A Gentleman Online

[ysabetwordsmith]

Etiquette guides fascinate me, although I pick and choose manners in a way that few cultures ever approve of. Or use them as boxes of spare parts to build interesting new cultures. In general, I find that guides for gentlemen are far more useful than guides for ladies. So here's one for how to be a gentleman online. Most of the advice is quite good.

Certainly the loss of empathy from interacting as anonymous, disembodied selves is a major factor. But the real root of the problem is how we view our time online; many see it as a break from their “real lives”—a place where they can let it all hang out. In their off-line lives they must be civil and refrain from telling their boss how they really feel about him, yelling at the customer service rep who’s giving them the runaround, and getting out of the car and punching the rude and reckless driver in front of them.

Interestingly, I find it far easier to be polite online than in person, because I don't have people right in my face, and I can just ignore them I feel like they're wasting my time. I can be myself online, in ways that are sometimes feasible in person and sometimes not.

As for being rude -- well, sometimes the most honorable thing to do is call a man a coward to his face when that's how he's acting. Be polite, but don't impersonate a doormat. If your honest opinion is rude, lying about it is hardly any nicer than voicing it.

This is simple: if you’re not proud enough of something to have it associated with your real name, then why are you writing it?

Because there are a great many things that need to be said and done, that could get someone fired for saying even outside their job, which is legal but not acceptable.  Online anonymity is a necessary precaution for many people and topics, so ignore this rule.  Just don't use anonymity as an excuse for acting like a jerk.  You are still responsible to yourself even if nobody else knows who you are.

The thing about being a gentleman is this: It doesn't matter what other people think of you.  It matters whether you live up to your own expectations of being a decent, responsible human being.

Comments

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Very well said.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I go to pretty extensive lengths to keep my online and in-person identities separate. Not to cover myself for being a jerk, because I don't usually do that, but because my sexuality is not mainstream and I like to have a place to rant occasionally, and I'd rather not have those things coming up in a Google search run by a potential Employer or something. And compared to some of my friends, that's on the low end of the list of good reasons to maintain anonymity online.

In general, though, this reminds me of one of my favorite Heinlein quotes: "Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naïve, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless," or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best."

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

As for being rude -- well, sometimes the most honorable thing to do is call a man a coward to his face when that's how he's acting.

An important point I was taught as a child: a gentleman never gives unintentional offense.

[meeksp.livejournal.com]

It bothers me that he claims to define empathy "as the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes, to understand their feelings and feel them yourself", but equates that with the ability to read body language and nonverbal signals and seems to think that the lump of flesh typing on a keyboard is somehow more real than the self that's reflected in the words that it types. It's hard to be empathetic when I'm being bombarded by sensory input, but I have no problem empathizing with people (even fictional ones!) when I read about their experiences. I also think that reading what other people have to say makes it more likely that you will understand their feelings rather than guessing from the outside and projecting your own.

Like you, I find it much easier to be myself online. My personality comes across far more clearly in text (and pictures!) than in person — to the point that I'm not sure my real self even exists in physical space.

I also disagree with the implication that real (by which I assume he means legal) names are necessarily more valid than the names we choose for ourselves.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

*tangent* I adore etiquette guides. Some of my favorite memories of being a kid was reading- in my grandmother's 1925-era book- about what a butler's duties are, and how best to set a table for an "informal" luncheon for 12.

This had utterly no relevance to my life, of course! but at the time, it was pretty close to sf/f for me... and was a delightfully ordered and comprehensible world.