Clown posts and resisting the urge to 'pile on'

It's too hot. It's too hot to sleep. It's too hot to get anything productive done. It's too hot for my kids to go to school and too hot for them to play in the garden. It's definitely too hot to get into arguments with people on the internet. As far as I can see, that might even be the only benefit of the heat at this point.

Yesterday though, when it was just two or three degrees 'cooler', the urge to get into a row with some idiot spouting nonsense was two or three degrees harder to fight. I managed to hold myself back in the end, but there were plenty of others who didn't. I'm not judging those people, they were absolutely right in what they were saying, but it got me thinking about how difficult it is to stop ourselves from 'piling on' in situations like this - and what the benefits are of shouting back, versus taking the higher ground and staying silent.

The offending post in this case was, as I've hopefully foreshadowed, about the hot weather we're all currently struggling through. Some bloke who works in 'sales' (I'll come back to that, it is relevant) made his statement about how the government needed to sort itself out posting stupid warnings about the heat, how stopping the trains was ridiculous and how the media was just scaremongering. After all, he explained, he'd been to places like Dubai and Spain this year, where they have hot weather all the time... and you don't see them moaning etc. His post was foolish, ill-informed and arguably dangerous - and people wasted no time in telling him as much. Some calmly pointed to the serious risk vulnerable people face in 40-degree heat when they aren't used to it. Others (including a bunch of engineers and Network Rail employees) explained why British infrastructure and transport services don't have the equipment or means to cope, and why closures were necessary. In other words, hundreds of responses essentially explained to him that 'Dubai ain't Derby' (I made that one up).

For a moment, I was tempted to add my own furious/hilarious take. What an absolute, massive clown. Hadn't he heard about the hundreds who might die? Wasn't he worried that putting a post up like this could add to that death toll? What did he know about trains and British transport infrastructure anyway? Didn't he know Dubai ain't Derby? A scroll through the comments though, revealed that all of these points and more had already been made, many times, by people who were angrier, more perplexed and in many cases better qualified than me to do so. Even more foolishly, this guy had replied to quite a lot of the comments, using the standard catalogue of 'oh chill out mate/I was only having a laugh/give your head a wobble/why are you so triggered' responses that are the last hiding place of the out-of-his-depth moron. In short, this fella was already reaping what he had sewn. His boring and boorish salesman-like (I'm coming to it, I promise) tone would never let you know, but he was already having a very bad day... and he was actively making it worse. What benefit was there in me adding to that whole mess? What did anyone stand to gain?

The thing is, we all say stupid things sometimes. The difference is, when we say stupid things to our friends or our family in person, we have the benefit of knowing who we're dealing with. We have the opportunity to recognise our mistakes and back down, change course and move on. We might even apologise, explain we were wrong, we misunderstood, misspoke, haven't eaten, have had a bad day or... look, its just too fucking hot OK? Likewise, our friends and family enjoy the benefit of knowing who we are, that we may not have meant it or that what we said was genuinely meant as a joke. The internet affords no such luxury. Context is very hard to come by. Nuance very difficult to communicate. Your personality means nothing here, the only value is in your cold, hard words and the responses they generate. I've also seen first hand what happens when someone you love makes a (very, very harmless, trust me) joke online and people take it the wrong way. The majority may supply smiley faces, 'lols' and appreciation for your witty remark, but it's the personal attacks, mockery and threats that stick to their bones. It's brutal. And it's tough to see how quickly people forget about the real person behind the profile pic as they furiously twist the knife.

I've talked about my reasons for leaving (most) social media behind and the ways I think my life is better off for it. But my only remaining channel, LinkedIn, can be as bad sometimes (if not worse) than even Twitter when it comes to taking people down who we don't agree with. Sometimes, as with our worldly-wise sales clown above (not yet), there might be genuine reason to tell someone they're wrong - but there may be just as much reason to say nothing. I only saw the aforementioned post because of the volume of comments attached to it, which is how social media works, so chipping in just makes the fury louder and the idiocy spread further (The Daily Mail has made a business out of it). To give you another example, did anyone see that post the other week of the woman who 'saved' that homeless guy by posting a picture of him in genuine distress? Yeah, I bet you did. And did you see the comments? Don't get me wrong, it was a horrible thing for her to do, but she's now had days of strangers abusing her, while the image of this man at possibly his lowest ebb has been spread further and further. We also know social media plays to our own preconceptions and prejudices. I've worked in a couple of places with 'sales teams' who I found to be brash, arrogant and bullish. Really not my kind of people at all. Does this mean everyone who works in sales is brash, arrogant and bullish? Of course it doesn't, that's my prejudice. But its also the vibe I was getting from this bloke - so wouldn't engaging with him with that prejudice in my head only reinforce it?

Social media (I'm told) can still be a place for good, but increasingly it's become a place of pure negativity. However, a platform is only really as bad as its users - which places the responsibility on all of us to do better. I'll probably continue to stare at the clown posts I see on here and be tempted to respond. On occasion, I might even craft a killer put-down, only to think better of it (hopefully) and hit delete. And that, for me, is how we make social media less of a circus. Maybe the idiot behind the post is having a bad enough life by virtue of their idiocy. Maybe the person behind the post is having an unimaginably horrible day because they made a mistake. Maybe our own opinions on what they are saying is the issue, and maybe we'll be outed as the clown if we get involved. For every reason there might be to toot our horn, there are probably ten more why we shouldn't. So maybe we should just walk on by?

Or, maybe I should just go fuck myself. Please let me know in the comments. ??