Tag Archives: etiquette

Yes, but…

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Faded Glory

Faded Glory, originally uploaded by bfurnace.

Today on a mailing list I follow there was a lively debate. Lots of interesting ideas were batted around, and good thinks were thought. (You can find the threads in the Journalism_Next archives — look for posts with "The Future of Everything" in the title.)

In the end, my big takeaway was that I don’t much enjoy online debates.

I already thought some of the conclusions that people came to, so there weren’t any big ah-ha moments for me. (Maybe that just means I didn’t really give full consideration to the viewpoints which I didn’t agree with; but on this occasion I happened to agree a lot, so I think I was paying attention.)

More significantly, I felt like this discussion kept interrupting my day (because I let it, by checking email to see if anyone said anything interesting). More frustrating, in the end I didn’t feel confident that anyone heard or cared about what I’d written. Maybe this was the result of the style of the others participating, or the fact that I don’t know any of them well (I know Brad King, but not well enough to feel confident I know what he means all the time). Or maybe I’m just a whiny brat who thinks everyone should cheer when she says anything.

I could go back and restate the points I thought might have been missed. I won’t. All the important things have been said, and resaying them offers little return.

(Let me make clear that I think everyone on the list is a good person and a fine thinker, and no one was rude or insulting or anything along those lines. In fact, of mailing lists I’ve participated in, this is among the best. My issue is more with the technology, or maybe the protocol (or lack thereof) of discussions on a listserve.)

It’s too bad, this unpleasantness of online discussion, because email and the web on the whole offer many great tools to interact with people one might not otherwise meet or have the chance to talk to. But these tools still lack the ability to let us really see and absorb gestures, facial expressions, and nuances — little subtle changes and shifts, tiny sighs, small smiles. And so online tools require much more from the participants — extra effort to show that you’ve absorbed and acknowledge the other person’s viewpoint, for example. It’s hard stuff. Given a choice, and I’d rather sit down across from you and talk to you.

A question of etiquette

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Pink foam toe separators

Some time back, a man who was in my bedroom saw some blue foam things on my bedside table. They looked quite like the items pictured above, except that they were blue.

He picked one up and turned it around. “What are these?” he asked. “They’re like brass knuckles, except for when you want to be very, very gentle.” He put it on his hand, like one would brass knuckles, and did some shadow boxing.

I laughed. “Those are for painting your toenails. You stick the toothy bits between your toes, and then your toes don’t rub against each other and smear the nail polish.”

“Ack!” he said, throwing the thing down. “On your feet? Why didn’t you say something?”

I apologized profusely, but ever since — this happened years ago — I’ve never understood what was the big deal. I mean, my feet are at their very cleanest when I paint my toes; I soak them and scrub them first. They’re like a baby’s feet. Everybody loves baby feet.

And would he have reacted in disgust after picking up a pair of socks? Clean socks, I mean.

But maybe I had been unkind to expose the poor gentleman to these items. Maybe feet and toes are inherently icky.

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