Many of our online communications are far different than they would be in person. Typing away at a computer keyboard, facing a computer screen instead of an actual person, we don’t have the inhibitions and filters in place that limit the content and tone of our words.
When my husband Thom and I were getting acquainted, he was in Hawaii and I was in Florida. Because we had met on-line, we first got to know one another through e-mails. At first our e-mail content consisted of two widowed people comparing notes on the difficulties of single parenting, and some of the well-meaning but unhelpful things that people say and do.
Soon we were sharing stories about our children and experiences that were a little more personal. I looked forward to seeing his e-mail address in my in-box. It wasn’t long before we progressed to the immediacy of chatting via instant messaging. Eventually we had our first telephone conversation. Before we ever met, I already felt I had begun to fall in love with this man, and it scared me to death. What if we didn’t click in person? What if there was no chemistry? What if one or the other of us found the other hideously unattractive?
Several months later when we met in person, we realized that our in-person comfort and intimacy level was far less than our on-line comfort level. I wondered why I had told this perfect stranger about all my childhood insecurities. I would never have told a guy on a date, someone I was trying to impress, about my junior-high cat-eye glasses or my lifetime membership to Weight Watchers. And he had warned me that there was something special about his ears.
As we sat on a bench in the little park we had chosen as a meeting place, he noticed my occasional surreptitious glances at the protuberances on either side of his head.
“You’re looking at my ears.”
“Okay, you caught me.” Somewhat relieved, I continued. “I don’t see anything wrong with your ears.”
With a sly smile, he wiggled his ears for me. Normal-looking ears, check. Warped sense of humor. Check.
After a week spent together, we began to feel more comfortable. We discussed how in cyberspace it is easier to be open and unselfconscious about the things we share. We just celebrated our eleventh wedding anniversary, so suffice it to say, things worked out, but the process was rather daunting.
This brings me to my next point. Sometimes when I read an article online and scroll down through the comments, I notice that people are often very vitriolic in the opinions they share, not only in their response to the article, but also in response to the comments of others. They don’t limit their commentary to the content of the article but often make biting personal attacks on the author or other commenters. Hiding behind the anonymity of a screen name, without the inhibitions of a face-to-face meeting, people seem to forget their manners. Profanity, name-calling and just general rudeness regularly seem to be the order of the day.
Even people who don’t resort to being blatantly unkind can still find themselves being more blunt than they normally would be. In person, if you hurt someone’s feelings, you can see the stricken look on their face and perhaps realize that an apology is due, but when you send your words out anonymously into cyberspace, you don’t have to see the effect they have on others.
Sometimes I’m tempted to respond to an e-mail and say, “Please, please, please stop sending me inane time-wasting e-mails that tell me that if I forward it to ten people something special will happen to me. I don’t believe in that stuff. I thought you were intelligent enough not to believe in it.” Instead I shake my head and hit the “delete” button. With computers, it is easier to say things that are better left as thoughts.
Ghost of del Refugio
There is a funny movie called “Once Upon a Scoundrel” starring Zero Mostel as Senior Carlos del Refugio, a cruel Mexican landowner, hated by all in his community. After he unfairly jails the fianc of a woman he desires, the citizens of his town plot against him. They ply him with liquor one evening until he passes out. They hold a mock funeral procession, carrying his flower- laden body through the village, they lay him to rest in a grave, each throwing a handful of dirt on him as they pass “mournfully” by.
In the morning when he awakes from his drunken stupor and finds himself laid out and six-feet-under, he spits out a mouthful of dirt and claws his way out of the grave only to discover that apparently no one can see him. By agreement, the townspeople have decided that when he reappears, they are to ignore him and treat him as if he is invisible, to see if they can convince him that he has truly died and is with them in spirit only. It doesn’t take him long to realize that this is a situation he should take full advantage of, and he embarks on all kinds of mischief, believing that no one can see him.
When we sit behind a computer screen firing off caustic remarks with only “fancynancy” or “tacoma007” to identify us, we are no different.
Assignment: Be Kind
When I was a sophomore in high school, an aspiring writer, I submitted a few poems to our high school literary magazine. My older brother, Joe, a senior, was the poetry editor, so I had my “in.” My inside contact didn’t work out quite the way I had envisioned. They accepted one haiku for publication, a measly seventeen syllables. Joe explained to me how the process worked, that they sent the submissions around the creative writing class, without the name of the contributor, and all the class members wrote comments on the back of the works, giving a score from 1 to 5 points. He kindly offered to retrieve my submissions so I could benefit from the feedback. (As an author, I still struggle at times with this process.) I suppose I should thank my brother for helping to toughen my hide early on, but gratitude was not my first response. I was devastated. Many of the comments were so unkind that I took all my writings and stuffed them in a drawer and didn’t write anything for about a year.
The kindest thing anyone wrote was “If she wasn’t so hung up on making everything rhyme, she would be just about good.” Eventually I started writing again. I even tried writing things that didn’t rhyme. Feedback can be a good thing, but if it is delivered in an unkind, offensive way, it is not likely to bring about change or growth.
A couple of years later as a senior, I took the creative writing class. My best friend, Julie, was the editor of the literary magazine and I was the poetry editor, following in the illustrious footsteps of my big brother, something I had been doing since I was old enough to toddle admiringly after him. As our class began the process of determining which submissions to include in our literary magazine, I read the caustic comments left by many in the class. Even though I knew the authors would never see them, I could not help but wonder if there wasn’t some way to combat this problem.
Julie and I talked it over and approached our teacher with a plan. We headed to the library to do our research, finding obscure poems by famous authors. We typed several of them up and added them to the submission pile. One of them was an eloquent tribute to postmen, the winged Mercuries of our streets. A few days later, our teacher sorted them out and stood before the class.
“Ray, you just told Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to take a postman and shove it where the sun don’t shine.”
She then proceeded to tell us that we were a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears high school students not world-class literary critics. She told the class to clean it up and keep our commentary kind and that our criticism was to be limited to the writing content and style and reflect the things we had learned in class. She also mandated that from then on we were to sign all our comments rather than just initial them, letting us know that our remarks on the back of the submissions would affect our grade for the class.
We were further challenged by the fact that immediately afterwords, some poor soul submitted a ton of poems, each of them worse than the last, all handwritten in the same recognizable handwriting. It was just my luck that poems that could have inspired some witty commentary and snarky comments from my poison pen came along just as I had climbed up on my high horse. I can still remember a line from one of the love poems.
“Love is a special thing that has its own ting-ling-ling.”
In addition, our teacher gave me and Julie the task of finding something out of all his submissions that we could put in our magazine. He had submitted over forty poems, and she said it would be too unkind not to accept at least one of his submissions. We picked a haiku. I hope having that haiku published inspired him to go on to greater heights, to write a sappy love poem that he used to propose to his wife and that years later they could take out and make fun of. Or something. At least he never had to get back copies of his poems with written evaluations of how bad they were, especially during the high school years when insecurities run rampant.
Or maybe he turned out to be fellow Meridian columnist, Larry Barkdull. Okay, just kidding. I can never figure out how to end a column.
Here is something to keep in mind.
When leaving comments please be kind.
It really is the nicest thing to do.
Someone’s feelings could be hurt by you.
If an awful poem gets this point across,
And the message is not lost,
The world will be a kinder place,
If you respond as if you were face to face.
Wow! It is good to know that after all these years, I’ve still got it!
Susan’s new e-book “A Beacon Light” has just been released, a collection of her Meridian columns, soon to be followed by “Running the River of Life,” a second volume of memorable columns. It is available on Nook and Kindle.
