Stop Misinterpreting What Your Customers Are Telling You

Digital organisations in India have a particular problem. Regardless of what you do, there will inevitably be someone who thinks you’re wrong. After all, with half a billion voices online, some might disagree with you.

However, at Lokal, we’ve recently noticed one particular reader who has a big problem with some of our news updates. Well, problem might be underselling it a bit.

Satish (name changed) has been launching into foul-mouthed tirades in our comments section, largely ignoring the more level-headed commenters around him, and directing his anger towards the Lokal team.

It would be easy to write him off as an anomaly, if a particular unpleasant one. An angry man. A frustrated man. Maybe even a troll with nothing better to do.

Yet, what if we are just reading him wrong?

The Unwritten Etiquette

The Internet is a different place to different people. To those of us who have been lucky enough to use it for years, we’ve developed an unwritten etiquette, especially on social media.

Twitter is for discussions. Facebook is for friends and family. LinkedIn is for work. Instagram is to discover the world.

Don’t add someone on Facebook unless you know them offline. Don’t like that picture of your crush from two years ago on Instagram.

Of course, there are exceptions. You can slide into a stranger’s Twitter DMs if you’ve built an online connection. You can be personal on LinkedIn, as long as it doesn’t stray into becoming unprofessional.

Yet, these unwritten rules still tend to exist somewhere in the back of our minds. Our collective consciousness and experience of social media has taught us what not to do, and when not to do it.

However, what if you never had the chance to learn any of these social cues?

We’d like to believe that we would all still be the same. But, that’s just not true. We’ve all grown and changed, and our Internet etiquettes have grown and changed with us.

I really, really hope I’m not the same person I was when I first started using social media!

‘Hello World’

The first piece of code anyone writes when they are learning a new programming language is traditionally ‘Hello World.’ Another one of our unwritten Internet rules.

And yet, it’s incredibly apt.

The Internet really is a brand new world. Full of possibilities, you can learn anything you want, and be anyone you want. Best of all, you can meet thousands of people just like you!

It just seems polite to say ‘Hi’ first. I think a lot of us may have forgotten that.

The chat boards of the early Internet were very different from the slicker comments sections and social media pages we see today. Even Reddit, with its simplistic, utilitarian design, feels like a massive innovation compared to the clunky UI/UX of the 1990s.

Ah, for the days when Amazon was just a quirky way to buy a book, and not a monolithic corporation that coerced employees into peeing in bottles to reduce time wasted on toilet breaks. Image rights: Flickr.

The way the world used chat boards back then is very similar to the way the Jio generation of digital Indians use the comment section of a post today. It’s a way to put yourself out there, and see who you can connect with online.

It’s a way to say ‘Hi.’

If Prasanth was introduced to an anxious stranger in his community, he would be more than willing to advise him on how to ace his exams. Jeremy’s status popped up on his feed — why shouldn’t he say introduce himself and give Jeremy the same advice? Credit: Ranker.com.

“I Wanted To Warn Others”

As a video storyteller himself — and with multiple friends working in the media — Satish believes that he has a duty to hold liars in the media accountable.

After all, everyone has heard of the scourge of fake news. Politicians of all hues have decried it. There are too many nefarious actors, hiding behind digital anonymity, spreading lies.

Thus, when Satish sees fake news being published, he angrily comments on the post to warn others and to try to force the publisher to recant.

To be more accurate, when Satish thinks that he sees fake news being published, he angrily comments on the post to warn others and to try to force the publisher to recant.

After a few such rants in the comments section of a few Lokal articles, we contacted Satish to ask him why he thought it was fake. More to the point, why was he using so much profanity to make his point?

“I wanted to warn others. I used bad words because I thought it would get your attention, and you would do something about it [the ‘fake news’ article and the user comments supporting the article].”

Hard to argue with that logic, especially considering I’m using him as a case study for an article.

However, once we talked to him and told him the facts of the article, he seemed a little confused but more willing to understand. When we mentioned that all the commenters were real people whose profiles he could easily check on the Lokal app, he was enthused.

Suddenly, Satish was no longer the lone defender of the truth against the big, bad media publication. He was just another commenter on an article, and he realised that. More importantly, he saw the potential of other commenters too. A community to interact with and talk to and learn from (and, yes, teach to as well!).

Don’t Look At Behaviour; Look For Intent

Satish and Prasanth are by no means unique among the digital Indian diaspora. In fact, they were working from essentially the same accepted Internet etiquette. It just doesn’t happen to be the etiquette that Tier-I Indian has grown up with.

So, what drove Satish to swear us out in the Lokal comments section?

To us, the Internet is intrinsically different from the ‘real’ world. Internet connections are to be talked to, but not trusted. Comments are accepted, intrusions are not. (What constitutes an intrusion, as opposed to a comment, is yet another example of our unwritten rules.)

However, to millions of Indians, that is not their Internet. Their Internet is not a room full of strangers who need to earn your trust. The Internet is their community. To Satish, it was his community to protect from fake news.

Photo by Dario Valenzuela on Unsplash

Additionally, there seems to have been another factor in play.

In contradiction to our unwritten etiquette that people on the Internet have to earn our trust, we believe that the Internet itself can be inherently trusted. If Amazon says they will deliver the item, they will deliver the item. If Citibank says that they will transfer your money, they will transfer it.

This is not Satish’s Internet.

While he may trust the people he meets online, he may not trust the Internet itself. A discount on Flipkart is only believable if his local vendor can offer the same discount. Political news online is only believable if his friends in the media have the same political outlook.

What do you get when you combine an insistent distrust of the Internet with a strong desire to protect your online community?

Someone who believes that he is morally obliged to scream profanities in the comments section of a news article.

Are you unsure of what your customers’ reactions signify about your marketing efforts? What does a hostile user truly want from your offering? You can contact me anytime at tarutr@getlokalapp.com, or at malhotratarutr@gmail.com, and I would be happy to try and help!

You can also DM me on my LinkedIn page or my Twitter profile. I would love to talk to each and every one of you personally!

If you liked this article, please do consider subscribing to my weekly email newsletter. It provides a brief and links for all three weekly articles, as well as some interesting little tidbits for subscribers only!