by williamthallis » Wed Sep 16, 2015 3:20 am
Tesseracts,
I've noticed the same. Even the most passive people get treated like they are screaming, and the text based nature of it doesn't help since it lacks social cues. I can empathize to a certain degree, since even getting to be a higher up there means you have to put up with a lot of crap. I didn't even know what the word 'doxxing' was until I saw what happened with John Cheese. After his last column I wrote him a PM telling him how much I enjoy his writing and that I don't get the negativity he seems to attract, especially since he gets so personal with information, which I have a lot of respect for and would probably not be willing to do myself. With that kind of scrutiny, even mild criticism can come across like an insult.
The difference is I have experience playing live music, where you have to deal with hecklers. You play in a bar, you're playing in front of people who have been drinking. It comes with the territory, and you can't just kick them out if they shout something rude. One thing I've noticed that is very different between musicians and writers is that writers don't develop that thick skin because they don't have people staring back at them while they do their thing.
Bucholz wrote a column that brought it up best - even the idiots are right sometimes. I played a gig where the PA kept feeding back, and someone yelled about it and they were right. Not my group's fault, but it was annoying. Not the best way to voice your opinion, but it wasn't baseless. The difference was I couldn't just ban the guy by clicking a button, or delete his voice shouting at me so I engaged him and made the crowd laugh. He shut up, we kept playing.
I can imagine that each time you see criticism, and you have the ability to make it go away with a click of a button, it gets easier to do, since we're human after all. At some point, though, it goes too far and it becomes interpreting any criticism as an attack. It's understandable, but not excusable since other people pay the price. One of the best things I ever figured out for writing was to treat it like a performance - imagine myself reading everything I just wrote to someone while looking them in the eyes, and then seeing how bad I'd cringe, like playing music live when I played a solo too long and I got *that look* from someone. Urgh Icky. It's a good way to catch my own BS.
I forget sometimes writers are sheltered so on my part it's probably my directness that was part of why it did not go well. I prefer to think of it as a miscommunication among people with the right intentions from different backgrounds, that way I don't have enemies, just potential future friends. I always try and look at how I look from their perspective while I'm saying what I'm saying, so I can anticipate any potential unnecessary animosity. It works. Unless I get banned that is... Then I suppose it's time to move on.
“Ever since you’ve joined this PC thing, you just bully people, and wait for people to say anything improper so you can just jump down their throats for whatever words he or she used.”
“‘He or she’ is an agender phobic microagression, Sharon. You are a bigot.”