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So, right up front: I don't like arguing about things online. Discussing, yes. But arguing? No. It turns so easily into a lot of hurt feelings, and it's so much harder to walk away. Because if I walk away from a discussion in real life, after a while my incredibly bad memory will erase large portions of the conversation, and I may remember that I was upset--or possibly even what over!--but the specific things that were said that upset me? Unless they were unusually pithy, not so much. I can chew over it for a few days, and then generally let it go. But online, the text is still there. It's all there in its original glory (unless it gets deleted after the fact, which seldom improves matters), often with people continuing to add (or just rehash) points... So every single time I go back to that forum/blog/whatever, there it is again. Being upsetting.
All that said? I'm pondering the matter of the internet pile-on. Someone says X in a way that pisses people off. They point out that X is upsetting because of Y. People who agree with X say, hey, no, Y is entirely wrong, X was right in the first place. And depending on the topic, and how well-read the original person (or first disagreers) are, it sort of...cascades, until every place I go online is reporting on the matter.
And this bugs me! Because it makes it even harder to back away from a discussion. The whole X vs. Y thing was upsetting to me, so I go somewhere else, and hey, there they are, discussing it again. And again. And again. It's popping up on every place I go, and it trickles through my Twitter feed as new people discover it and react, and it's like getting constantly poked in a bruise. Especially because people start explaining the implications, and the implications of the implications, and pretty soon even a topic I didn't really care about is turning into yet another internet hairball about some horrible thing that I do care about.
...and. And yet. Much as this frustrates and hurts and irritates and confuses, and leads to my own irritation, I can't honestly be upset at people for reacting. (For kicking things up a notch? I may think they shouldn't have. For getting hyperbolic, or using dirty argument tactics, or being newly offensive? Oh hell yes. I can be upset at people about that.) Because that's the thing about the internet: everyone is allowed to react.
I mean, if I'm in a room with six people, and suddenly one person does something offensive, all five of us are going to be offended, right? And we will probably all say so. But that's five people speaking up, and hearing each other, and that's...pretty much it. A hundred people in the room? There's probably going to be some audible disapproval! But we don't hear each of those hundred people individually, because we're all reacting at the same time, in the same place. Online, every one of those hundred reactions is distinctly visible, in succession. So a hundred people doing a murmur of "Hey, now" ends up sounding like this massive, unending roar. It's a pile-on. It's disproportionate, a lot of the time.
...and yet. Which of those hundred people do I get to tell, "Hey, you. You don't get to say that you were offended, because 3/20/99 people already said they were"? When do I get to tell people that they should shut up and not say anything about their own experience and reaction, because someone else has already done so? At what point do I have the authority to go tell someone that they should let other people speak for them, and not give their own opinion, because it's been said already by other people who got there first?
I don't think I get to do that. I don't think anyone gets to do that. It's appropriate in specific spaces, yes: if it's seventy-five people on a single blog post, the blog moderator gets to step in and go, okay, beating a dead horse, here. We're moving on. But on Twitter? On their own blogs? People get to talk about what matters to them. And if something matters to a hundred people, they all get to talk about it in their own spaces, if they want to.
Even if it means I'm getting flooded with reactions to something I didn't want to read about more than one or two times.
So. I guess I end up having to put this one in the pile of things that bothers me but is a sign of the internet Working As Intended. I'm allowed to be irritated by it, of course; but I'm not really allowed to be angry at any one individual for wanting to voice their opinion. (I can be upset by what their opinion is, or how they present, but that's a different matter entirely.) So, you know. Learning to cope with the complex and often irritating real world, as adults are supposed to do: I'm working on that.
All that said? I'm pondering the matter of the internet pile-on. Someone says X in a way that pisses people off. They point out that X is upsetting because of Y. People who agree with X say, hey, no, Y is entirely wrong, X was right in the first place. And depending on the topic, and how well-read the original person (or first disagreers) are, it sort of...cascades, until every place I go online is reporting on the matter.
And this bugs me! Because it makes it even harder to back away from a discussion. The whole X vs. Y thing was upsetting to me, so I go somewhere else, and hey, there they are, discussing it again. And again. And again. It's popping up on every place I go, and it trickles through my Twitter feed as new people discover it and react, and it's like getting constantly poked in a bruise. Especially because people start explaining the implications, and the implications of the implications, and pretty soon even a topic I didn't really care about is turning into yet another internet hairball about some horrible thing that I do care about.
...and. And yet. Much as this frustrates and hurts and irritates and confuses, and leads to my own irritation, I can't honestly be upset at people for reacting. (For kicking things up a notch? I may think they shouldn't have. For getting hyperbolic, or using dirty argument tactics, or being newly offensive? Oh hell yes. I can be upset at people about that.) Because that's the thing about the internet: everyone is allowed to react.
I mean, if I'm in a room with six people, and suddenly one person does something offensive, all five of us are going to be offended, right? And we will probably all say so. But that's five people speaking up, and hearing each other, and that's...pretty much it. A hundred people in the room? There's probably going to be some audible disapproval! But we don't hear each of those hundred people individually, because we're all reacting at the same time, in the same place. Online, every one of those hundred reactions is distinctly visible, in succession. So a hundred people doing a murmur of "Hey, now" ends up sounding like this massive, unending roar. It's a pile-on. It's disproportionate, a lot of the time.
...and yet. Which of those hundred people do I get to tell, "Hey, you. You don't get to say that you were offended, because 3/20/99 people already said they were"? When do I get to tell people that they should shut up and not say anything about their own experience and reaction, because someone else has already done so? At what point do I have the authority to go tell someone that they should let other people speak for them, and not give their own opinion, because it's been said already by other people who got there first?
I don't think I get to do that. I don't think anyone gets to do that. It's appropriate in specific spaces, yes: if it's seventy-five people on a single blog post, the blog moderator gets to step in and go, okay, beating a dead horse, here. We're moving on. But on Twitter? On their own blogs? People get to talk about what matters to them. And if something matters to a hundred people, they all get to talk about it in their own spaces, if they want to.
Even if it means I'm getting flooded with reactions to something I didn't want to read about more than one or two times.
So. I guess I end up having to put this one in the pile of things that bothers me but is a sign of the internet Working As Intended. I'm allowed to be irritated by it, of course; but I'm not really allowed to be angry at any one individual for wanting to voice their opinion. (I can be upset by what their opinion is, or how they present, but that's a different matter entirely.) So, you know. Learning to cope with the complex and often irritating real world, as adults are supposed to do: I'm working on that.