In case you haven’t seen it, The New York Times has a new-ish section called Smarter Living that offers pointers on how to be effective in our hybrid physical-digital world. A recent article by Victoria Turk is representative; it highlights the importance of good manners online:
As more of our lives moves online, good digital etiquette is critical. Just as we judge people by their behavior IRL — in real life — so we take note when a person’s manners in the digital sphere leave something to be desired.
The article addresses some of the challenges of operating in contexts made of (written) language:
Both the content of your message and its tone will live or die based on what you type on your keyboard, so the gap between, say, landing a joke and causing mortal offense can be perilously fine.
It goes on to suggest ways in which you can be mindful about your online etiquette; all good reminders.
I’m glad to see major publications like the Times acknowledging the contextual nature of our digital environments. Being effective in today’s world requires that we become adept at operating in places made of text. Minding our manners in these places is perhaps more important than in physical environments since written language is so easy to misinterpret. It also sticks around: spoken words are evanescent, but your online posts will be there for a long time.
While the NYT article doesn’t mention it, for me, an important part of minding my manners online is reminding myself that I’m dealing with other people, not just collections of pixels and metadata. These people — different though their positions may be from mine — also experience joy and suffering and all the tribulations of being human. I’m often reminded of this beautiful admonition from Kurt Vonnegut:
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’