“If you wouldn’t post a birthday greeting on their page, you should de-friend them.” That was the advice I received from a friend recently. On my birthday, I realized the logic of that suggestion was actually backwards and may have accidentally learned how to appreciate the possibilities for civility in the realm of social media.
For several years I have made a rather big deal about the rise of incivility being directly correlated to the growth in social media related channels and technology. The cloak of anonymity is now almost regarded as an extension of First Amendment rights in the US. I still vigorously reject this notion. Free speech is rooted in the requirement of responsible speech. Going back to the very beginnings of the argument in favor of natural rights, John Locke never envisioned a world where we would exercise these natural rights with no regard for our responsibilities as citizens or a universe absence of consequences for those who would abuse, disuse or tread on those very same natural rights. And yet, here we are in a world where snark and public shaming, charges with no proof and acidic anonymous commentary and gossip are changing the very community fabric that depends on civility.
But this past week I dealt with my own nonchalant attitude towards my social media “presence”. It all started a couple of weeks ago when a friend of mine shared her philosophy on how to tidy up the messy world of Facebook friends. You know this world well. It is the place where people you barely knew in high school (“I am married to the guy who used to date your cousin who was in geometry class with your sister”) or even where someone you might have been tormented by in elementary now wants to be your “friend”. I have written before about how these connections give a false sense of community and an attitude of entitlement between the “friends” we reconnect with. I have personally experienced the pain of receiving advice, personal criticism, finger waving and outright insults from people I friended who maintain a perception of me that is fossilized somewhere back in the Early 8th Grade Pleistocene Era and does not take into account 30 more years of experiences with growth, loss, heartache, travels, education, embarrassments and victories.
The philosophical approach to a better Facebook world is to eliminate “friends” that you wouldn’t send a birthday greeting to each year. As soon as I heard the theory though, it didn’t sit right with me. At some point, someone sent me that invite for a reason. Even with my cynical position on social media and civility, I struggled with the nagging suspicion that slipping out the Facebook back door on these synthetic relationships was still…wrong. Something as trivial as these ephemeral cyber friendships had gotten me to thinking about my part in striving for a more civil world – my own little actions – our little actions that are collectively the solution to civility.
Last year I made it a point to “like” every person’s “happy birthday” comment on my Facebook wall. I wanted each one of them to know that I had seen it – that their well wishes had resulted in a return receipt. I felt good about that. I was taking time to acknowledge them, right? This year something dawned on me at the beginning of my 47th birthday. If civility is a measure of how we choose to respond and interact with others, what if I tried to respond personally to every individual birthday greeting? Not just with a “thanks” but instead with a comment or reference to something relevant to their lives, their Facebook updates, their families, their victories, their heartaches. What if I tried to show them that I was paying attention throughout the year? Here is the scary part – what if I started to interact like this and realized I hadn’t been paying attention? Awkward.
I decided it must be attempted. What an incredible day! Not life changing or cathartic. But it was a day of actual community, on the digital medium I find to be such a contributor to today’s uncivilized personal behaviors. I found that investing a few moments to share an inside joke, a memory or a congratulations was returned with kindness and thanks. I realized that Facebook has surrounded me with friends and family with passions and purpose that I admire. Friends who organized motorcycle rallies to memorialize a family member who passed away. Friends who share the most amazing pictures and fundraising events for an incredible child with Williams Syndrome – a child with an amazing smile, whom I have never met but brightens my mood every time I see the newest picture of his great adventures. Friends suffering through depression, loss and illness seeking a shoulder or a listening ear. Friends sharing graduations and marriages and victories. And they took time to wish me a happy birthday.
It took time and effort. Sometimes my response leapt onto the screen with little thought. Other times it took a few minutes to recall an event that would be relevant, timely and hopefully meaningful to my well wisher. And then there were those few where I realized that I had not been paying attention. And it bothered me. Someone took time from their day and I couldn’t respond with the type of genuine interest that I should have for them. I am sure that critics might scoff at the idea of taking the time to try and stay current with all those friends out there on social media.
But maybe that is the lesson to learn on this birthday. That civility is a product of community, of friendship and of a true and abiding interest in others. These are fundamental truths whether your friend is over the fence or hedgerow next door or in Papua New Guinea. Whether they are reading an old fashioned pen and ink letter or your last posting about your new barbecue grill.
Maybe civility is as simple as telling someone that you appreciate that they think your birthday matters.
Anonymity – Familiarity’s Ugly Cousin and the Bane of Civility
October 7, 2009Is being invisible a good thing?
The availability of information, in both volume and speed, has been one of the key contributions made by technological innovation in fostering incivility. Familiarity, as the old saying goes, does breed contempt. But, the greater threat to civility and civil behaviors is most certainly the cloak and veil that technology now provides to each and every one of us in our dealings with each other.
It is a fascinating condition of the human race; that we embrace both the best and worst that a technology has to offer. While I will spend some time today writing about chat rooms, avatars and hate-speech camoflauged as political commentary – the tendency for humans to use and misuse an innovation applies to stone wheels just as much as it does to bits and bytes.
The lowly hammer; it is most commonly used to build things. Hammering nails and framing houses, or fixing the dog house are natural activities for this technological innovation that took us beyond pounding some form of a peg with a large rock. But, that same hammer on many occasions, has been wielded and brandished as a weapon. Pounding a nail or bashing a skull – humans seem to find the light and dark within every single implement. Guns, axes, dynamite, atom smashing, oxycontin; the list of innovations that we corrupt is as long as history itself.
Computer based technology is no different, but the consequences for civility are just as concerning. The darkest aspect of technology, even darker than our continuous exposure to on-line fraud and theft, is the lack of responsibility and accountability that the anonymity of a virtual personality provides. The disconnectedness of being constantly connected manifests in the tendency for human beings to say things in an internet chatroom or on a comment string associated with a news story that they would never, ever say in the presence of a real live human being.
I’ll use an example to highlight how frightening the veil of anonymity has become, and how easy it is to be uncivil in the virtual world. I could link this posting to hundreds, if not thousands, of comments to news stories. But, a recent story in my hometown is certainly as good as any to drive home the point. On September 23, 2009 the Columbus Dispatch reported on a local speech given by Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. Mr. LaHood took issue with conservative talk show hosts, suggesting that their analysis and rhetoric (“trash talk”) had contributed to a decline in civility.
As I have written before, I don’t find that I learn much about civility by observing or researching politicians or political analysts. We live in an age where conservatives use inflammatory words and phrases but deny that they have any responsiblity for the potential consequences should things get out of control. And, in this same age, liberals are screaming for a more civil discourse and the complete elimination from memory of any of the bad behaviors and vitriolic rhetoric that they leveraged when they were in the minority.
I’m reminded of what Will Rogers had to say about the state of political behavior in the United States some 80 years ago – “I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him “father.””
What I would ask of you is that you read the comments to this news article, as many of the 1265 as you can stomach. Rather than addressing whether Mr. LaHood’s argument is defensible (are conservative talk show hosts contributing to a decline in civility), the comments immediately focus on demanding that the reader subscribe to one political ideology or another. Since I am in the mood for quotes today, the seething anger and vicious statements made by commentators on this news story recalls a point by Oscar Wilde “Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.”
Hate, racism, rants, venom – all of these uncivil aspects of discourse, and more, manifest themselves in the comments to this news story. Many of the people on this comment thread could be your neighbors, friends, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, your boss or your community leaders. Unfortunately, we can’t tell, because no one knows for sure who they are really are. In fact, one of them might be you. With names like “theTruth”, “Troll”, “Legal American” and “Master Yoda” not only are we denied the opportunity to know who is writing, the writer is given carte blanche to be as uncivil as they want to be. Read some of the most antagonistic postings in this thread, and then wonder on whether the person who wrote it would be inclined to say the same thing – verbatim – in church or at a PTA meeting. Would they be so bold to stand up in a meeting of Rotarians, a Chamber of Commerce or a school board meeting and share the same sentiments? Not only is the answer a resounding “no”, most of these writers would be personally embarassed to make such offensive comments in any public setting.
But, the internet changes everything. The upstanding citizen within our community that deems the anonymous “tagging” of a train box car with graffiti that points out any number of social ills in our inner city as a blight on society, sees no parallel to their own anonymous “tagging” of news stories and blog posts in the same light. The graffiti artist is a social misfit (as opposed to an artist), but an anonymous commentator spouting a hate filled response is not? The anonymity of the internet has created an environment where the absolute worst aspects of our human nature manifest themselves; stalking, pedophilia, bullying to the point of driving someone to suicide, revenge postings of nude photographs of former girlfriends, boyfriends and spouses.
If you were invisible, and could not be held responsible for what you say or do – what would you do with such power? Maybe you don’t need to think about an answer to this thought experiment. Maybe all you need to do is re-read some of the postings you have made in the vast anonymity of the internet. Maybe being invisible has made us much less civil.