On public online behaviour

I’m currently in “digital fasting” mode, trying to consume as little content as possible here on the internet. But I do have to be here for work, and so I still end up reading a few things here and there. Some of that content is sent to me via email by random people (always appreciate that) while other is just because I have to open links to blogs that are submitted to blogroll.org. And even though I am not on any social media platform, some of the nonsense that’s going on there still manages to reach me, albeit indirectly. Which is quite impressive, I have to say. It’s incredibly hard to both have an online presence and also completely seal yourself away from social media nonsense. And this is something that’s not going to get better anytime soon, unfortunately. Especially because the idea of a fediverse is blurring the line that separates these worlds.

One thing that’s fun to observe, though, as a very passive and disinterested spectator, is how some patterns of behaviour seem to be platform agnostic. Which is just a very polite way for me to say that dickheads are omnipresent. It doesn’t matter what tech stack they have behind them: if you give them a public way to express themselves, they’ll inevitably shit on everything and everyone and just be despicable human beings, no matter what.

And I really do believe that this is a byproduct of the public nature of social media. I sincerely doubt that they do this in private, because I don’t think it’s as rewarding. By doing it publicly, you can be part of the mob of the day, find yourself in the company of like-minded individuals (that you likely don’t know and might as well hate you in real life), and have fun berating someone. Then pat yourself on the back and get ready to join the next mob.

This is something that’s entirely absent when interactions are moved to private channels of communication. I think it’s incredibly rare for a mob to try to pile on you via email. You can just keep marking everyone as spam, not even bothering to open their messages. And they get no kick out of it. There’s no personal reward to be found in sending a shitty email to someone.

And that is why, even though I had nothing but enjoyable exchanges with everyone I crossed paths with online, I’ll still stick with email and DMs as the way to interact with the rest of you out there. And if you think you have a good argument to make to prove I’m wrong, I wanna hear it. My inbox is open.