I listened to/read these two pieces by friends lately, and it made sense to me to talk about them together as they both lead me to question how we, that is you and I as individuals, may be causing problems online. Maybe for other people, most likely for ourselves.
I want to discuss the pieces, and then I’d like to make an argument why it is (sometimes at least) worth expressing an opinion online.
My Goddamn Garage (MGG) talks about why it might be advisable to not share your thoughts online, namely 1) you might change your mind and then you have to deal with the fact your outdated views are public property 2) you can’t choose your audience as carefully online as you can in real life, making it more likely you will say any combination of the wrong thing to the wrong person in the wrong way at the wrong time and 3) he compares sharing via social media in particular to standing in the downtown with a bullhorn yelling at passers by.
The last image particularly spoke to me, as I have often pictured the public square of social media this way. I am not sure how others picture their relationship to their audience when they speak/post. Often I am inclined to think they do not consider them at all, but that may be unfair. Personally I tend to imagine my audience as friends in a coffee shop. I have two or three people at my table that I am speaking to, but there are other people in the shop who will overhear the conversation, in whole or part.
Some people may come join the conversation at the table (we can assume this is a coffee shop I frequent often where people are fairly comfortable doing that.) Many others listen but say nothing, staying at their tables or passing in and out silently. Some may smile or nod at what they hear, or glare at me (but the last one is rare in my experience, in real life and online). Many or most people are totally preoccupied with their own affairs and do not hear or pay any attention to me. Some may go and gossip about what they heard. Some may approach me afterward. Etc. But I always have, or try to have, the table audience and the overhearing audience in mind. (Which is not to say they can’t surprise me.) I have spent a fair bit of time at coffee shops in my time, and so I am quite comfortable with this sort of audience. In fact, I cannot say I want a bigger audience. I do not know how I would feel speaking to an auditorium or stadium of people, and I have no great desire to try.
However, when I find myself an audience to others, it doesn’t always feel like a coffee shop environment. Thus I judge by my standards and find myself puzzled by their goals and motivations. Particularly when people are emotional and “political” they sound most like:
- Street preachers in a square with a megaphone (this was a common site in the european cities I lived in, maybe less in North America);
- People with provocative placards or signs on the street (e.g. anti abortion protestors)
- The crazy person who gets on a crowded train car and then proceeds to tell their captive audience loudly why they are going to hell, or to play the accordion (both examples from life)
- The person who sits next to you on public transit and proceeds to tell you what they think about something whether you want to hear it or not.
Now all these things are features of public life, so I don’t believe we should be completely protected from them. I think it is important to go out in public, regularly, and deal with crazy people. I think it is important to give (some) space to your friends and family when they act crazy, profess belief in strange and stupid things, to forbear and forgive with the expectation it goes both ways.
What is a concern for me is when the nature of online communication tempts us to regularly be the speaker with the bullhorn, or the person on the train yelling about hell, or to grab our rude and provocative placard anytime we leave the house for the public space (people who put slogans and logos on your profile pictures, I’m a - looking at you.....except I’m not because I’m not on Facebook. Phew. I don’t miss that at all.)
Speaking for myself, if I am constantly exposed to this behaviour, it becomes hard not to react emotionally to it, and hard not to adopt some kind of contrary position, even if.....and this is important....It never occurred to me to oppose or quarrel with the claim or idea, before.
Example: someone on social media that I find particularly annoying, at least at times, once posted a public survey about a city bylaw. The bylaw itself is not one I care about or find personally relevant. But I was so irritated by her tone and argument (on this occasion and others) that I went and completed the survey the exact opposite of how she asked, purely our of spite. This is not behaviour I want to encourage in myself, but it is just as much me as when I am trying to be rational and fair.
Basically, listening to preachers with megaphones makes me wonder, at least occasionally, where I put my megaphone.
But I don’t really like megaphones! Which brings me to Maziart’s poem. If I don’t want to be the person yelling at others, why not outsource the job? Why not find someone who is willing to do the preaching for me and throw my support behind them?
Again, this is not all bad. It’s enjoyable and enlightening to follow people who have something to interesting to say. But what if they are a bit too good at playing the game? What if, were they to be perfectly honest (which they would never be) they would sound like the speaker in Maziart’s poem? At that point, do I have something to say, do I have an argument to defend, or am I part of an unthinking collective, or at worst, a mob?
I have resolved to never be part of a mob in my life. I do not think this is in any way an easy goal to achieve.
So should we just shut up, as MGG says, or is it sometimes worth it to speak?
Well, I don’t want to shut up, and I don’t want My Goddamn Garage or Maziart, snd many other people to shut up. I wish some would shut up, sure, at least when I’m short on patience. On the other hand, I think it is a good idea to speak/write, and for almost the same reasons that MGG says it’s not a good idea. It’s important to have a record so you can see how you’ve grown. If people do choose to mishear or misinterpret, should there not be a detailed record to check? (This of course assuming no tampering with the record which.....yeah. I know that’s idealistic. The whole business where someone can delete or change the record....that’s a big problem.) I believe you do need to try to say what you think purely for the experience of learning what you think and how it is differentiated from others. I think you need to risk pissing people off. Not for fun and profit, but to learn what pisses people off and why.
I don’t know all the right ways to do these things. For me, I believe slowing down, writing long form instead of for reactions, and choosing mindfully with whom I interact with is a step in the right direction.
* Partial transcript with some edits: (I mostly wrote this out for my own benefit so I still suggest you listen to the original. I left some bits out.) “There’s a lot of reasons I don’t like to get too pissy with people online, or fight with them too much, or call them names, and one of the biggest ones is: that’s me. I’m fighting with myself.
“It’s really easy to just accept the shit your brain tosses your way; to become obsessed with the inner workings of your own mind.....over all the years of my life I’ve learned not to trust myself so easily. I can have complete debates in my head. But if pressed I will give an answer and try not to get paralyzed in indecision. But I have to do that in full knowledge that [over the years of my life] I’ve changed my mind many times and thanks to the internet, I can see what [old me] thought and he’s not such a bad guy; I’d still like to go and have a beer with him.
“So....the person you are hating online now, the person you want banned, the person you want to scream at: it may as well be....yourself.
“Sometimes I’ll hear people complain that they are afraid to voice their opinion on social media.....I have a lot of empathy for that position. But I also think that maybe that’s for the best. Maybe we shouldn’t be voicing all of our opinions on social media. Maybe we should be a little uncomfortable.
“When I first started using the internet for this kind of thing I would just type whatever came into my head and hit ‘enter’: like throwing a grenade into a public space. I didn’t consider the consequences so much, I just figured I was entitled to my opinion like anyone else.
“Unfortunately I have the habit of intentionally stating opinions I think are not getting the airspace they deserve, and predictably I pissed off a few people doing this. At first I just rolled with it, but over time it started to impact my life. Gigs were harder to find, artists in town started to not like me. What was the benefit of this? Should I self censor? Well I did, and I think it was for the best, for me.
“This doesn’t mean I don’t believe in freedom of speech. It means that social media is a whole new world. I can speak to everyone simultaneously, and maybe that’s not always a good thing. I don’t for example, talk to my grandma the same way I talk to my friends or a boss, or a police officer. I don’t set up a soap box in a downtown community and shout my opinion at random passers by. These are all different relationships and situations and each one necessitates a different approach, not because I’m self censoring but because I know and respect the other person and situation at least......I know each person will hear my words differently.....I know my audience well enough to alter the language I use to get the best results.
“....the arrogance alone, of thinking my opinion is so important that I need to voice it publicly. I’ve heard celebrities say things along the lines of “Oh, I’ve been given this platform and it would be irresponsible of me to not use it. But that’s not what I hear. What I hear is ‘My opinion is so awesome and so well informed it would be criminal of me to not share it with you. And it seems too arrogant: it didn’t sit well with me. And if I felt that way about celebrities, then why wouldn’t I feel that way about myself? Why shouldn’t I take a page out of my own book and shut the hell up?” —My Goddamn Garage, imperfectly quoted. See link at top for reference
Great read, thanks for the reference.. cheers.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading and for the conversation!
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