You are entitled to your opinion, but voicing it can make you an arsehole. That’s the main takeaway from this post, straight off the back. This isn’t really about teaching, more just me ranting about something general. In my defence, I’m on my summer holidays, so I don’t want to think about work right now. You don’t have to carry on reading if you were looking for teacher life content. However, this is something that I think is important, so if you fancy a bit of a PSHE lesson then you might like to stay and learn something.
In true lesson style, I’ll give you a starter activity in the form of a quiz.
Question 1
You see someone walking down the street and you think their outfit is hideous. It’s all mismatched and you’d never wear something like that. Do you:
A) Go out of your way to go up to them and tell them?
B) Point and loudly laugh at them?
C) Silently judge them and carry on with your day?
Question 2
You’re sat on the tube and someone is talking about how the Earth is obviously flat, and anyone who thinks it is round is brainwashed and stupid. Do you:
A) Publicly start an argument with them over it, announcing to the whole train that they are an uneducated idiot, making sure you don’t leave out that you feel sorry for their family for having to be related to such a ridiculous brainless low life?
B) Point and loudly laugh at them?
C) Silently judge them and carry on with your day?
Question 3
You see someone you know and they’ve put on a lot of weight since you last saw them. Do you:
A) Tell them immediately, and when they get upset, explain that you’re entitled to your opinion and maybe they shouldn’t go out in public if they don’t want people telling them how fat they look?
B) Point and loudly laugh at them?
C) Silently judge them and carry on with your day?
Bonus question
You’re at a party and someone you’ve never met, but have decided you don’t really like, is there. Do you:
A) Declare really loudly that you don’t like them - you’re not sure if they’re in earshot, so you assume not and hope for the best?
B) Point and them and make a smirky face to your friends?
C) Silently judge them and carry on with your day?
You get the idea. Now, if I was in the classroom, the entire class would have selected A for every answer in an attempt to be hilarious. If you genuinely answered A to any of these then you are, sorry to say, an arsehole. If you answered B, you’re pretty rude and need to sort your life out/learn some social skills. Hopefully most people answered C to all the questions. The brightest in the class may have worked out where I am going with this. Perhaps you’re thinking “I wouldn’t do any of those options, I’d do something else!” I’ll come back to that later.
To get to the point, my question for you is:
If you wouldn’t say something unkind to someone in person, what makes it ok to say it online?
Spoiler: It's Not.
Obviously, it’s not! So I want to get into why so many people seem to think it is. I sometimes read threads where celebrities have been subject to nasty or hateful comments and I see people saying things like, “it’s to be expected if you’re in the limelight”, or, “if you don’t want people’s opinions, you shouldn’t be in the public eye”, or, “That’s just the way it is, celebrities have to be prepared that people are going to make comments.” How can people not see how wrong this is? Why are we sitting here and accepting that celebrities are becoming the victims of mass bullying and doing nothing about it because they’re famous? Having that response is like saying to a child “I know it sucks that you’re being bullied but it’s to be expected since you get full marks in everything and play the cello. If you don’t want to be bullied, maybe be less successful? It’s the price you pay for being clever, sadly!” It’s not right.
It’s not just celebrities who are the victims of trolling, obviously. It just really bugs me that people seem to think it’s ok because they’re famous. Perhaps they accept that it happens to famous people because they’re successful and they think they somehow deserve it due to some form of twisted jealous logic? Or, maybe they don’t think it’s ok, but they think they can’t do anything to stop it so it’s easier to accept it? Maybe the trolls themselves think the celebrity probably won’t see their comment, so that makes it ok? Obviously that’s still not ok. In fact, this is a good time to emphasise that throughout this whole post I’m not just talking about comments that are directly addressed to someone else, but also any negative comments that are posted about someone publicly for all to see, hence the bonus question in the starter.
The reality is, anyone can be subject to hateful comments, and it has to stop. The classic response when someone tries to challenge a troll is, “I’m entitled to my opinion”, as if they were talking about a chicken sandwich or the colour yellow. When did we all become so insensitive to other people’s feelings that we think it’s ok to share our opinions on human beings without considering how we might be hurting them? Don’t even get me started on calling people “snowflakes”. I won’t go into it, I’ll just leave it as: it’s ok to be offended if someone says something offensive.
Why Do It?
You wouldn’t go up to someone in the street and tell them you think they look hideous, or they’re uneducated, or they’re overweight or whatever, because if you do it in person you have to see the impact of your words first hand and deal with their reaction. Anger is a secondary emotion. It comes from being hurt, upset or embarrassed. If you insult someone online, you don’t see the painful part, just the angry response. It makes you feel better because you think “well, they’re just an angry, nasty person”. You don’t know that it was written through tears, and you’d rather not know that. You also then have time to think of the perfect response to their comeback, which you wouldn’t have in person. Social media has given us a platform to tell someone what we think of them, and has hidden the emotions involved, so that we can be as brutal as we want and we don’t have to deal with it. That is so, so dangerous.
I want to come back to the people from the starter activity who said they would do something else. Obviously in my starter I can’t include every single possible response, and obviously you can still be an “A” person (hole) if you say something unkind but you don’t use my exact words. You’ll just have to reflect on your own behaviour at the end of this lesson and decide for yourself if you think your actions are appropriate. However, if your response was “I would talk to them, but I would be nice about it!” I’d like to welcome you to...
The unsolicited advice and similar entitled behaviour section
of this post.
If you think someone has terrible dress sense and you tell them “nicely”, you still fit into category A. If they get the message, it’s still unkind, no matter how you dress it up (excuse the pun). If you think someone has put on weight and you tell them “subtly”, then that’s still category A. They don’t need you commenting on their weight in any way. If someone is talking passionately about something and you can’t believe how stupid they sound, why do you feel the need to “educate” them? You might think it’s weird that a teacher is telling you not to correct people or share your education, but the fact is, you need to have enough common sense to judge this one, and so many people out there don’t have any of that. Ask yourself, can you really educate this person publicly without coming across as a patronising bitch who is trying to show them up? What are you trying to achieve? Think about this really carefully. Do you think that person on the tube who feels so strongly about something that they’re shouting about it in public is ready to hear you politely spout your facts and figures that you learned from your geography degree to prove them wrong? Do you think, even if they did believe you, they would say “oh wow thank you so much for this information, I’ve totally changed my mind now” and look like a complete tit in front of the whole train? Guess what? Just like no one is going to change your mind about the world being round, because you are 100% sure you are right and this person is ridiculous, no one is going to change this person’s mind either because they are 100% sure they are right, and they think you’re ridiculous. If this person’s speech isn’t changing your mind, your speech isn’t changing theirs either. If someone on Facebook or whatever is talking about vaccinations or whether or not they eat meat or what they think of the Prime Minister, and you don’t agree with them, your opinion won’t change their mind just like theirs won’t change yours.
I will admit, you can give an opposing opinion without being a troll - there are actually ways of doing it nicely and, importantly, privately. However, if the person isn’t ready to hear your opinion then they’re going to be defensive. This is often the gateway to a nasty public argument, and the chances are, that’s all you’ll achieve. Making someone look like an idiot online is not nice, whether you disguise it as being helpful or not. While I’m here, don’t correct people’s grammar either. Publicly pointing out someone’s mistakes is the same thing - it’s a dick move.
So, to conclude our lesson, I’d like to leave you with this piece of homework. Before you post anything online, consider whether you would actually say this to the person in real life. Publicly. Consider whether what you are saying is kind, and think about what you are realistically going to achieve. At school we use the acronym “THINK”.
T - is it (definitely) true?
H - is it helpful?
I - is it inspiring?
N - is it necessary?
K - is it kind?
If you’ve worked through the acronym and you’re still not sure, imagine a stranger said what you’re about to post, to or about, someone you care about. If it would upset you if someone told your sister she “wasn’t even pretty”, maybe don’t say it to someone else’s sister.
Ok, you can tidy away your things and go to break.
Comments