Mean Streets
Recently, I ended a friendship of 30 years based upon a snafu that happened on FaceBook (FB). Yep. The person posted a comment that I, and others, felt was a bit mean-spirited. It doesn’t really matter what it was. When I saw the comment, I said to myself, oh, boy, here it comes. And it did.
When I saw the after effect of the original post, I regrettably got so angry that I broke my own civility barrier, and called these people out. I’ve seen this happen over and over again on FB, where someone says something a little snarky, and then the feeding frenzy begins. Someone makes a post to top the first post, and so on and so on. My rule is “Never post anything that you also would never say aloud to the person that you may be posting about.” After all, it is called FACEbook.
And this just isn’t me making a mountain out of a molehill. There are initiatives out there to bring this to our attention. For example, there is http://www.facebook.com/CivilityInitiative, which is The Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins that originally began in 1997, as a blend of academic and community outreach activities aimed at assessing civility, manners and politeness in contemporary society. It’s mission is assessing and promoting the significance of civility, manners and politeness in contemporary society.
Then there is: The Civility School, http://www.facebook.com/TheCivilitySchool, which actually offers classes, private lessons, and workshops in modern manners, business etiquette, and social skills. It’s mission is to teach its students, young and old, the transferable skills needed for both personal and professional success.
When I saw this happening several years ago, I went out and looked for a book that dealt with this issue, and I found P.M. Forni’s “The Civility Solution.” It was a very good read, but it is so difficult to follow its advice when you are in the midst of perceiving mean-spirited posts that are both unfair and unwarranted.
I’d rather read a post about the weather, or how fast a brand of paint dries, than to read a discourteous taunt. I have “unfriended” this person after getting an amazingly hurtful email from them. There will be no loss here because I was thinking of doing this anyway. I had tried to reach out to them prior to this, but that was rebuffed by a hurtful interpretation of my posting, which I didn’t know then, but found out later through the aforementioned email. So, I guess it wouldn’t have much mattered. It’s truly sad. It’s like being married to someone and then waking up one day and find out that they are a cross-dresser, not that there’s anything wrong with that — just surprising.
And, if I had it to do over, I would not have changed my postal-attack because I achieved three things: first, they knew exactly how hurtful I thought the posts were; second, in the after-effect, the person who posted the most egregious comment, ended up taking it down — which for me was my main intent. And of course, the third thing was following my rule: I didn’t post behind their backs — I posted to their faces. “Classless” as it was (so said my friend), which is so funny, because I thought their original post was as classless a comment as could be made.
I did not wake up that morning saying that I wanted to embarrass my friend. And my friend’s reaction to my reaction was equally upsetting because they cared more about being embarrassed than their own incivility. I think this scenario plays out everyday on the Internet, and as it becomes endemic to our online society, it is going to cause more incivility. I hear from students that its quite the "mean streets" out there because there is no true face-to-face consequence for the things that are being posted.
When I saw the after effect of the original post, I regrettably got so angry that I broke my own civility barrier, and called these people out. I’ve seen this happen over and over again on FB, where someone says something a little snarky, and then the feeding frenzy begins. Someone makes a post to top the first post, and so on and so on. My rule is “Never post anything that you also would never say aloud to the person that you may be posting about.” After all, it is called FACEbook.
And this just isn’t me making a mountain out of a molehill. There are initiatives out there to bring this to our attention. For example, there is http://www.facebook.com/CivilityInitiative, which is The Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins that originally began in 1997, as a blend of academic and community outreach activities aimed at assessing civility, manners and politeness in contemporary society. It’s mission is assessing and promoting the significance of civility, manners and politeness in contemporary society.
Then there is: The Civility School, http://www.facebook.com/TheCivilitySchool, which actually offers classes, private lessons, and workshops in modern manners, business etiquette, and social skills. It’s mission is to teach its students, young and old, the transferable skills needed for both personal and professional success.
I’d rather read a post about the weather, or how fast a brand of paint dries, than to read a discourteous taunt. I have “unfriended” this person after getting an amazingly hurtful email from them. There will be no loss here because I was thinking of doing this anyway. I had tried to reach out to them prior to this, but that was rebuffed by a hurtful interpretation of my posting, which I didn’t know then, but found out later through the aforementioned email. So, I guess it wouldn’t have much mattered. It’s truly sad. It’s like being married to someone and then waking up one day and find out that they are a cross-dresser, not that there’s anything wrong with that — just surprising.
And, if I had it to do over, I would not have changed my postal-attack because I achieved three things: first, they knew exactly how hurtful I thought the posts were; second, in the after-effect, the person who posted the most egregious comment, ended up taking it down — which for me was my main intent. And of course, the third thing was following my rule: I didn’t post behind their backs — I posted to their faces. “Classless” as it was (so said my friend), which is so funny, because I thought their original post was as classless a comment as could be made.
I did not wake up that morning saying that I wanted to embarrass my friend. And my friend’s reaction to my reaction was equally upsetting because they cared more about being embarrassed than their own incivility. I think this scenario plays out everyday on the Internet, and as it becomes endemic to our online society, it is going to cause more incivility. I hear from students that its quite the "mean streets" out there because there is no true face-to-face consequence for the things that are being posted.
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