Careless talk...
This post may be full of contradictions, but there is probably a general feeling I'm going for, at least that's how it presents in my brain as I type.
Not everything you say is going to be perfect and not everything you hear or read from others is going to be perfect, but there are a couple of things we probably should all be aware of before we respond to one of these non-perfect comments or indeed before we respond to the response to one of these comments. Confused already? Read on my online friends.
"It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated." - Douglas Adams
Saying the wrong thing can be bad, it's why we don't walk up to someone holding a weapon and tell them that we just engaged in carnal activities with a member of their family on the hood of their car. There are likely to be severe consequences. This is about assessing a situation. The choices you make may cost your life or at the very least, a few teeth, and so we don't make the comment. The reality is, who the hell would say that anyway unless you were angling for a stoush and were armed to the teeth (the ones you are hoping to keep). So although this is a ridiculous premise, you hopefully get what I mean.
* Don't deliberately pick an argument where you may get hurt or killed.
So there's the extreme end of the scale. There are two aspects to this, namely, deliberately insulting/upsetting someone and the inevitable blow back from that decision.
Of course, these two aspects are in fact variables, and not always dependent upon the other. The reason for this is that the two parts of the interaction are being carried out by two deifferent parties. So whilst Person A may approach the situation with the intent to insult or harm, the person receiving the insult, Person B, can largely choose how to respond to the insult. They can be horribly insulted to the extent that a physical response feels suitable, or they can allow the insult to flow by, like water off the back of the proverbial duck. Irrespective of the choice Person B makes, it is pretty clear that the intent of Person A was to both get something off their chest and the evoke a reaction from Person B.
We're all familiar with this stuff, but these days, where for a large number of us, our interactions are virtual or online, the intent of Person A (assuming we are Person B) is generally unknown. In a world of short form communication (unlike this waffling blog), Person B has to assess a lot about Person A's intent in, quite often, just a few sentences. Marry this predicament with the realities of the world today where people are more black or white in their views, are more set in their attitudes, are quite certain in their perceived place in society (cue the Brave New World memes) and sprinkle in a healthy dose of what a shitty fucking year 2020 has been that everyone is living on edge and well, it feels like a recipe for at the very least, a misunderstanding.
Yeah, I said it, a misunderstanding. Apparently this will make me an arsehole, but add this to the fact that by default, as a 40 something white male, I'm already likely to be a privileged, mainsplaining, sexist know it all with a superiority complex. Perhaps if this is how all this has come across it means I don't know how to communicate...or...you know, the bit in the previous paragraph.
Either way, a while back I tried to incorporate into my appreciation of how people responded to me that attack wasn't necessarily the right way to go. I am a person, (Person A in fact) an imperfect one at that, and so occasionally I will say things in a way that may come across to Person B not quite as I intended. In real life, this used to be okay, because people knew me, knew my INTENT and understood what it was I was talking about. Then some time in the last 10 years, this went a bit awry.
I don't know whether mixing with different people, you know, the sort you meet when you are an adult, as opposed to those you grew up with, made things awkward because of me and my presentation, or whether it was because during that period in which I was developing these new friendships, the world became a suddenly precious place, languagewise...if languagewise is even a world. I trust someone to tell me otherwise.
Anyway, the entire point of this blog isn't to have a whinge, it's to point out that in 2020 and no doubt moving forward, it is much easier to insult people and usually unintentionally, and whilst I know that and you probably know that when you are Person A, we all seem to forget it as soon as we are Person B.
It's actually a LOT harder to change how you speak than it is to change how you respond to someone else. I look at the way I type and it really hasn't changed that much over the years in that it's largely how I speak. A lot of weird thoughts strung together. See, my automatic reaction to typing 'strung' is to think how a lot of the words we say in Australia are pronounced differently in New Zealand to the extent that they almost change the tense of the word. Anyway, I digress (a phrase which should be on my tombstone btw).
We have each got used to the change in assumptive pronouns that we use every day for people. On my chosen social media platform, an awful lot of people list their chosen pronoun in the bio. Quite aside from the fact that online you rarely discuss a third party with another person thus eliminating the need to worry about specific pronouns anyway, we all...mostly all get it. But, social changes are rarely immediate, they take time for people to change their habits. No, I'm not talking about suddenly not being able to murder people...
"Sorry I killed them Your Honour, the murder ban came in last Wednesday and killin' is a habit for me..."
We're NOT talking about that. We're talking about lifelong habits that aren't there because of intent, they're there because they are LIFE LONG HABITS. As discussed in a previous blog, I have trans friends and it took me a little while to not refer to them (when speaking to their parents etc) using the wrong pronoun. It wasn't my intent to say the wrong one, it wasn't my intent to offend and it wasn't my intent to make anyone uncomfortable. Breaking a habit takes time, not a set time, just time. And not once did any of the people I am talking about express anything but understanding and acknowledgement that it's a habit that took a little while to change and get used to. But again, I know these people. They understand my intent.
Now back to whatever I was saying before about it being easier to change how you respond, because in that above example, that WAS something that needed to be changed. There was a change in the parameters. A new pronoun was introduced and so change occurred. With Person A and Person B from earlier, there is no change. Virtually everyone we speak to online is a stranger, even those we converse with on a semi-regular occasion. A stranger with habits, views, opinions, feelings and the ability to choose how they respond to something said by another.
If I don't know you and I read something you type for which I have no other position to assess your intent other than the words themselves, I'm probably then relying on my own attitudes and projecting those onto your words. If there is any ambiguity in your words and I go negative, I really think that's on me.
Online interactions are not the same as real life, but you're still dealing with actual people whose intent isn't always as evil and nefarious as you're lead to believe.
llama
@SirWonderLlama
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