3 ways that people are digitally evil

I’m a huge fan of Twitter. I think it is a tool that has a challenging entry point, but with a little help and advice, it can be a powerful place to learn and build a great PLN.

It can also be used for evil.

Now, to be honest, I don’t see this very often because I don’t look for it. I see a whole lot of good in my Twitter feed, but here are 3 ways people use Twitter that are digitally evil, and would probably be less likely to happen in a face-to-face conversation:

1. Ad hominem attacks.

Ad hominem (Latin for “to the person”),[1] short for argumentum ad hominem, typically refers to a fallacious argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.

Examples include making fun of someone’s weight, looks, background, or social position, rather than looking at the actual issues. If you think about this, by attacking the person, rather than their ideas, you actually diminish the points you make against their arguments. Let’s say you hate the ideas someone is sharing, and you call them fat and ugly on Twitter. Would their argument be better if they were skinny and handsome/pretty? Are you suggesting their ideas are dependent on their size and looks? That these things matter? Should you be judged on the merits of these kind of arguments? It is hurtful and derogatory, and insulting not just to the person you are attacking.

2. Sarcastic questioning.

This is a passive-aggressive move. It is the asking of a question that your question already suggests you understand what’s going on, but you ask it anyway.

“Is it just me or… ?”

“Why is it that… ?”

“Why on earth would… ?”

“Can you believe that… ?”

These openings can be fun and lighthearted, or they can be accusatory and underhanded. I used this strategy above by asking, “Should you be judged on the merits of these kind of arguments?” But it wasn’t an intentional attack, it wasn’t comedy at the expense of people.

3. Full on rants.

I will confess to ranting against poor customer service in Twitter. I don’t do it often, but I’m also not guilt free. That said, there seem to be a subset of Twitter users that use it as a venue to regularly rant. This seems unhealthy to me. It is something I try to avoid, but often angry tweets are retweeted, and so I might see them not because I follow the person, but because someone I follow retweets this person.

Sometimes I think digital conversations give rise, and permission, for ‘inside voices‘ to be externalized. The medium allows people that may not normally have a voice to be heard, to speak to (or at least at) a CEO, politician, or movie star. A hashtag gives anyone an audience. Someone might only have 5 followers, but #companyname, #election, #event, or #movie will find them readers of their tweets. For those that already have a large audience, there is an even greater responsibility not to be intentionally evil.

I try to be thoughtful. I pause before tweeting a complaint or a rant. I think about the point I want to make… and I’ll still make mistakes. But at least I‘m making an effort not to be mean, and I unfollow people that don’t seem to have this kind of filter. I filter my timeline as best as I can from digitally evil people.

PS. That doesn’t mean I ignore people with different opinions, or shy away from good, challenging questions.

Your chance to share:

4 thoughts on “3 ways that people are digitally evil

  1. Stephen Downes

    I would add an ‘S’ to the end of ‘THINK’ to make it ‘THINKS’:

    S = Is it Selfless (ie., is it not merely Self-Serving)

    (Because I was 100% with your post all the way to the THINK image that has your self-branding all over it.) Much better IMO would have been a simple name or URL and a Creative Commons logo, so people could share it (which presumably the intent).

    I don’t mean to sound so critical (I know that’s how it may sound) because I do value this contribution. It would have been just a small thing to have made it so much better.

    1. datruss

      Hi Stephen,
      I share almost everything with a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) Licence. In fact, it was you, about a dozen years ago, that convinced me that the NC – Non-Commercial was ‘more free’, and thus both my blogs and my presentations use this.
      You wrote about it here: http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2012/11/free-and-not-free.html
      And I noted it on this blog here: https://daily-ink.davidtruss.com/tag/creative-commons/ for #OpenEdMOOC, but I’m sure I read your thoughts on it long before that.

      About the image:
      1. It was an afterthought, not essential to the post. I’d actually remove it now except that I appreciate this conversation that came from it. I actually like that you are critical about it because this conversation demonstrates that there can be disagreement and dialogue without being evil like the negative approaches in the post. (Thank you!)
      2. I like the ‘S’ for Selfless too, if I were re-making the image, I think I would share it. I don’t think everything has to be selfless, but self-promotion can come across as spammy.
      3. Yes the image is promotional. It is plugging a book I wrote to help people get started on Twitter… It is my most commercial online endeavour, and it is also something that I give away for free. http://DavidTruss.com/TwitterEDU
      4. If I were to redo the book, I’d put a Creative Commons license on all the images. I paid someone on Fiverr to make the SuperTweet bird for me, so there is nothing on the images I made for the book that could not have been shared that way.

      That’s three critical and worthy pieces of feedback you provided. Thanks again Stephen!

    1. datruss

      Thanks Aaron!
      I’m going to have to dig into these links you shared. I ended up going into the first link on the first site you shared, which sent me down the ‘Free Will’ rabbit hole (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/ ), and I never made it back from Wonderland to respond to this comment. 🙂
      My ideas on free will have been inconsistent and I need to blog them out loud at some point, but that’s a weekend thing… it will be a long post.
      On another note, the collapse of dialogue online is something I think is actually getting worse. Politics in a 2-party system in a neighbouring (or should I say neighboring) country has seemed to feed into this collapse in ways that may take quite some time to recover from.

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