I wrote this blog earlier this week which can be summarised as follows:
The distinction between the public and private sphere is melting away due to social media.
Essentially, ‘pub chat’, ‘locker-room chat’, and ‘meeting-room chat’, have all become ‘posting’.
And therefore, we should not condemn someone for saying something on Twitter that we would find acceptable for them to say in the pub with their mates.
However, what happens if someone does say something you think is worthy of condemnation or derision? In the pub, you challenge them. At most, you cause a scene in which 20 people are witnesses who might get involved and join your side or theirs (sounds pretty messy, but it’s an extreme case).
If you challenge someone online, you have the potential to invite hundreds and thousands of witnesses, and the bar for them to get involved is much lower. This isn’t an extreme case. ‘Pile-ons’ as they’re known, are pretty common on platforms like Twitter. And they’re as awful as you’d imagine.
In response to my blog, some people have made the argument that it would have been ok for Daniel Grainger to say Birmingham ‘is a dump’ privately, say to his friends, but not ok for him for him to express this view publicly.
I had argued that it’s either ok to say something, or it’s not. My view was that it does not matter if it’s the public sphere or private sphere (behind an open account or locked account, for example).
But how about if you were a poster challenging Daniel Grainger? What if your view was that Grainger is a despicable snob who should be told how wrong and horrid his comments were?
Now, according to my line, if it is perfectly fine to challenge Grainger in private then it would be fine to challenge him on Twitter.
However, the outcomes would be very different.
Overhear Grainger’s comments in New Street station and you call him a snob tw*t and that’s the end of it. See his tweets online and call him a snob tw*t and you help perpetuate his hounding, you act as one of hundreds of others, and you signal (inadvertently or not) to others to come and join in too.
So the dynamics of posting publicly online and saying something in private, are inherently different.
Maybe, we shouldn’t be able to be ourselves online after all?
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