Saying things online that you would never say in polite company
Thanks to social media, we all know too much about each other. We broadcast opinions to the entire Internet that a reasonable person would never mention at Thanksgiving dinner.
I only fully appreciated the flip side of this phenomenon very recently, however. As Jamie Bartlett writes in You are not an embassy, and as simple observation proves, social media companies work very hard to motivate us to share our thoughts publicly. More people sharing more thoughts means more readers, more commenters, more fights, more addiction, more ad impressions, and ultimately more money for these companies.
I can't claim the moral high ground here. I was guilty, too.
We know too much about each other because we've been manipulated into saying too much about ourselves. We've been convinced that we should say things online that we would never say in polite company. Is it any wonder the world is so divided?
I know this may seem hypocritical at first. I'm blogging right now, after all. However, I consider thoughts, the platform that currently powers this blog, to be a calm technology. It doesn't beg for my attention. I don't get any buzzes in my pocket letting me know that someone thought I was wrong. Nobody can like or comment at all. As a result, I write when I want to, not when the platform wants me to. I say what I want, not what drives outrage and enriches Mark Zuckerberg. We need more platforms like thoughts… and fewer like Facebook.