I have a principle that I apply to people on social media. It’s the “are-you-fun-at-party” principle.” Social media brings the best and worst out of people, with “worst” currently winning the “best” by a 74% margin. It seems these days, the social cue is to go as bombastic as possible on everyone, especially those who are nearest to you in the theological scale.
The end-result of such antagonism MUST play a role in how one lives their personal lives. When someone responds to a post about the weather with “Because you hate Trump” I often have that subtle pastoral feeling that his wife or his kids are under some kind of manipulative environment walking on egg shells. When I read yuppy-millennials or thunder puppies act as if grandpa George has nothing to say or that his history is unimportant in any discourse because after all, “I speak the truth as I see it,” I immediately begin to fear for this individual’s closest family members. Not that anything cruel is taking place, but that the fingers that strike the keyboard are also the lips that speak to kids.
Yes, we may play the bifurcated role of introvert in public and extrovert and intellectual murderer of liberals on-line, but eventually, these things are revealed in a harmonious fashion. Eventually, the guy who stays up into the late hours fussing over the legitimacy of QAnon is the guy who has few acquaintances and whose acquaintances quietly whisper to one another at a party, “There he comes, don’t bring up anything political.”
The goal is for you to become the person on-line that you are in public. If your goal is to rally your Twitter gang into a frenzy at the first smell of political blood, know that these same gang members often make terrible friends and really bad cooks. They will stay with you only to a point and at the point where they think you are not going far enough, they will drop you with haste.
Be respectful? Yes! But be generous in mercy towards your on-line associates for your presentation on-line says a whole lot about who you are. I have no right to dictate how you write and to whom you write, but I do have a right to dictate whether you’d be fun at my party. And I like my parties filled with mercy, parody, and good discussions; all in a spirit of joviality and good manners.
