It's really easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment and take a path that leads somewhere you would never intentionally go, and it's especially easy when that heated moment is occurring online. There's something seductively free of normal responsibilities when you're talking to faceless pseudonyms from behind a faceless pseudonym.
We're seeing some really unexpectedly nasty stuff on this site recently, and I just wanted to expand briefly on gchaucer2's diary yesterday from a highly personal perspective. Because I really think we could all use some reinforcement on the concept of "stepping back," as she so appropriately refers to it.
When I first started posting on an internet bulletin board, I was brand spanking new to the whole thing. I'd never lurked on messageboards or seen how things worked on them, ever. And the first place I landed wasn't maybe a real typical kind of board, and it wasn't specifically a political board. It was a relatively small board with some really devoted members which happened to include a forum where political topics were often discussed.
As it happened, most of the members who cared to talk politics back then were extreme conservatives, the kind who talked regularly about their tax dollars going to support welfare mamas who churned out baby after baby in order to get bigger welfare checks while they, the honest taxpayers, slaved to support them. There was one big liberal who delighted in sparring (and flaming) with these folks, but he was pretty much a lone voice in that tiny wilderness.
Until I (and a few other new, female, liberal members) got there. And then things got a little crazy.
We watched how the "discourse" was conducted on this forum until we'd had enough of that, and then we waded in with our two cents. We gave them exactly the same tone as they were using, only we were smarter and better informed than most of the old guard there, and we were definitely wittier and better at writing. And predictably, they went apeshit. We were "nasty," we were "mean," we were "vicious" and "bullying." We were "bitchy!" We were everything bad they could possibly think of, and it was mostly because we were a) women, and b) better at the debating game than the conservatives at that site were. We weren't doing things any differently than they did - they had no qualms at all about getting personal and insulting with the opposition - we were just better at it. At all of it.
But for all that I and my cohorts may have been "right" in what we said and did, that experience still leaves a nasty taste in my memory. I was often unfairly attacked and was certainly unfairly vilified, but I know that I let myself go places that I, as a rational and fair-minded person, shouldn't have gone. Just because my opponent attacked me personally in lieu of refuting my arguments doesn't mean I was right to retort with a matching insult in my response.
The problem, for me, was twofold. First of all, I didn't know anything about internet interaction back then, so I figured that everyone expected that kind of treatment in response to their own actions and knew how to deal with it. The second problem was that I was in serious trouble emotionally at the time, mired in deep clinical depression and (as yet undiagnosed) PTSD, and I just didn't have a whole lot of rational control over my emotions. When someone took a shot at me, I might laugh or roll my eyes and go about my business, OR I might feel it like an arrow in my heart, build up a hugely inappropriate feeling of hurt or outrage, and start firing armor-piercing word bullets at the offending party. God help us all if my response was of the second variety, because it usually resulted in a fucking shitstorm.
And on top of everything else, while I was in the middle of it all, the aggressive response felt good. No, it felt GREAT. There is nothing, nothing in this world, like the feeling of landing a solid verbal punch against the fragile jaw of some asshole who really, really has it coming. Is there? I know you know what I'm talking about, even if you don't want to admit it. It's the reason action movies make big money. We have an instinctual joy in administering brutish comeuppance to the deserving.
The only rub is in determining who is truly "deserving." That's where it gets complicated.
I'm sure that the people who attacked me on that original board felt they were beating up on a horrible, nasty bully who had rough treatment coming in spades. In fact, they were beating up on a fragile person with a serious emotional illness. Some of them even knew that about me, actually, and still said some unbelievably vile things. All because I was saying things that they disagreed with, and because they were upset because they couldn't refute a lot of them.
But I don't blame those people for "beating up on me," because I've come to realize that most of them were also fragile people with serious problems of their own. It was easy to see if you read a little between the lines (or sometimes, they were open about it). We were all "sick" to some degree, in some way.
Yet, we all still had a choice in how we would respond to each other. We could have made the choice to keep our arguments on the facts and not respond to any personal attacks, no matter how nasty someone else got or how far below the belt they struck. The fact that we were weakened by illnesses or stress or personal issues made us more vulnerable to not choosing that path, but it was still visible and available to us.
As crazy and unpleasant as that time of my online life often was, I managed to learn a great deal from it. Today, I tend to try much harder to not only keep my own comments out of the realm of personal nastiness, but to avoid reacting to those directed at me that go there. I slip a bit now and again, but in general, I am fairly successful.
However, I've found it much harder to do in the last few weeks, as it appears many others here have done, as well. Recent events have taken a toll on nearly everyone's self-restraint capacity, but for me, it's been a little more. A severe asthma attack recently forced me to take prednisone, which is something I avoid like the plague, because it has such a violent effect on my mood. The last time I took it, I spent hours on end fantasizing about suicide.
This time, I was already on a more even keel when I began the dosage, so things didn't get as low as suicidal thoughts. I did notice, however, an enormous fluctuation in my ability to control emotional responses. For a period of a few days, I was almost irrational. It took every bit of energy I had to get through a workday without losing it, and whatever I had left to not go crazy on my family at home.
Somehow, I managed to get through posting here without any major flamewars, but I'm surprised at that. Even so, I found myself "letting go" here more than I normally would. And it felt "good" to do it. That's actually how I knew I was starting to lose my grip. To me, it's scary when it starts to feel good to beat up on someone. I know I'm in dangerous territory when I get that feeling. Someone will definitely get hurt, and the person who gets hurt might just be in a very, very bad way in real life.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to kick someone who's already down. Even if they are being an asshole online, they could be in dire shape in their life. The point is, we just can't always tell.
So as I'm starting to regain control over my emotions (thank GOD!), I'm trying to renew my commitment to keeping the personal attacks out of my discourse, even when provoked. I know I will slip occasionally, but I also know that I always have a choice - be a jerk, or not be one.
You have that choice, as well.