"Going Silent"

When I notice that someone I've been following on a social media site (including a blog) has "gone silent," I want to know why. Some of this is idle curiosity of the gossip type. Occasionally, the reason can be much more serious than such happy occasions as the person taking a vacation or being buried in an engulfingly-wonderful work project. My own excuse for not posting more regularly this year is that I'm happily wending my way through editorial revisions (that is, revisions in response to feedback from my editor) for my June DAW release, The Heir of Khored.

On at least one occasion, quite a few years ago, the other person's silence was due to a life-threatening situation that prevented the person from obtaining help. Only the concern of friends who noticed brought the necessary assistance. (In this case, the person had been incapacitated and without food or water for 48 hours in a closed apartment in the summer.) I was one of the people that took action for our friend, asking someone local to to a welfare check on the person, and I came away from the experience with a profound respect for the power of social media to create positive communities that not only nurture and enrich our lives, but can literally save them.

GUEST BLOG: Juliette Wade on The Internet Trap and What To Do About It

If you're a writer, I imagine you are familiar with the problem of the internet trap. You turn on the computer to start writing, and an hour later you're still on the internet. You think of the pages you have still to write and you want to scream, Why is this happening? How can I stop it?

So I thought I'd begin this week by talking about why the internet is such a trap, at least for me. And also, thinking about how to manage the whole thing. I hope that my thoughts may help those of you out there who experience something of the same thing.

Internet Trap #1. Small flashes of wonderful in a torrent of irrelevant

I've heard partaking of the internet compared to drinking from a fire hose. I don't quite agree with this, because it suggests that if you could manage to take a sip, it would be good water that you were getting. To me it's more like a baseball game: you'd better have good friends with you and be doing something in the stands, because most of what's going on is stuff you don't care about anyway (in this I reveal my bias against baseball - sorry baseball fans!). Each critical play is buried in a ton of waiting around. On the internet, sometimes I'll have a day where I find tons of links I want to pass on to my blog readers. Then I'll go for weeks without encountering anything to care about at all.

Internet Trap #2. News

Yes, this is where I get the vast majority of my news about the world. And though I spend a lot of time in worlds of my own, I do care about what's going on. So I find myself clicking through to read about current events when I should probably be writing, or at least not reading my sixth article in a row about a particular issue. Even one I really care deeply about.

Shouldn't You Be Writing?

... not that I want you go go away and not read my blog. But I don't know any writer (who is online, that is) for whom the internet is not a time sink. The black hole that eats up hours -- days -- of writing. Not to mention leaving us frazzled and dry-eyed. This latter bit is true: when you're staring at a computer screen, you blink less frequently than when you're not, so your eyes get drier. As you age, this effect becomes even more pronounced. So, apart from eye strain (again, more of a problem for older folks), there's that scratchy-eyed feeling as if it's 2 am. This is apart from neck and shoulder strain -- well, you know the ergonomic lament of anyone who sits at a desk all day.

Juliette Wade's blog today is on "the internet as a trap" -- some thoughts on the psychology of how we get locked into online stuff, including what we get out of it -- or think we get out of it -- and some strategies for disconnecting. No, not unplugging. Email, blog sites (like this one!), news sites, social media, are all valuable in their place. So how do we, with our primate brains and addictive natures, manage to keep it all under control?

Gossip and Community

The internet is practically an engraved invitation to indulge in gossip and rumor. It's so easy to blurt out whatever thoughts come to mind. Once posted, these thoughts take on the authority of print (particularly if they appear in some book-typeface-like font). Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to question something when it appears in Courier than when it's in Times New Roman? For the poster of the thoughts comes the thrill of instant publication. Only in the aftermath, when untold number have read our blurtings and others have linked to them, not to mention all the comments and comments-on-comments, do we draw back and realize that we may not have acted with either wisdom or kindness.

To make matters worse, we participate in conversations solely in print, without the vocal qualities and body language that give emotional context to the statements. I know a number of people who are generous and sensitive in person, but come off as abrasive and mean-spirited on the 'net. I think the very ease of posting calls for a heightened degree of consideration of our words because misunderstanding is so easy.

I've been speaking of well-meaning statements that inadvertently communicate something other than what the creator intended. I've been guilty of my share of these, even in conversations with people with whom I have no difficulty communicating in person. What has this to do with gossip?

Mob Psychology, Author Tantrums, and Compassion

Nathan Bransford offers some great insights into the recent events you may have been following: an author didn't like an online review and proceeded to respond in a rather ill-considered and childish way. That's not the problem; the disturbing event was what followed, a sort of feeding-frenzy on the part of hundreds of commentators. They not only pelted this author with scorn, but attacked her book with "faux" five-star reviews or scathing ones. There was a sense of "blood in the water" jumping-on-the-bandwagon delight in pointless cruelty.

Yep, cruelty. Because as unprofessional as the author's response had been, no one deserves what's happened to her. Sarcasm and lashing out and outright attacks have never led anyone to examine and improve their behavior. If anything, such a response solidifies and validates the author's combative stance.