I recently witnessed an exchange between two people I regularly "chat" with on Twitter as well as offline. Both are decent people, although they are very different. During this exchange what I expect started as humorous banter, albeit with a serious edge too, quickly degenerated into something far less pleasant. Both had their points to make, but I suspect that neither really "heard" what the other was saying. Matters became worse when other Twitter followers started to take sides, with one even going as far as threatening one of them. I looked on with sadness feeling that I could do little else. Eventually things calmed down but I suspect that by then people had become offended and/or upset.
Initially I was thinking "but why couldn't they see what the other was saying, why was it so important for each to convince the other, why did this seem to inflame people so quickly?" But then it struck me that I had been involved in a very similar exchange in real life a few days earlier. Suddenly my questions became "why couldn't I hear what the other person was saying, why was it so important for each of us to convince the other, why did we get so inflamed to quickly" What a change is perspective that was.
Did I then have a startling revelation that I can share, sadly not! But I did appreciate anew that when I communicate with others my emotions, past experiences and ego are very much part of those exchanges. I am seldom completely logical, even if I would like to think I am and should be. I also appreciated the need to listen and ask far more questions to understand others perspectives. And finally I recognised the need to forgive and ask for forgiveness when I forget the former and end up miscommunicating.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Nice post. I think one of twitter's greatest strengths is also it's greatest weakness and that's the 140 characters limit. That combined with the difficulty in communicating tone and meaning in digital comms it's a recipe for disaster.
ReplyDeleteOf course the problem isn't the medium it's the message and more so the person constructing the message. How many people think 'what would I think if I received this?' before sending the send button?
One of the best calming phrases in speech I've heard is 'Don't hear what I'm not saying' it really makes you stop and think 'what is that person saying then?'