Would You Say What You Write?

There seems to be an escalation of social media outrage at the moment.  Virtual name-calling, mud-slinging and moral indignation is burgeoning.

Last week South Africa was up in arms about racism on Twitter   It all started with one young woman posting a racist tweet and, before many hours were up, that tweet had been re-tweeted countless times, causing a national outcry and ruining the career of that young woman.

This week I am fascinated (much in the same way one can’t look away from a horrible accident) by a number of Facebook discussions which feel – to me – quite a lot like playground spats, but covered by a thin veneer of politeness and adult language.

Why do we use social media to make racist/sexist/homophobic/judgemental remarks?  For that matter, why do we use it to say anything that may be regarded as insensitive, confrontational or inflammatory?   I have no idea what is going on in the minds of others who use social media to express themselves, but I do have a theory about why the virtual environment is heating up so.

Social media (and by that I mean Facebook, Twitter and even e-mail) provides a weirdly paradoxical sense of anonymity and intimacy that results in boundary confusion and blurring.

Even though we have never actually met many of our Facebook ‘friends’ in real life, we feel as though we know them. We know what they are drinking/eating/reading on a daily basis.  We know where they go on holiday.  We know what their preferred form of exercise is and where they like to practice it.  We know where they live and what flowers grow in their gardens. We may even know their religious beliefs and some of their philosophical outlook if we belong to the same discussion group.

We know what they choose to share about themselves in a public forum.

But we don’t really know them – not the private, real, warts-and-all them.  And they don’t really know us. Because we don’t generally reveal our private, real, warts-and-all selves on social sites.

The nature of social networking is that we make a connection with someone without actually seeing them or being seen.  For all its abilities to connect people from all over the world, technology is not yet able to bring warm, live, seeing and feeling bodies together.

Despite our connections, there is a sense of disconnect, of anonymity, of omnipotence in what we say to each other through the perceived veil of safety that distance and invisibility provide.

And it is that sense of disconnect and omnipotence that allows us to write a hot-headed statement and hit the ‘post’ button without giving much thought to the possible consequences.  We become ostrich-like in our thoughts and behaviour, believing that if we can’t see others then they can’t see us. 

But they can.

Being on Facebook or Twitter is like having a conversation with a friend in a crowded coffee shop, or talking to stranger in a supermarket queue; you don’t tell your intimate thoughts and life events to a stranger standing behind you while waiting to pay for your milk because there is a very great risk of being overheard, misheard, misunderstood, and repeated. 

Perhaps the same should apply to social media sites?

If you were in a crowded coffee shop or a supermarket queue, surrounded by people who did not know you at all, would you say – out loud – the sorts of things you write?

Tags: don't drink and tweet | Facebook | facist | social media and anonymity | social media and omnipotence | social media. racist tweets | think before you tweet | Twitter