Social Media is Not Always Very Social

In the past week, I have been yelled at by not one, not two, but THREE different people on Goodreads who claim that I have spoiled a book for them, a claim with which I vehemently disagree. Never mind that none of them have actually read the book yet. Evidently, it's perfectly acceptable to do this, what with the whole Internet thing between you and the person you're attacking. I tried responding with logic to the first two, and I'm proud to say I was not nearly as snarky as I was feeling. Yet, still, I got a third comment saying the same thing. If you'd like to see this for yourself, check it out here  
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20604350-not-my-father-s-son?from_search=true

But the whole thing has me thinking about the use of social media in general and how the ability essentially to remain anonymous is eroding our social skills (ironic, isn't it?). I have a Facebook account, but I haven't used it in years. Oh, I didn't stop because I was concerned for privacy or had anybody misbehaving on my wall. I just thought it was a huge time sucker, and I spend plenty of time on the Internet as it is. Even now, I only occasional reconsider my choice, and then just as a means to see pictures that friends have posted. I do have a second, made-up account in the name of one of my former cats that I use on the very odd occasion to get a coupon or something similar. I do have a Twitter account, but it for work more than anything (at least, that's what I tell myself). I use it to keep up with authors and publishers, and I may or may not have posted a couple of cat pictures there. Oh, and I guess I have to fess up to having a YouTube account. The cats need their screen time.

Otherwise, I stay away from social media. That thing about it taking too much time still holds true. But, really, who needs to know all that? I don't need to know that you're on your way to the grocery store. Or that you're about to sit down to dinner (accompanied, naturally, by a picture of your plate). Or that you got 75% on a quiz about world capitals. My brain only holds so much information. I'd rather talk to friends and family in person, asking how they're doing and, you know, having a conversation. Notice that I said friends and family. When did it become a game to see how many "friends" you could have online? Don't get me wrong. I love getting tweets from my favorite authors and learning more about them. But I'm not foolish enough to think they're following me and my tweets. We're strangers. And it would never occur to me to respond to any of their tweets or posts with some kind of rude or negative comment (I might think it--I'm no saint--but I'd never post it in public).

Yet people are doing this all the time. At the risk of being a bit stereotypical, it seems to be mostly younger people. There's been a shift in what kind of dirty laundry is acceptable to air in public. There are large numbers of people who have grown up laying it all out, mostly on the Internet, and they don't seem to have the same sense of privacy or decorum that used to be so common. It doesn't seem odd to make comments, even mean or intimidating ones, to people they don't even know. After all, they're safely on the other side of a phone or computer somewhere else entirely. This does seem strange to me, in part, because it's not the way I grew up, and it's not the way most of the people I know would talk to other people, online or anywhere else. 

But there's another element of this that bothers me but doesn't seem to bother the people who do it. Once something's out on the Internet, it's out there for good. It can't be unsaid, and it won't be forgotten. It can't be torn up, burned, or hidden away in a closet. And it will be there when you apply for school or a job, when that cute guy goes to Google you before asking you out, and when your kids start searching your name to see what comes up. Yes, sites are taken down and postings and pictures are deleted, but we all know they're never totally gone. Perhaps it's the worse kind of computer virus, the kind that lays dormant but could come back to make you ill at any time. I don't understand why that doesn't make people think harder before they write some of the things they do. 

A couple of years ago, an article in the Wall Street Journal asked this question, and posed some interesting theories. One was that we become more aggressive when we don't have to see the person's response face-to-face. Others spoke to lowered self-control and an enhanced sense of self-esteem on the part of social media users, interestingly, especially in those with close network ties. We have a tendency to build up our profiles a little beyond the truth and so take measures to protect that. Maybe it's not just people we don't know. We're even more likely to display poor behavior to people we know if we're doing it from a screen. 

My story is fairly innocuous, just people complaining because they thought I'd given a way something about a book in my online review that you weren't supposed to know until you had been reading it for a while (for the record, that's I didn't. I'm just saying.). But some of the stories out there are horrific. A waitress in Ohio posted to Facebook about her dissatisfaction with the tips she received at her job (and evidently added a few choice names for these patrons). She found herself fired. Another waitress lost her job when she posted a receipt with a note from the customer, a pastor, saying that she gives God 10%, so why should she tip 18%? When did it get to be okay to call people out like this in a public forum? I'm not commenting on whether or not the wait staff should have been tipped (that note was unnecessary), but who goes and makes it worse by embarrassing them in front of an entire social media community? A 14-year old girl was found hanged in her bedroom after receiving hate messages on her ask.fm page where they told her to cut herself, drink bleach, and kill herself. This is not schoolyard bullying but an attack of the worst kind with unthinkable consequences. A student artist in Maryland keeps a Tumblr page where she likes to post pictures of her work and a lot of selfies. But she's received hundreds of cruel comments including things like "You're honestly one of the ugliest people I've seen in my whole entire life." Luckily, she was smart and talented enough to turn it into a whole new Tumbler post called Anonymous in which she's using the hate messages as an art project. It absolutely boggles my mind that people think it's okay to do these things to other people. And what's really scary is that this may eventually become the norm to the point where there are no consequences for these actions.

I was talking to a colleague about the comments I received on Goodreads, and she noted that as awful as it is, the attitude that it's okay to make these kind of comments prevails, and I'd better get a thicker skin if I'm to continue using it. She's right, of course. It may not be fair, or good, or appropriate, but it's the way it is, and if you're going to participate in social media, you'd better get used to it.

Who knew it could be so dangerous to recommend a good book?