These days I spend a lot of my time online. I have made many friends on Facebook and I spend much of my time chatting to my friends and trying to promote my business through networking pages and groups. I conduct entire conversations through typed messages. And I've come to realise that it's very difficult to convey emotion and tone through typed messages alone. There are no facial expressions or tone of voice to guide you as to the writer's feelings.
My writing style has changed a lot over the last couple of years. As a solicitor (which was my former life) my writing was generally very correct, very polite and rather formal. I never used to use emojis, and I was scarce in my use of exclamation marks - one doesn't want to sound over-excited, you know. And I'd never have dreamed of making friends with people I'd only ever met online - they might be weirdos!
I think I'm still a grammar nerd - it irks me when "your" is used instead of "you're," or if there are apostrophes in places there shouldn't be. But some things I've come to accept are necessary when conducting conversations online. A laughing face emoji can transform a staid reply into amusing banter. A series of exclamation marks can convey a sense of uncontainable excitement - or outrage, depending on the context. Using terms of endearment (honey, my lovely, my dear etc) conveys a sense of affection for others that can help to foster relationships with people you have never met and most likely never will meet.
But still, these tools for adding emotion to the typed words are not foolproof. I've seen countless arguments arise because a relatively innocent comment has been misconstrued as an insult, and then an aggressive defensive response has triggered a spat, rapidly deteriorating into childish name calling, with friends of the combatants wading in to support their side, and innocent bystanders trying to no avail to bring calm and reason.
These types of arguments never end amicably. The issue is never resolved. Normally they just stop when an admin on the relevant page or group steps in to turn off the comments and/or ban all the people whose behaviour they deem to have been unacceptable. Those involved will forever consider the people on the other side as enemies, and if they come across each other again in another forum, an argument is very likely to arise again.
I'm lucky to have never been directly involved in one of these arguments. Though maybe it's due to my non-confrontational nature. On the rare occasion I've had a comment directed my way that sounded rude or insulting, instead of immediately responding to the perceived insult, I've taken a step back and re-read it in a different voice to try to work out how likely it is that the author intended me an insult. And in all cases I've chosen to believe that the comments were well intentioned, and continued the conversation in a friendly manner - and in all cases things have turned out well, thankfully.
So my thought for the day is that maybe we should all give each other the benefit of the doubt; not jump to conclusions; not assume that others are out to get us. And even if someone does say something mean - ignore it, delete it, don't rise to the bait. Life is too short to get upset about things said by a random person on the internet. They're all weirdos, after all.
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