cobbles

Our Ego will betray us all online

Over the years I've often gotten the sense that online discourse exists in a state of unreality. There's a part of you that doesn't believe that what you do in cyberspace is real.

Therefore there are no consequences and when you're passionately engaging in discourse you're taking part in the full exchange of free ideas on the internet. When you're doing it that is. When you get a robust response conversely it's other people attacking you and therefore you must defend yourself.

“Someone is wrong on the internet!” XKCD

What you say online has ripple effects offline. Discussion happens over the breakfast table. The effects continue to ripple out and exist for far longer than you realise. Especially when trust is broken. Reputational harm persists.

An online community is just as real as an offline community. Causing arguments online, engaging in harassing behaviour and then dismissing it as “Drama” is harassment. It's not defending your reputation it is engaging in bullying to argue the other person into compliance or to leave your group.

It's a very Patriarchal thing to do. I see it often on here. I saw it before on twitter. Particularly with Nominet's own campaign against it's dissenting members before an important member vote.

But I'm not here to attack anyone. I promise. This is more of a general call in.

A brief history of what not to do.

Back in the mists of the past, there was a public benefit campaign to bring Nominet back from the Silicon Valley nonsense they decided to engage in. Nominet bought a security startup. They created an office in San Francisco. They were about to put up wholesale domain prices in the UK. Nominet had been walking away from it's Public Benefit beginnings for a long time. Eventually different members who had very different ways that their businesses operated came together in a campaign It was anarchic. No one specific was strategizing on how to campaign on twitter. There was a sort of figurehead, but as far as I know we all had grievances with the direction Nominet was choosing. So we chose our words, posted it on a hashtag to support the main campaigner who did the hard work of reaching out to various members and telling us about it.

Nominet's Board on the other hand, were not careful. Instead they leveraged accusations accusing some of us of being ring leaders. The chief executive and one of the NEDs kept posting when silence and careful PR would have been wiser.

This is where I coined my own personal phrase of “Someone needs to rugby tackle their phone away from them.”

I've seen other more examples since, so I modified it to “Someone needs to rugby tackle the means of communications from them.”

It's a less pithy phrase I grant you. But whenever I see a cis white man , (usually it is a cis white man) going on the attack online against their community it comes to mind. At the point when that person holds any criticism of an organisation to be critical against them personally, they need to step away and calm down. Before reputational damage affects their organisation and the people they work with. We make mistakes when we are angry and haven't learned to harness the anger so we aren't harming others with it.

You need a PR person with empathy

When an organisation gets to a certain size or has a reputational influence over a community there's a point you should consider asking for help from someone who understands your community. If your organisation has kept itself above the rabble with little community work, then you shouldn't be surprised at the criticism that comes your way when you choose a controversial way to go.

While there may be a recent incident that comes to mind, there are incidents in the past and there will be in the future.

I just witnessed continual harassment of a queer woman online over the weekend because she dared to criticise a policy document. I mean did no one consider the optics of that? Or did it get lost in righteous grandiosity and trauma response to criticism? Don't answer that please. I don't need to know your answer.

I know some folks may want to rush to the defence of their favourite. They do good work after all.

Isn't that the sad thing though? When folks boundaries get ignored because they must be proven to be wrong.

You are hurting right now. You are allowed to be hurt and feel. I object to the continual harassment of others in defence of yourself. Our Human Rights end at the point we harm others and you're doing that right now by violating others Right of Association in safety . That's Article 20, in case anyone needs to refresh their memory.

You persisted even when you were asked to stop. That's abusive right there.

So if you're feeling that empathy injury because of my words just now I want you to do one thing before even replying to this.

Stop.

Self care

Step away from the keyboard, from the phone, from the tablet. Go for a walk or a swim or whatever floats your boat. Calm down and take a moment, breathe. If you need to talk to someone do so.

You may find it's better to just ignore me. Consider being wiser than I'm being right now writing this post.

Take this brief lesson and don't engage. It's why despite the many things I've wanted to say this weekend I haven't. I've sat on my hands. Because I know no good can come from fights online.

But what you've done and will continue to do is make it so that no one will trust you to have that conversation about this issue. But perhaps you wanted no dissenters to your decision or policy. Perhaps you wanted everyone's compliance. Perhaps you get your rocks off from the libertarian idea of free speech before safety.

Consequences

At the moment you are unsafe to be around and there will be a road back to forgiveness, but I suspect that's a road you are unwilling to take. Other's have taken that road. It's a long and difficult road and it starts with you taking accountability for your actions.

As things stand, where we are right now is that some of the wider community will no longer trust you or your colleagues as an institution.

Gradually we will create our own organisations to advocate for us. Which is better. Coalition building is only possible if you can negotiate. You could respond that's your job, it's what you do. But this post and other's posts online show you can't negotiate at all. This is a failure to build community or maintain community with folks who did want to be your allies and who wanted you to be their ally.

You've never aimed to build that community in my spaces or to do so with the wider community. It takes large and small acts, I've seen you have disdain for the wider community. Which is understandable. FOSS is full of abusers and I never thought you'd be the person to cause harm. I'm sad about that.

I never thought I'd see you as unsafe to be around.

You've failed at this point in time and I suspect labelled many of us as cranks in your head and to your friends in private.

You've failed our community and your friends failed you as well. Someone in your circle should have persuaded you away from the means of communication. No one's strong enough to do so and that's a real shame.

No, that's wrong.

You have no one around you that you will listen to. Although perhaps they supported your decision to defend yourself the way you have. I'm disappointed in them as well.

So I repeat:

Step away from the keyboard and take a breath for yourself

You've not just done reputational damage to yourself. You've done it to your organisation and broken the trust of everyone in your organisation and the community that supports that organisation.

You aren't the first to do this. You won't be the last.

You only get real community engagement by having empathy for everyone in the community. You don't do this by “debate” and “owning your opponents.”

I have empathy for you and the trauma that's currently leading you to spread that trauma. It still doesn't excuse the harassment.

Sadly this post will be seen as a personal attack, but it will be evergreen. There's always going to be someone online who activates my empathy as I wish someone at this point in time persuaded them to put down the phone.

I wish we were all better than this.

Community thoughts and a wish for accessibility affordances – @onepict@chaos.social