  At the end of the year, I begin to clean all this up both for personal privacy reasons and to protect my artistic work and to just be able to keep track of what is posted and what is not.  The more artistic photos I will post in lower resolution on the off chance that someone would 'steal' them.  My friends ask if they can use them for odd things and I always let them copy and re-use so it is not a hard rule.  

So, now for your challenge and response.  I recently deleted a bunch of photos and posted on FB that I was cleaning up my albums getting ready for 2018.  One of my virtual friends (He is very smart, very opinionated, and I do not know him very well. He worked IT and I rarely saw him when we worked at the same company.) went off on a tangent.  He was furious that I was deleting photos and he said he was not going to comment in the future on my photos if I deleted them, etc.  I commented that I was sorry, but that was the way it was.  I went on in my life and last week decided to re-read that conversation as I was still mystified and the thread was gone!  He had deleted it.  Weird.  I do not care about this person.  We are never meeting in real life.  I am just curious about what would make a person think he had control over anothers' creative work?  Why would he care that his comments on my photos (which were short and flattering and mostly just LIKES) would be gone forever?

Where is Miss Manners when you need her advice?