Why the Way We Write Online Matters
(and the way we interpret what we read online)
I enjoy Medium as a platform because it has in-line commenting and highlighting. This turns a thoughtfully written piece into a conversation piece, something I can engage in with the writer as well as other readers. When a point is made that strikes me as significant, I like to remark on it, to share my thoughts or observations, perhaps a quote that came to mind or a link to a further resource. Sometimes I just like saying I agree with a person and I appreciate their viewpoint. A comment can be recommended, turn into a sideline conversation thread, or even become the spark for someone to write another thoughtfully written piece.
Several weeks ago I read an article by an individual on the importance of men acknowledging that feminism is not exclusively for women and that men play an important role in creating gender equality, just like white people play an important role in addressing racism or heterosexual people play an important role in addressing homophobia.
In this article the author points out that Justin Trudeau’s statement: “It’s 2015” in response to why he created a cabinet that’s 50% women (not to mention inclusive of people in wheelchairs, people with varying religious beliefs, people who are not white and so on) is all very well and good but it’s sad that he’s a shiny Unicorn example.
I highlighted this and commented:
I didn’t write a lot — just two sentences — and it was on the back of a conversation I’d had with my wife where she pointed out this very thing, almost verbatim, about how ‘impressed’ we are with something that, sadly, shouldn’t be impressive. When she said this I reflected on why I thought it was impressive and remarked to her that for me, it was not because a man said it, but that a politician had said it. A few days later I read this article and posted thusly. I didn’t give it much thought after that and the comment, as with many, got a few recommends, but not much attention. After all, I’d simply agreed with the original piece.
Then, a few weeks ago, I had a notification of a reply in my inbox.
Every time I get a notification of an actual comment in my inbox the following things happen before I even see what was written:
My heart feels like it’s just sped up rapidly, my stomach goes all fizzy and uncomfortable, my throat feels thick and swallowing becomes difficult, my mind begins to race with panicky and fearful thoughts like ‘Oh gawd what if someone is angry with me what am I going to do this is so hard why I do I post anything online the Internet sucks afraid, afraid, afraid.’
Which is to say, I get a nice shot of adrenalin and all the fun intensity of an anxiety spike — before I even know the content.
So I open up the comment and the adrenalin shot goes through me again because this person appears totally angry, seems to be attacking what I said and I’m convinced they hate me, I’m a terrible person, but also that they’re wrong and that I have to keep reminding myself they’re a human being too and my fear is ego based and I’m probably not in the best state to be responding to the following:
My first impulse was to delete my original comment — do away with it entirely. I was confused, anxious and not thinking clearly. I just wanted the angry person to not be angry at me. But then, I also didn’t understand most of what they had written in the context of what I had written. It didn’t make sense as on the surface it seemed we should, in fact, agree with each other.
I have been, for just over a year now, genuinely experimenting with how to use the Internet better. I want to make Social Media more social, to be a spark of positivity and kindness in a knee-jerk (emphasis on the ‘jerk’) flood of negative online interactions. I have written about this, done a podcast on it, and my friends are probably sick of me talking about it. I resolved to push through the intensity of the anxiety I was experiencing, along with all the neurotic self-doubt and ego clinging/protection, and take my own advice.
I was going to reply.
First I paced around a bit, muttering occasionally and trying to get some clarity to my thoughts. Then I meditated — not long, just five minutes or so — to get some cohesion going. I read and re-read what had been written, clicked reply, and began to write. I pulled up referential links with language I found to be helpful and precise for responding to such aggression. I injected it with a bit of humour thanks to XKCD. I re-wrote chunks of it. I went back and read the response again, read my reply again, and tweaked accordingly. I added links to relevant articles, like the one I wrote about the Cabinet just days after it was announced, and Trudeau’s emphatic statement on the importance of men embracing feminism.
Eventually, with great trepidation, I posted this:
My palms were sweaty. I closed down my browser, shut my computer and texted my wife. I fretted about a reply but remembered my resolve, the resolve I shared with my apparent attacker, to not respond should they decide to disregard the clarification I’d offered and continue making assumptions about my motivations, opinions and emotions.
And then something happened. I went to check my email and almost right away, there was a reply. And at first the adrenalin shot ran it’s course (again - this was like the seventh or eighth one) but I saw, from the first line of the reply, that the aggression was an illusion.
It was magical. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced online before. It was amazing, relieving, heartening.
I went back and read my first comment, reading the second line dripping with sarcasm:
Personally, what I looooove about this is not that it’s a MAN saying it but that it’s a POLITICIAN.
And I got it. I got how reading tone of voice into something, a simple sentence, entirely changes how we interpret it. And no, there isn’t a sarcasm font. And yes, a lot of the miscommunication, aggression and rage online comes about because of the tone of voice we apply, consciously or not, to everything we read.
This is not a new idea, nor some huge revelation for me, and probably not for you either. This is something I’ve been considering for well over a year: How we write online is akin to how we speak, and unfortunately this gets us into a lot of trouble.
It is no groundbreaking thing to say that written language differs from spoken language. So much of how we communicate in face-to-face interactions comes from the nuances of our body language, tone of voice, inflections, hand gestures and so on. Anyone who has ever written a speech and read it straight from the page knows this, or they do if they’ve been paying attention. I script Everything is Workable but my scripts are guidelines to how I’ll record it because speaking written language sounds stiff and strange, just as reading spoken language sounds floppy and incomprehensible.
The Internet creates a strange paradigm whereby we write how we speak and expect to be understood without the trappings of body language and tone of voice. Two sentences, two pithy sentences, can be so misunderstood because of this paradigm and suddenly, people who agree on something can fall to fisticuffs because of how they ‘hear’ it in their head.
No one is to blame in this situation. The state of the Internet often puts us on guard for sarcasm, aggression and hatred — I know that’s certainly the case for me. It’s why I get that shot of adrenalin when I see a notification of someone commenting on what I’ve written, a pure habituated ‘fight or flight’ response. It’s why I avoid looking at comment sections usually, despite my longing to have engagement and conversation. Too often the conversation dissolves into a ‘Nu uh!’ ‘Uh Huh!’ match that merely reinforces opinions and ideas, dividing rather than uniting or feeding any kind of understanding, compassion or openness to seeing things differently.
It’s also particularly difficult around issues of inequality, which are met with such intense vitriol because of the way we dehumanise one another online, the way we don’t think of it as ‘real life’. It’s an excuse so many people use to justify shouting their racist, sexist, homophobic, trans*phobic, ableist opinions and fears in an online forum. Those of us belonging to such minority groups are walking around with mild PTSD, on the ready for a fellow human being filled with hate ready to do anything they can to keep us marginalised. And because so many of us are marginalised, that’s a lot of people on hyper alert against online aggression, possibly not in the best state of mind to recognise if their words were misunderstood versus being totally ignored or disregarded.
How to approach online interactions and communication differently, how to learn from these experiences, is something I want to understand, something we would all benefit from.
We need to learn to see how someone else’s anger shouldn’t be taken as justification of anger of our own, how this creates a cycle that breaks down communication instead of helping us relate.
We need to learn to take the time to clarify what we mean, to ask questions and to genuinely listen to the responses.
We need to check our assumptions, notice the thought processes that lead to them, become less blind to these processes, so we do one another, and consequently ourselves, less harm.
It may seem a little thing, just one interaction in which the aggression was diffused, but I take great heart in what happened in that exchange. In a matter of a few hours something was deescalated, clarity was found, communication opened up and now I have someone new to follow on Medium, with whom I can have genuine conversations and helpful discourse.
There seems to be an argument that if there isn’t one big groundbreaking solution to instantaneously resolve a complex societal issue, then it’s not worth doing. We need to stop thinking this way. It’s not about suddenly transforming all the people with an MRA viewpoint into people who embrace feminism, or all the people with unconscious bias regarding race into #BlackLivesMatter advocates, or all the people policing bathrooms into non-binary social justice warriors. It’s about the baby steps, the single point of engagement between one human being and another, during which mutual humanity is recognised, respect is given, and common ground established.
Our common ground is that we all just want to be happy, to be seen, to have the same opportunities as anyone else to live a meaningful life. Baby steps are still steps and it’s the accumulation of many that lead to a greater whole that benefits everyone.
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Related reading/listening:
A podcast about recognising basic goodness in ourselves and others, as a way to relate and cultivate compassion.
A podcast about compassion, how to understand what it is and how it works as an antidote to apathy.
A blog about compassion, much along the lines of the podcast above.
A blog I wish I’d written but couldn’t have written better on calling people in instead of calling people out.
