Last night I (re)read, “(Digital) Identity in a World that No Longer Forgets”, by Alec Couros and Katia Hildebrandt. I say ‘(re)read’ because I thought I was reading this article, written in October 2015, for the first time… but when I looked at it again today, I saw the first comment on the article was by me. The internet might not forget, but I do!
In the article, this sentence really struck me:
“In a world where forgetting is no longer possible, we might instead work towards greater empathy and forgiveness.”
We need to recognize that people are allowed to make mistakes. Take the time to read the article by Alec and Katia. These things matter when measuring the severity of someone’s digitally inappropriate contribution: Context and intended audience, intent, history, authorship, and empathy (and forgiveness).
If we treat every transgression on the internet with the same level of disgust and anger, then comparatively we are reducing the level of anger and upset over truly appalling and disturbing comments and behaviours. Furthermore, we are creating an unforgiving and un-empathetic society, that does not allow us to apologize and/or learn from our mistakes.
I’ve written about this in my post ‘Resilience #OneWord2020‘, and I’ll end with a quote from that post:
In Online Spaces:
People will make mistakes online. They will say things that are unintentionallyhurtful, or blindly offensive. This is different than someone being intentionally biased and rude. If the slander is intentional, it should be reported. If it is unintentional, even to the point of ignorance, we need to be more resilient about what our responses are. When every transgression is treated with an attack, the most severe/bigoted/rude/biased transgressions are not given the heightened alarm that they deserve. With lesser errors and mistakes, we need to let people have a venue to recognize their errors and invite conversation rather than damnation.
Growing up, I heard the playground retort to taunts, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never harm me.” We are past the era of letting nasty people say whatever nasty things they want, and just turning the other cheek to pretend we are not hurt. This is a good thing. We want to live in a world where that behaviour is not acceptable. But it does not serve us well to treat the attacker like they can not repent or be sorry.
