The Worst Thing You've Ever Done

[dalekboy]

This piece is not about any one person specifically, it's about the way people are demonised in general.

I want you to think about the worst thing you've ever done. Something, no matter how long ago you did it, that you're still ashamed of. Don't shy away from it, think hard about the nastiest, shittiest, lowest thing you've ever done to someone.

Now, I want you to imagine people in general, and the internet as a vague group, deciding that's the person you really are.

Think about how they would react, how they would treat you, attack you, the things they would write about you - for a single act. It doesn't matter if it was a mistake, deliberate, or if there were extenuating circumstances - they don't care. There's little to no forgiveness out there, almost every time folks talk about you, it will be in relation to whatever it was you did.

How would that make you feel, as the weeks became months and years, and people still brought it up? How would you feel about the fact that no matter what else you did, there would always be someone there ready to bring up that single bad decision and start the whole thing up again? That every other positive act in your entire life would be deemed unimportant or irrelevant compared to this single event.

I'm not saying there should be universal forgiveness. Some people repeatedly do horrid things to others. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a price to pay for a single error, sometimes we have to make amends. But if the only issue you can find with a person is one really bad thing they've done, then doesn't that suggest there may be more to them than that one act?

Remember this the next time the crowd starts baying for someone's blood over a single mistake, especially if you're part of that crowd. Other people are as complex and have as many layers as you do.

You, and I, are not just the worst thing we ever did.

And neither is anyone else.

Comments

[ghoath.livejournal.com]

I'll join the chorus of people who agree with this totally.

I know my (and my partner in evil's) biggest sin is, neither of us are proud of it, and we are still both judged in various ways and scared to go close to that circle ever again. Even the judgee who broke the news to the community of concern has admitted that that in itself was a sin to do, as in respect for myself and my partner-in-evil's long term reputations.

But from what I can tell, it seems to be worse in a hobby society group thing rather than in a disability group. In a hobby society, people seem to find it easier to deamonise people because they feel ike if they push someone hard enough they can push someone out, which of course backfires when that person is strong or brutally stubburn enough to go "fuck this, I'm staying" and then everyone else gets more angsty and miserable, rather than figuring out how to work around that person's faults.

In contrast, my experience of disability groups seems to be that we have to be a bit more tolerant and understanding of each other, because you know that you are going to know, and need to put up with, these people for the rest of your life. Come what may, you can't stop being part of that disability group. So even though you don't agree with a whole bunch of things someone does, or has done, you still have to figure out on what level you relate to them or can be civilised with them, so it doesn't appear that you are having a go at them all the time, because that gets tedious pretty quickly.

Just my ovservations anyway.

It would be an interesting experiment, to have a post where you invite people to annonymously fess up to their worse sin; giving context of the situation without revealing names and places. You wouldn't want people to publicly judge each other as a result, even annonymously, because that could hurt people, but it would be interesting to see what people thought of each other's crimes, when they were faceless. Or you could do it in a way where the rules are, if you post your sin, you open yourself up to having any annonymous criticism levelled at you. I for one would be interested to see what random people who didn't know the people or circumstances involved, thought of my supposed sin.