Social norms and etiquette on the Internet and its relationship to altered behavior and unhappiness.
If you’re not hiding underneath a rock, you’ve likely seen or heard that using social media platforms increases lonliness, depression, anxiety and FOMO (fear of missing out) and that inversely, reducing usage decreases the above social complications.
I’ve been using the internet since the late 90’s, back when the standard modem was a 28.8k. That puts my internet “age” (usage) at around 23 years. For the first 10 years that I used the internet the usage jumped from 36 million to a billion users. I first started seeing viral videos (long before we coined the term) in early 2000s. Rejected was the most memorable to me and I have the video still saved on my harddrive that I’ve backed up over and over to different drives over the past 2 decades. Honorable mention to Peanut butter jelly time, All your base are belong to us and Star Wars Kid which I was fortunate enough to watch at the time they were released and being spread around email chains, bbs and web 2.0 http forums.
Now that I’ve firmly established im a super super old guy (Looking at you teenagers on the internet today) I wanted to talk about how much I’ve changed as a human being since the early days, how much the internet has changed, and how much has (unfortunately) not changed and how unhappy this makes literal billions of humans. For me, I’ve changed a lot due to general maturation, life experience and friction. All are essential in order to evolve as a human in a complicated social society especially compounded by internet usage.
I used to be a troll. Infact, I was a troll well more than 10 years before the term was even coined. I was very young and immature, and I just was not aware enough to grasp that screwing with people on the internet is equivilent to screwing with people in real life. Pranks were a normal part of society growing up in the 80s and 90s (Looking at you jerky boys!) and screwing with people was something I always just considered funny and not completely socially inappropriate. Sadly, it wasn’t until my late 20s that I finally realized what an absolute monster I was to people on the internet. It took quite a few highly frictional situations (me being trolled by others) to finally realize why trolling is so bad. This is common in humans….we rarely reflect upon our own actions until they happen to us, making communication difficult and often pointless with people who have not experienced first hand incidents in which you are attempting to have a nuanced conversation about.
I’ve long moved beyond that stage of behavior but still find my online experiences filled with frustration at both myself, and others behavior towards one another. I “quit” facebook years ago (it was awesome), but realized that I was missing out on major opportunities within private/semi-private and public marketplaces for area’s as they relate to a favorite hobby of mine (Video Game Collecting), forcing me to jump back into the toxic pit of snakes that I refer to as “facebook”. Note that this is not limited to facebook…it includes any social media platform. That could be reddit, instagram, 4chan…whatever crazy place you spin your mental wheels at in frivious conversations with other human beings. They all suffer from the same impact upon your general happiness.
Last night I woke up at 3:30am and couldn’t fall back asleep mainly because I had a epiphany. After 2 decades of internet usage I believe I have finally fully grasped the majority of context as it relates to impaired/negative/aggressive/frictional behavior on the internet. I finally have a analogy that everyone should be able to understand. But before I get to that, I need to lay just a little framework for understanding. I’ve thought a lot about this issue especially in the last 10 years and prior to last night my “birds eye mental view” of communication on the internet went like this analogy -
You go to school and not only do you hear bits of your classmates conversations as you walk by, but you also hear their thoughts. “Hear” is more of a stretch though, its almost as if their thoughts are physically imprinted on your vision field in speech bubbles you might see on a cartoon which converts into thoughts, but stay visible permanantly. If you can try to put yourself in this example you’ll immediately understand how annoying that is. Fortunately, each day you come back to school, those past days thoughts are somewhat “in the past” and therefore disappear of sorts and the new day has new thoughts imprinted on your vision field along with new gossip you overhear, combined with the communication you have with your friends and peers. Still pretty annoying being constantly barraged with others thought bubbles constantly being interjected on your consciousness. Now, when you talk to your friends whom you know well and have previously built rapport and empathy with, its relatively easy-going despite the fact that you cannot see their faces or bodies and therefore body language and behavior/social cues. Despite that, you mostly “get” each other due to the prior rapport built and get along without a lot of friction. Yet, when you try to talk to your acquaintances or new school mates you don’t yet know, there seems to be a lot of misunderstood underlying context and more consequential interactions that tend to have a lot of friction and result in damaged social interactions that translate to real life.
Now, that sums up the way I have viewed the internet in the last 10 years. The important thing to understand here is that human beings absolutely suck at communication without social/behavioral cues. If you want to understand exactly how bad we suck its actually very simple to grasp. Those with Aspergers Syndrome suffer from this literal exact scenario. Common behavior issues documented amongst AS indidivduals is related to an inability to process Social cues, including body language, social distance, eye contact, and tone of voice. Speech pragmatics, including introductions, conversational skills, tone of voice. Non-literal language, including slang, idioms and expressions. Problem solving skills, including how to identify a problematic situation and apply specific learned strategies; how to use prior knowledge to make inferences; how to predict the outcome of different possible actions. Emotional coping skills, including learning to identify feelings of anxiety and frustration, manage stress, and apply effective strategies to respond to their emotions.
Now its very important to not create a false equivalency here. The analogy of internet users being like AS individuals is merely an anology for understanding and is not meant to be interpreted literally. It should help you understand why people on the internet struggle to communicate with each other but it should not be used to claim that people whose communication suffers from the above mentions are suffering from AS.
So take those two pieces of information (School Analogy + AS Analogy) and combine them together to create the blueprint for what my past-self has thought for the last 10 years has resulted in higher friction internet-based social communication. I think I’ve finally figured out the final piece of the puzzle as to why I, and everyone else, gets so freaking annoyed with others on the internet and why we extroverts (myself) especially struggle with this. Let me put this as directly as I can — I am no saint in this. I need to do better, but so does everyone else. It takes two to tango.
The missing piece of the puzzle in the above blueprint has to do with the way human beings perceive themselves, their right to speech as well as entitltement related issues. Its important to categorize and understand the different modes of speech and interaction we have on the internet. Basically, its private, semi-private/public and full public broadcast communication. You are either have a 1 on 1 private conversation with a individual in a non-public view (PM/DM/email/etc), or a semi-private conversation such as having a discussion with a individual on his facebook page, private group or private group setting where others can view and interact, yet you are not addressing anyone other than a single person or persons, and then fully public broadcast where there is no barrier to entry and anyone on the internet can join the conversation. Examples of semi-private/public include but are not limited to private facebook groups, private reddit subreddits and group text/group messaging. Full public could be any internet forum in which anyone can easily sign up to add commentary to a publically broadcasted communication.
Ok, so lets dig into the new analogy for the new and vastly updated Internet-Communication-Social-Dysfuction-Model v2!
You are at university/School walking along the path to your next class. All around you are individuals and rooms which are private as well as public rooms. The private rooms require a invite from the school admin of that room and usually there are rules of etiquette formally posted on the bulletin board when you enter. The indivduals are just walking to their next class or taking a break, similar to you. The public rooms are 2 or more people having conversations which you can overhear as you walk by. These public rooms might have some sign that says “God is dead, change my mind” or “2nd Amendment Rights Group” etc written on them, encouraging those who pass by to step in and interact with the other people in the room.
Now, before we go any further with this example I need to interject a important rule. Regardless of any of the above scenarios, there are social etiquettes that apply in these examples in real life and equally apply here. So for every one of these situations, regardless of private or public, there are few baseline rules that normally apply. Such as -
Rule #1 — Prior to engaging with *anyone* you should introduce yourself and ask if you may join the conversation. I think everyone can agree that whether you are in a public or private setting its socially inappropriate to walk up to a complete stranger or strangers and butt into their conversation as if you know them and just start talking. That is generally considered very rude and if you don’t think so then this may be the first issue you need to address on your goal of becoming a better person.
Rule(s) #2 — General social etiquette rules apply. Be nice and courteous, don’t scream, rage, get violent, threaten, harass, conspire against, spread false information, gossip, etc. Just treat the situation like you would your interaction in a group that you care very much about and you’ll likely be just fine.
Ok, back to the University example. In all cases, whether individual, private or public group (room) settings Rule #1 applies. Infact….this is the epiphany. This is the source of most of my general irritation of others on the internet. Because we do not have global social internet etiquette rules everyone just kind of “wings it” and behaves in whatever way their emotion dictates for that moment. Yet, all of the social etiquette rules of communication and engagement still apply, and most human beings have cultural expectations built around these social norms and will be highly offended and more likely to not or mis-communicate with you if those rules are broken.
For example, if I am giving my opinion about a topic the group moderator in a private room has started a discussion on, that does not mean that I am automatically inviting others into my semi-private conversation with that admin. I say semi-private because even though our words are broadcasted to others (those in the group can overhear us talking) the information was directed at a individual, not the group. The commentary did not start with “change my mind” and I do not have a “challenge me” note written on my forehead. If you decide to jump into the conversation to offer any type of critique or non-validating opinion at all you have just broken rule #1 and I will automatically want to tell you “You were not invited into this conversation, buzz off”.
Now the important thing to understand here is that if you said this in most internet-based situations and I responded like that, many would assume that its me thats being the jerk. Yet, if you take that exact same situation in real life, where someone just walks up to your conversation, butts in, critiques you…it would be perfectly normal to give that person a glare and inform them their thoughts and conversation are not welcome and ask them to leave. It would be just as normal for someone to get really mad and a higher probability for a physical altercation to occur if rudeness is not resolved and instead continued (which is bullying at this point).
The issue at hand here is entitlement and a lack of awareness as it comes to public and semi-public group situations as it relates to social media. If you break Rule #1 and you are a complete stranger to me, you really can’t expect a positive interaction to occur. I will immediately be annoyed by you and not want to give you empathy or the time to frame understanding and compassion. Starting the conversation off with rudeness is the worst way to get someone over to your side of the aise on whatever topic you may be discussing. Usually when people do this to me (challenge my position on something when they are a complete stranger on the internet and im having a conversation with someone else) I will first respond with a polite inquiry, such as “Why do you feel this way”? If this person becomes aggressive, I immediately recognize the situation for what it is — a rude altercation, and seek to distance myself from it (if im being emotionally intelligent), or if im being unintelligent, I will engage. This negative engagement is most frequently seen in men because we are evolutionarily ingrained to postulate and testosterone is a hell of a hormone. No excuses, we need to be better aware of our behavior traits and seek to maintain and control them.
Now fortunately we have a wonderful tool called “blocking/ignoring” on the internet which we don’t have in real life. We desperately need to use it more. If someone starts off with rudeness right out of the gate you can choose to explain why they are rude giving them a chance to understand their behavior better and see if they pivot, or you can just click block right away and be done with it. I actually see no problem with this and this has nothing to do with creating echo chambers. If someone is unwilling to use basic courtesy in their starting communication, its really not likely they will offer you extended courtesy thereafter.
This general rule of social etiquette applies whether you engage with individuals walking to class, groups with private settings and even sometimes in fully public groups. It gets more tricky with full public situations because just like being in the public you have to accept there is a loss of privacy and entitlement that has to occur in public settings. You don’t own the space around you, and even your own sight and hearing can be barraged by others in a public setting (looking at you weird christians with microphones and crazy-people thoughts written on signs next to you). So when you decide to engage with someone in a public group that has a “Change my mind: Water is wet” you can reasonably expect others to try to engage with you as well and you shouldn’t get so offended when those interactions occur. But when you are specifically engaging on a rigid topic with a individual in a non-fully-public setting, there are additional etiquette rules that apply here just as if it was real life and you were physically sitting there having a conversation with a person.
And ultimately, what makes all of this even more difficult is the fact that none of us can see each others social or behavioral cues while having these highly complex etiquette-based interactions in increasingly complex social media platforms. Its very easy to misconstrue the best of intentioned words and to get overly sensitive and to respond negatively. The best way to avoid these highly frictional situations is to apply rules #1 and #2 as well as have empathy for our fellow humans.
I have one last piece of information that applies, and that is to you “free speech” protesting individuals. Your speech is protected against government intervention. Not private intervention. If you say something I don’t like, and it pisses me off, I have the right to tell you whatever I want so long as I don’t infringe upon your liberties. Being a asshole and interjecting your conjecture or criticism on someone who you don’t even know and didn’t even bother to introduce yourself to or ask permission to engage with will almost always result in a highly frictional conversation that will result in nothing but negativity. You can be an annoying twerp and interfere with others communication unannounced and without permission, but you’ll just be viewed as that annoying guy and build a stigma around you.

I know that FOMO is a big part of depression and unhappiness with social media on the internet, but that really has never been my issue. My issue has always been the friction of communication between me and others when we disagree, which has often been my fault just as much as theirs. I need to spread better awareness of proper etiquette and to give people a chance to reflect upon their behavior prior to engagement, establishing baseline rules for communication in open group environments. Again, it takes two to tango and we both need to be better human beings to one another if we are to get along in virtual environments.
Thanks for reading if you got this far. I look forward to not arguing about stupid shit on the internet with you =)
