July 8, 2009

• Learn to Depersonalize

  Often we draw the line in arguments on the idea that you ought not argue, out not defend yourself, ought not fight back when someone does or says something cruel to you, or bates you, or attacks you. We say we should not butt in, when our friends are attacked or ridiculed. We say that escalation is wrong. Turn the other cheek. Can’t we all just get along?

  I’ve often rejected those kinds of reasoning. Far too often, such behaviors effectively allow the assholes to win. Trolling continues. Bullies still bully. People continue to get hurt. Nothing changes.

  But there is some truth to the idea. I think it’s based on something important. The fact is, when people attack often what they are looking for IS the attention. That is when you fight back, you give them what they want. You give them a bigger audience. A bigger microphone. And hence, ultimately, even more power to hurt and harm. Often anything your angry words in reaction to what they say will do to them is, in their minds, a very small price to pay for the increased exposure.

  That leaves only two options left. One is to do something so horrible to the person that it is far too costly for them to continue with their abusiveness. That happens sometimes. It’s pretty hard to do online. In real life it usually involves someone going and beating the crap out of the bully to such an extreme extent that the bully becomes afraid of continuing. It’s a gamble, and it might not work. Some bully’s are smart enough to turn a non-fatal beating to their advantage. But it often does work because as they say many bullies are cowards deep down.

  Online it’s much harder to cause enough harm to discourage continued abusiveness. It’s extremely difficult to do on your own. You either need a powerful authority to help or you need to get a lot of people to help. And then what you do is something like a DDOS attack. Shutdown their website or make it expensive for them to run. Or in the world of an online forum you effectively run the person out of town by having EVERYONE attack the one person, relentlessly and obsessively to the point where being a part of the community becomes un-fun for the person. They go elsewhere looking for better targets. There are other mechanisms. You can run a big con-job against the person. You can setup an elaborate hoax. You can try to infect the person’s computer with a virus. But most likely the direct group abuse approach is most likely the most effective. In effect, you do an online mob lynching and run the offending individual out of town.

  If you’re at all like me this kind of solution strikes you as no better than the problem itself. Basically it raises the degree of cruelty in the environment overall. And there will be collatoral damage. People will even when they agree that the target is a bully or in the wrong find the mechanism through which they were dealt with unsettling. Further it is natural to when subjected to such an environment develop fears that you might be next on the community chopping block. Who knows when they might happen to not like something YOU said or decide to mark YOU as a troll.  These kinds of mob mentalities can easily get out of control. Each seeming moral victory emboldens the crowd and makes the threshold of what is offensive enough to warrant a community response lower.

  There’s actually an even deeper risk inherent in this kind of a solution. Mobs are just natural inherently manipulatable. A group of people once brought together even if it is to depose a monstrous individual can very often easily be manipulated and enthralled by another equally monstrous figure. Often it doesn’t start that way, but some influencial speaker or writer starts talking to the crowd bringing them under their will, possibly for good causes, and then gets drunk on the power they have over the masses. Soon they just like being in control. And they know that the only way to keep their power is a steady neverending stream of “causes” to mobilize the people to fight for. We see this kind of behavior in public figures all the time.

  There is a way to fight though without playing into these nightmare scenarios even whilst not playing into the Online Bully’s game.  It’s actually fairly simple:

  Learn to Depersonalize.

  It’s that easy. There are two parts to depersonalization.  One is not to take things personally. The other is not to make things personal.  If you do these two things then you can counter the external attacks in such a way as to make it clear that you do not back down while at the same time not feeding into the trolling tradition. You can earn the respect of your fellow bloggers without them starting to perceive you as being “just as bad” as the person who offended you. You can even often change the perspectives of the people involved, making them see things differently thanks to the force of your cold impersonal logic.

  In practice this means you DON’T mention people by name. You DON’T tell everyone you know to go after someone. You DON’T make unsubstantiated accusations about someone. You DON’T spread rumours and generalizations about someone. And you most *certainly* DON’T do any of these things behind someone’s back.

  Instead you ask questions. You formulate theories. You try to understand the behavior, what happened, in general terms. You try to see where the person is coming from and why the person is attacking you. And you try to come up with a response that is consistent with as complete an understanding of what happened as you are capable of forming. When someone asks you a bating question in an attempt to start a personal attack on you, try to turn the question around. Try to depersonalize it. Make it not about you. Make it about something general.

  In effect I am talking about not turning a simple disagreement into a personal vendetta. No matter how much you feel that someone has attacked you or hurt you, don’t try to draw people to your side and make it an “Us” versus “Them” thing. Instead, simply answer the criticism in a calm, rational, clear, and concise manner. If someone is engaging in behavior that is immoral or unjust by all means mention it, but mention it GENERICALLY. Not “Person X is an Ass for doing Y” but instead “Whenever someone does Y they are being an ass because of reasons A, B, C, etc.”.  See? Sure that doesn’t offend the person as much, but it’s much better than that. It creates a general rule. A principle that people can see and understand and get behind. It’s not just you attacking someone because you’re angry.

  And when you do this, you may even find that the behavior you perceived as “trolling” was actually a misunderstanding. The person might actually have an answer or an explanation for their actions. They may even possible have simply acted too quickly out of a strong emotional response and said something they didn’t mean to say. They may even apologize. 

  But if instead you attack first and ask questions later the likelihood of any progress being made on a resolution is slim. You’re much more likely to create a life long enemy who will haunt you forever. And maybe multiple enemies. And in the process chances are good someone, even those you didn’t intend to will get hurt.

  Discussions are better than wars. If you want to interact in a civilized, adult manner, learn to depersonalize your tense internet interactions.  Don’t mention names. Be bigger than the bickering and petty name calling. Go above and beyond it and struggle instead to make the community better.

  • 1:20 pm
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