Q:"I have to ask you something," the young girl sent over gchat. Reflexively he opened a new tab and clicked the bookmarked link to quickmeme, thoughts racing as to which template would be most appropriate to respond with, but then he got another message. "Serious question." His fingers went limp. His expression sobered. His inner Good Guy Greg took over.
Jake C., everyone! (Who hopefully doesn’t mind me posting this publicly.)
My esteemed colleague Loni The Linguist also responded to my complaint thusly:
since you can’t read body language or hear the tone of someone’s voice in digital culture, these are the cues we have to work with
Right, and that friction of intent (combined with the potential for anonymity) is the seed of all trolling, snarking, and asshat-ery online. People can be jerks in real life too, of course, but what troubles me is the way that internet conversations seem to be spiraling toward sarcasm (or irony or meme-ness or whatever you call it) as the default attitude. Our troubled hero Greg is the perfect example: only when forewarned of a serious question does he pocket his cleverness and pay attention. Don’t get me wrong—I love clever gifs/air-quoting/all that and I think people like me just need to lighten up sometimes—but in many cases I sense the kind of one-upsmanship at work where people aren’t ‘listening’ to each other so much as waiting for their chance to make a really ripping comment. Digital culture often seems predicated on speaking (or perhaps shouting), not being spoken to, and I think that’s a dangerous attitude for people to get used to.
Anyway, enough Sean Telling People How To Be for one day. Who needs a drink?
4 Notes/ Hide
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justsoicancomment liked this
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justsoicancomment said:
way to trash my tumblr
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jakec liked this
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jakec said:
Me.
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popcornnoises posted this
