It’s quite common to see people get into spirited banter on social forums and for us outsiders it can either make us want to duck for cover or get fired up and add our 2 cents worth. Social media does not play by the same sort of real life social rules and everyone has the ability to be a big mouth from the comfort of where ever they decide to attack from, it’s a new form of guerrilla war I guess, and it’s a global playing field of cowardliness. I’m guilty of it too, but I am trying to learn from it. There’s always going to be someone who wants to take a dig at you, someone who feels they’re some sort of authority on whats right or wrong. Truth is, there is no right and wrong, we all do things for different reasons and I’m sure that if we were face to face with one another and we took the time to understand each other, it might just be a more civilized society after all. But it’s easy to shoot off another cocky reply on twitter than it is to consider for just a second why someone might have said what they did, too much effort to simply send them a ‘DM’ and engage in healthy debate. The reason I say debate, is that when you’re not being shouted at in a public forum, you’re less likely to be defensive and hence you’re likely to have a healthy conversation. Let’s face it, if people spoke to one another in the real world, like they do on social platforms, there would be a lot of people getting punched in the face.
I have adopted a new approach for myself, which I can only hope more people adopt. I’m not saying this is a hard rule and I’m no authority, I’m just a guy trying to stay afloat in the white waters of our technologically driven society. My approach is to say nice things, share great words of wisdom, spread the love. I like to live by “if you have nothing nice to say, then say nothing at all”. I see no point in arguing with people online anymore, and if someone has something to say to me, they need to be polite about it if they expect a response, because I try to live by “do unto others and you expect other to do unto you”. I doubt many people who don’t know me would dare say the things they do to me on twitter or Facebook to my face. So lets all attempt to be a little more civilized online, stop attacking one another, take conversations offline if you care so much to engage with one another.
Stay cool now, there really isn’t any reason to act like a dick!