Dear Jessica Brennan,
Recently I posted a blog that got a few people fired up. When I wrote it I knew it was a complicated, volatile issue that I was offering a very simple view of, so before it went live, I gave myself a pep talk about responding to the critics that I knew would come calling.
“Don’t use language that escalates things, Sharon.”
“Everyone is entitled to an opinion so be respectful.”
“Don’t engage more than once and don’t engage the haters, trolls, users and abusers at all.”
I did pretty well I think with the few comments that were lobbed at me that had the obvious intent to knock me over. I wanted to share with you some things I noticed about the words people used.
Most people who disagreed with my position simply said so, with an added, “what I would do”. I learned some things from them about different perspectives.
One person though started their response with, “I have never heard anything so ridiculous”.
I felt a bit puffed up really when I read that. I mean in all of this person’s whole life, (and I think she was a grandmother), what I wrote was THE most ridiculous thing she had ever heard. What are the chances of being that one writer who could achieve this for her? That’s sort of cool. I thanked her for being part of the conversation, (pride swelling in my chest).
She could have started her comment with, “I wonder if there might be another way to look at this…” or “In my experience things might be better addressed with…”. When someone starts a comment the way she did, they are setting bait – asking for a fight. It’s clear as day. Don’t take the bait as delicious as it looks.
Another person said, “So naive”. But after that, there was no explanation. If it was a letter she had mailed me, I would have been turning it over to see if there was more written on the back of the page. Was the whole blog naive, or maybe just the main thrust? Was the comment above hers naive?
Oh, wait. I think she meant me.
In the end, my naive self decided that this was simply another baiting technique to get me to nibble. I didn’t nibble.
When I was a little girl, grandpa used to take me fishing at Port Franks. We would pick up worms off the lawn the night before, then in the morning we would weave them onto our hooks and drop them over the side of the boat into the dark water. It was just about the most exciting feeling ever to think of a fish swimming around my worm under the surface of the lake. Eventually, a bass or pickerel would give in to the temptation and bite. When it did, a struggle would ensue and the fish generally would lose.
People who use the bait + aggression technique, in my experience, really don’t want to have a conversation, and as a result of their choice of words, they won’t be heard anyway. As soon as this method of non-communication starts, it triggers a combative chain of events that induces ears slamming shut and fingers typing angrily on keyboards, spewing comments that no one is really reading.
Like the fish, once you take the bait, you generally lose.
Yours in ridiculous naivety,
Mum
xo
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