Social Media Expectations — “Learn to Shut Your Mouth”

Growing up, I was a very shy child. I had difficulty making friends and talking to my extended family. My observational skills grew quickly while my socialization skills fell behind. I took to my journal because in those pages, the fear of judgement was non-existent. It wasn’t until junior high that I found strength in a more confident friend, Molly, who took me under her wing. This same friend also invited me into another world, one that I had only ever heard of as a seemingly fairytale: The Internet.

Molly showed me around AOL. We jumped from chat room to chat room, regularly striking up conversations with strangers and without a name or a face, there was no room for judgement. The screen names that we exchanged words with could have been anyone or no one at all. This brand new world of endless connectivity was wild and liberating, since I too, could be anyone I wanted to be.

This sort of communication was perfect for a shy extrovert. I was able to spill my guts and offer earnest advice, no matter how unqualified I was (in hindsight…perhaps a slight concern.) Fast forward to 2004, when I was 19 and green and suddenly, I found that I could take my private handwritten diaries and publish them on a public platform without the humiliation of saying these words out loud and in person. I had found LiveJournal.

I would update this “blog” on a regular basis for a solid 5 years, with the next 6 years basically only checking in to make sure the site hadn’t deleted my archive. This is when I learned that sometimes the experiences and opinions I chose to express, even when I thought were harmless, honest and personal, could sometimes get me into trouble. As it turned out, I was better at writing about issues than I was dealing with them head on and, as anyone can imagine, would hurt the feelings of a few people in my life. I became really good at stirring the pot and while it seemed a terrible idea at the time, I had found that the shit storms I had been creating had actually helped to bring awareness to the issues at hand. While it seemed to place strain on relationships in the moment, ultimately it would cause us to address the situations and deal with them. Knowing myself, especially in my teens and early 20s, had I only written about them in a private diary, I may not had ever brought certain issues to the surface and instead, probably wallowed in them in silence creating even more resentment and anxiety then actually dealing with them.

Backwards? Probably…but it was the only way I knew how to do it.

My love for the internet has only strengthened with time. Though some days I do want to throw my phone into a lake or slam my computer onto the hardwood floor (actually have done that…on purpose), my admiration for this connection is still aflame. I’m much less of an angsty teenager these days but my knack for vulnerability and my desire for honesty has not let up. This still apparently gets me into trouble…thanks to the likes of Facebook.

This brings to light a more recent experience I had, when a person that I shared a business relationship with became upset by an open and vulnerable post that I had crafted on my personal facebook page about anti-drug use. Because of the affiliation that this person had with an example that I had used in the post (Electric Forest), she became angry and worried that what I had written on a public platform would affect how others would view her and her company, though I hadn’t mentioned a single name. The conversation about the context of this post and what it had meant to me fell on deaf ears and we failed to reach an agreement. I ended the business relationship when it became clear to me that my personal opinions expressed on my personal social media or to my clients was not welcomed.

I was told that I needed to “learn to shut [my] mouth.”

When the writing is on the wall, you must not fail to read it.

This strikes the question...where do we draw the line at policing communication? We’ve learned that while the 1st amendment will protect our freedom of speech from the law, it will not protect us from social consequences. Understandably, the lines blur when you represent a company or group of people, but when do we decide to step across the line and condemn others to silence? How do we decide when to hold others accountable and when to step aside?

The internet is a tricky place. Don’t be silenced.