We’ve all watched social media gain considerable traction in the last couple of decades. We’ve also seen it transform over the years from sweet, interesting, witty and clever ‘sharings’ to easily triggered out-and-out hostilities. I am not, generally, a fan.
The closest metaphor I can think of where real life and online behaviour can be similar is when we drive a car. There are similarities: we are relatively unreachable/protected, we need to focus mostly on what we’re doing and where we’re trying to get to, we have to make quick judgements – we can’t hang about for nuance, we don’t experience so directly the impact we have on others and we have a frame of reference about how WE think everyone else should be driving. I am sure I could extend the metaphor, but that will do for now!
Recently I have been running a social media page about the city I live in and it’s been a really interesting journey – not least because everyone (with the exception of the odd person) behaves quite courteously on this page. There have been very few spats! I have been wondering about this behaviour and my thinking is it might be because:
- The page doesn’t have a ‘selling’ motive – it’s purely a labour of love and me (excitedly) sharing my joy of the city I live in.
- I never include strong negative opinions – I mostly report factually.
- I use a fair amount of humour (albeit little leftfield for some).
- I am generally upbeat and positive about the efforts of others.
- If someone writes something slightly provocative or negative, I don’t give it any energy and just leave it ‘hanging’. (The followers of this page appear to also do this.)
- On the rare occasion when someone is abusive, discriminatory or hateful, I hide the comment – so they believe it’s still posted, but is getting no attention.
- I only post about things it’s easy to be positive about – and use gentle humour if something is slightly questionable.
- I welcome all flavour of comments as long as they are (reasonably) respectful.
- I use the ‘heart’ button liberally because I do ‘heart’ people’s involvement and enjoy people’s comments. It’s become quite a community!
However, despite the general positivity, here are some observations I have made from running this page – of others, the nature of online-ness and myself:
The comments that start with ‘shame the…’ and ‘pity the…’
I was once as guilty of this as anyone. These comments make me realise one of the things social media effectively enables is passive negativity. We can really easily share our negative stance about something and do absolutely nothing about it.
The city council where I live is often the target of comments that start ‘Shame the council…’ or ‘Pity the council…’. If the ‘shame and ‘pity’ comments called those saying them to action – we’d soon be getting a lot of things done locally! These ‘dump and run’ comments only achieve putting a little thoughtless negativity into the world (and perhaps a call to raise council tax to address all these shameful things?). These kind of comments seem inevitable but positive action would always be preferable in my ideal world.
Being triggered
Sometimes a post provokes a random triggering in someone and they start to rant from a very personal viewpoint without seeming to 1) understand not everyone shares that viewpoint 2) realise it’s probably not the forum for it 3) not allow others to oppose their viewpoint without at least being slightly abusive and 4) know their sharing is extremely unlikely to have any impact, other than act as another tiny ‘spectacle’.
I realise we can all be guilty of being drawn to a spectacle! It’s what social media often runs on: our responses to ‘spectacle’, shock, outrage, contradiction, provocation, relating-to at the exclusion of others etc. Like the real media, it’s designed to whip us up as it’s very hard not to engage with things that trigger strong emotional reactions.
Online behaviour is just human behaviour with fewer social ‘checks’ and therefore it can sometimes become the most extreme thoughtlessness humans are capable of.
The ‘you shoulds…’
I created the page is to share what I love about the city I live in, in a way I get enjoyment from. I wouldn’t be motivated to do it if I was trying to cater for all tastes. I really don’t expect everyone to want to visit it – it’s very much a take it or leave it thing – like all things we can find ‘out there’ in the online and real world.
However, this doesn’t stop a few people from occasionally telling me what I ‘should do’.
The metaphor I might use here is with art. If someone creates a piece of art and we don’t like it, is it more appropriate:
- to acknowledge it’s not to our personal taste (but appreciate the effort and perhaps gain some personal insight by considering why we don’t like it)
– or –
- proceed to tell the artist how they ‘should’ be creating their art?
– or –
- realise if you think it should be done differently, there’s space for you to go and do it how you’d like it done.
– or –
- as my wise artist friend said, ‘commission me to do it.’ (He actually said, ‘if someone is telling you to do something, it’s a commission.’)
I think should can be received as bossy and dismissive of what you’re already doing, could can be received more pleasantly as a suggestion for consideration. But we all know that.
Bots!
They appear to have left the page alone now but when it first started, when a post gained a lot of attention, bots would rock-up, ‘read’ the thread, leave the most provocative comment artificial intelligence could muster, and then disappear, hoping to have stirred up some anger in its wake.
I didn’t recognise the bots at first but soon saw a pattern. A ‘bot’s’ profile nearly always shows a white man in a suit who studied at Cambridge University. He also expresses much love for his grandchildren – even though there are no two pictures of the same child and looks to have grandchildren numbering in the region of 60.
It’s sad to know that anything has been set up to provoke and possibly trigger demonise deliberately.
The need to be right
This is an egoic trap – possibly linked to any need to appear to be an ‘authority’ on something and/or try to avoid the shame many of us have been made to feel when we’re ‘wrong’. We have to give ourselves permission not to know everything we think we ‘should’ know.
On the page I run, I have learned to welcome corrections. I have started to see a correction offered to a post as collaborative writing and it’s helpful when others take the time to clarify things.
I guess the ‘threat’ we might sometimes feel if we appear to be fallible is that people will dismiss us as an unreliable source – but I figure that’s only true if we present ourselves as utterly faultless and pretend we know everything. That’s undoubtedly a fragile place to exist.
Being told something we already know
Occasionally a spat happens in a thread where someone tells another person something they already know. People regularly tell others something they already know. I guess what’s happening is ‘affront’ by the idea someone has assumed they don’t know something they do know.
I think it might be ridiculous to be at all affronted by someone just being keen to share what they know – certainly online where anybody could be learning from anything posted by anyone!
How online de-personalises everything (being inside the car!)
Social media is so noisy that we have become used to being very cursory with it. Its presentation doesn’t generally encourage us to hang about to consider nuance and we can quickly become impatient with what we see on a screen.
I have realised some people approach my page (understandably) without taking time to glean what it is and what its intentions are. This can mean people make irritated demands of ‘the page’/me that would be an unreasonably expectation if they were making it to a person’s face.
The internet can be irritating and make us demanding of the ‘people’ behind the screen that we might sometimes become inconsiderate towards. We can easily forget/dismiss the awareness/ignore the fact there is often a real person behind some of it too. It’s an anti-empathy enabler – like a car!
Mindset and outlook
The same post can trigger quite different reactions. Many people only respond with positivity, others have a tendency to only post ‘downer’ comments – and there’s everything in-between of course. This is obvious but perhaps what isn’t always so obvious, is how our mindset and/or mood influences what we see and subsequently what we deliver ‘out’ to others.
If a person has an unconscious default stance of nearly always assuming everything they encounter is problematic, difficult, horrible or ‘wrong’ – I suspect that general negativity triggers negativity from others and becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. This will likely impact negatively on their general wellbeing – a spiral down.
When I did a talk about my page to a photography club, I had an excellent example of how the same picture post triggered reactions of polar opposites in attitude. They were entertaining in their contrast.
We do, ‘see what we go looking for’ and that’s totally about the frame of reference we’re viewing the world through – do we tend to be curious about the world and what it might offer and open up or do we see one full of threat, quickly judge it and close things down? It shows in our responses.
Note: I might be over-simplifying in assuming it’s always better to spread positivity – as it’s true that some ‘black hat thinking’ (of Edward de Bono’s type) can benefit a project. Some ‘problems’ do need pointing out. We do sometimes need a ready radar for problems and this does require a slightly ‘yeah but’ approach. But my page is just offering things to look, at not providing problems to be solved.
***
I am sure I will encounter other experiences. I see the online behaviour as simply less inhibited. Same stuff – just louder!