Why You Cannot Rely on the Kindness of Strangers — Especially on the Internet
This topic is not one that has only recently gotten my attention. This is something I have been aware of for a very long time but have only recently figured out how to articulate. If you are expecting kindness from other people on the internet, you are in for a very bad time.
Let’s start out with some human behavior science and the limitations of communicating electronically where you can only see someone’s words but nothing else. “The majority of communication is non-verbal, composed of body language, eye contact, speech tone and language patterns. Without this information to help us process and categorize information, our minds are left to sort through the uncertain. And, thanks to a leftover prehistoric penchant for fight or flight, being unsure about another person’s intent often creates a negative reaction to a perceived threat” [source: How Stuff Works]. Although these reactions may have saved the lives of our ancestors, they work instead to our disadvantage now when so much of our communication is limited to typed words on a screen. Electronic communication, although not necessarily intended to be hostile, will come across that way due to our brain’s default position of “let’s assume this is a threat until proven otherwise”. We currently live in the safest human world that has ever existed but our brains don’t know it yet. This is because of the pace of human evolution. To put it mildly, continental drift is a supersonic race in comparison to the speed of evolution.
The internet and all our new forms of electronic communication are only a couple of human generations old. We cannot expect people to shake off the survival-ensuring lizard brain behaviors of their limbic systems in just a few short years. If humans could react and evolve and that quickly, obesity wouldn’t be as common as it is today because our bodies would realize that we are not actually preparing for a famine during the times when we overeat. Gaining weight is ridiculously easy but losing weight is difficult because our bodies and brains are not yet capable of understanding that we are living in a time of abundance and that it is no longer necessary to hold on and store all extra food calories as fat for the long winter ahead. If there were shortcuts to human evolution, we wouldn’t be spending upwards of $60 billion in the U.S. to shed unwanted pounds every year.
For the sake of your own sanity, it’s probably best to right now put aside the unrealistic notion that people will not judge you or say negative things to you on the internet. The nature of the internet allows anyone from anywhere to say almost anything. So even though you get to say whatever is on your mind good or bad, so does everyone else.
The risk you take if you are critical online is that you have set the precedent that criticism is acceptable, so you have opened the door for others to be critical back. Remember that on the internet unlike in real life, there are no real negative personal consequences to our bad behavior. Online you can always create another identity or find a new community to interact with if you happen to lose friends or offend people. Virtual identities are ridiculously easy to create and destroy on a whim. We do not get do-overs like this in our real life relationships. Your boss or significant other will not play along if you suddenly show up one day pretending to be someone else and actually expect to be given a clean slate and treated differently. You cannot erase your personal history with others with the same ease of deleting an online profile, which is the main reason why people are tending to live out their destructive fantasies online.
In the prevalent culture of oversharing that occurs online, we are lulled into believing that we know people better than we really do. We may feel that we “know” our online acquaintances even better than some people that we know in real life because of the way we are able to express ourselves in writing. Online we are given time to think and consider and not just react. The problem is we can never really know for sure if we are interacting with the genuine version of someone or a carefully crafted caricature created to gain our trust. Even if we are personally kind-hearted and generous to a fault, it is foolhardy to imagine that everyone else that we interact with online is exactly the same way. Because our own feelings are so strong and so much a part of who we are without any conscious effort on our part, we have the bad habit of extrapolating what we feel onto others. This is a big mistake. We do not all feel the same things to the same degree. The longer you live, you more you will realize that this is the case as what you feel and what is important to you changes dramatically over time.
It’s critical to remember that there has never been another period of time in history where we have had so much access and insight into the abusive behaviors of others. We see ugliness daily, to the point where it starts to become normal to us. If we compare ourselves to the denizens of reality T.V., we seem to be the sanest and most reasonable human beings on earth. The truth is that’s a terrible yardstick! Much of reality T.V. is scripted to be more outrageous and therefore titillating. The fallout is that behavior that was once unheard of in more polite society just a few generations ago is now commonplace, to the detriment of our relationships with others. Social media allows us to immediately share our unkind thoughts with no filter and no thought to the consequences. No wonder the rules of etiquette have completely flown out the window.
What’s worse is that all this access to the bad behavior of others is forever broadening our own personal libraries of cruelty. Schoolyard bullies are now infinitely nastier than they used to be because they have access to the work of other bullies, comedians, and pranksters online. Adults are not immune from this type of aping behavior either. How many times have we seen a perfect comeback on Twitter or Facebook and added it to our own lexicon to fling at someone else later? Our nastiness is no longer limited by our own personal imagination and the people around us are paying the price.
So what can we or what should we do about this? Never forget that you can control your behavior, but not the behavior of others. You can only lead by example. If you lecture or try to correct the behavior of another adult, you will end up aggravating them. If you personally can’t stand it when someone condescends to you, what makes you think that others will enjoy it or take it in stride when you do it to them? If you are not in a position of authority over someone else, patronize them at your own risk. Setting yourself up as a moral authority over others is the quickest way to alienate them. Word to the wise — you aren’t fooling anyone else into believing that your “corrections” are done out of kindness or concern for others. You need to be wary of the fact that it is often patently obvious to others that you are making yourself feel better by putting them down.
It is now more important than ever that every adult is savvy enough to take care of themselves in certain ways in their dealings with other people. The generations of people who came before us never had a Nigerian Prince sending them a personal email asking to send them money, which means that today we have to be that much more intelligent and cynical. Everyone in the world is not given the same chances or advantages in life and as a result, we cannot and should not expect everyone to be fair and kind to us at all times. If you are living a charmed life, you can afford to be amiable. However, it’s dangerous to expect people who are troubled or in pain to be kind to you, even if you are kind to them first. Sometimes you will have to be your own advocate and watch your own back. You will, at times, have to make hard decisions and do difficult things and uncomfortable things for yourself. Our world is not policed by benevolent caregivers who will swoop in and save us from those who mean us harm. If you are waiting for someone else to make the hard decisions for you, you leave yourself open to being used and abused by others. Give away that personal power at your own risk.
The sad truth is that being mean to others can make some people feel good. Hurt people hurt other people. We cannot control or dictate how other humans find pleasure, especially if that pleasure is not derived in ways that are physically damaging to other adults. Laws are built around physical, not emotional damage because there is no such thing as a consistent yardstick for emotional damage. Laws can only be created around discrete, measurable, and objective outcomes that multiple people can agree to. It is important to understand and internalize this because you will need to be your own advocate in the dog-eat-dog world that is social media, at least for the time being. Operate as if no one is coming to your defense under any circumstances for the best results.
Be safe and best of luck out there!
So what do you think, dear readers? Do you have any questions, comments, observations, or insights of your own to share about maintaining your sanity and civility online? We welcome and encourage responses below.
