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

Re: I know I know I know.....

[sjl.livejournal.com]

They love to take things the wrong way, and damn you for all eternity if you put just one word wrong.

My opinion here is that you're being a little bit harsh. With an online medium, there isn't (generally speaking) the immediacy of communication. You don't have the flow back and forth of ideas and thoughts; it's more stilted, more delays. There's also the lack of non-verbal cues - the tone of voice; the body language; the facial expression. All of these add an immense amount of information that too many people simply don't appreciate.

So people read something, and the tendency is to read into it what is already there in one's mind. I'm guilty of the same thing: I greeted a friend on MSN with "*doffs hat*"; she responded with a quote from the Two Ronnies. The line following that quote in the sketch was "Get lost" - and I was in a state of mind where I couldn't simply shrug off the possibility that she intended it in that particular way. She didn't, of course; it was just an off-the-cuff quote that was triggered by my greeting. We fill in the missing information in ways that are wildly off the mark, because we expect (at a low level) the information to be there ... and that leads to the misinterpretations and misunderstandings.

So I don't think it's that people love to take things the wrong way, as it is that there are nuances missing from a text-based medium (and even from an audio-only medium, such as the 'phone), leading to unintentional misinterpretations. The end result is as if people love to take things the wrong way, yes ... but I doubt that the majority of people deliberately set out to do so.

And of course, things that make us uncomfortable, like this post, automatically put us in a frame of mind where we're more likely to read nuances that aren't there, because we're uncomfortable, so our minds expect them ...

I'm rambling a bit, and there are probably some things I've overlooked in this stream of consciousness ... just thoughts to ponder (as if there aren't already enough in this post!) None of this is meant as a personal attack, just thoughts that have been bubbling around for a little while.

Re: I know I know I know.....

[bunny-m.livejournal.com]

The end result is as if people love to take things the wrong way, yes ... but I doubt that the majority of people deliberately set out to do so.

Quoted for truth.

Also: I'm slightly jealous that you have friends taht quote TTR at you. ^_^

Re: I know I know I know.....

[sjl.livejournal.com]

One friend in particular - we're both mad Britcom fans. She's suggested a couple that I hadn't considered, and vice-versa ... one of these days, I'll head up to Brisbane (or she'll head down to Melbourne) and we'll have a marathon ... between the two of us, we have a very large segment of the collected output of the BBC and ITV over the past forty or fifty years. More than a little bit of duplication, too, but that's all good.

I think I'll watch a bit more before I go to bed. Just the one ...