Is Facebook causing us to disconnect from people?

You have to have a tough skin to write for a big online audience. The feedback is often as brutal as it is swift. But I don’t have a tough skin, in fact my skin is practically transparent it’s so flimsy.

But, along with my delicate (and wrinkled) skin, I have strong opinions and so I have had to learn to deal with a bit of feedback, criticism even. For the most part I am happy to learn from other people, to broaden my view or consolidate it.

But there is a big difference between a disagreement in opinion and the attack of a troll. When trolls attack I take safety in the fact they don’t know me and they surely have their own issues if they think it’s okay to attack me rather than debate with me.

I have always pictured these trolls as sweaty, greasy men (and yes, sadly most of the trolls I have encountered have been men) sitting in the cold, dark basement of an old, dilapidated house, the internet their only contact with the outside world. Maybe it’s a defence mechanism to imagine them this way, almost different beings entirely, people I would never bump into or have anything in common with.

But then the other day I was scrolling through Facebook and I read a beautiful post on a friend’s feed. It was a poem about motherhood and it was beautifully written, evocative and relatable. Until the last line which read “let’s get pissed together soon ok”.

It was jarring and it startled me because I thought it was entirely unnecessary. The whole “getting pissed” thing is a bugbear of mine and I said as much: “Gosh I would have loved that if she hadn’t ended up by saying “let’s get pissed”. Maybe it’s my bugbear as the mother of a teenager but really – we don’t have to get pissed to celebrate or enjoy life.”

Not an hour later and a man I didn’t know commented “Pull your head in Lana Kanaretck Hirschowitz! Save your energy and go fight a real cause! That comment gives you NO right to carry on!”

I wasn’t even upset he spelt my maiden name incorrectly (there is no t).

But I did wonder why he had gotten so angry that I had an opinion that differed to his. Where was I fighting and what cause was I supporting? (other than the right to have my name spelt correctly).

Who was this man to take such offence at the fact that I didn’t love a line in a poem? Even my high school English teacher didn’t get so angry when I didn’t interpret poetry in the same way as him and he was a pretty cranky teacher at the time.
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So we continued

Me: Wow so much anger, my comment gives me no right to carry on? So I should have no opinion because you don’t agree with it?

Him: Enjoy your day sitting there picking out single comments in a great article to make yourself seem more important than you actually are! There was no connotations to the comment and no over zealous political “correctness??” was needed! Anger? Maybe? Maybe not? Probably it’s just people like you just need to be told every now and going. By the way if your teenager develops an attitude towards drinking in hard times based on this atricle (sic) I’d like to offer a solution if I may? There’s this thing called “parenting” its weird and it’s an old and very much forgotten idea! Try it sometime!!‬

Make of that what you will. I think Angry Man has some issues that have nothing at all to do with what I had said.

But what got me most was that we have a common friend.

Suddenly I saw this man who had attacked my opinion, as a real person with a partner and children. He wasn’t bashing away on a computer wearing an old beer-stained vest in an underground basement. He was a dad and a friend and a partner who just happened to engage in a hideous way online. I wondered how he would have responded to me had we been sitting around a dinner table at our mutual friend’s home and having the same conversation.

Today Facebook informs me “The web opened up to the world 25 years ago today! We thank Sir Tim Berners-Lee and other internet pioneers for making the world more open and connected”.

But I can’t help wondering if after 25 years maybe we have it wrong. Instead of social media being this great connector of people maybe it’s actually making us less connected. Maybe we’ve forgotten how to speak to people like we used to do at dinner parties. Maybe we need more time talking and less time typing…

If I didn’t hate crowds so much I would go and find a soapbox…