“Pouring grace into an outraged world” is the subtitle of my most recent book — which means responding to truly outrageous things presents me with a bit of a conundrum. I get angry just like everybody else, but my philosophy about using digital spaces to unite rather than divide makes me think twice before articulating my anger in social media posts.
“One of the greatest dangers of social media is that it speeds conflict up,” says investigative journalist Amanda Ripley in High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out. “It holds us captive in the reactive mode of thinking, by design, robbing us of time and space.”
But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s okay to take our time to think through hard topics. It’s okay to say, “This is complicated. I’m going to give myself whatever time I need to reflect on what’s happening, how I’m feeling, and what I want to say or do about it in online spaces.”
It’s okay if we don’t have a hot take.
It won’t surprise you that I love this vision for Twitter …
Before I say more, though, I want to emphasize that my approach is merely one way of approaching online discourse. It’s one I ask people to consider as we grapple with increasingly hostile digital spaces.
Over the past two weeks, however, a lot of genuinely outrageous things have happened, adding to an already overwhelming array of yuck. Fostering understanding and empathy isn’t everyone’s goal when using social media to respond to outrageous things. And that’s more than okay. I make room for the possibility it might not always be my goal. Grace accepts that we each have our own way of processing.
When we are impacted in ways that threaten our very existence — when we are the victims of injustice — being seen and heard may be far more important to us than pursuing unity.
“Throughout our history, no group has gained the societal change they were advocating for by simply asking nicely,” says Farrah Alexander in Raising the Resistance: A Mother’s Guide to Practical Activism. “They’ve had to get loud. They’ve had to fight. They’ve had to demand their voices were heard and not stop until they were.”
Social media is a powerful tool for rallying like-minded people into action. It’s also an important tool for spelling out where dangerous ideas may lead, educating about immediate impacts, and joining with others in expressing anger, grief, and fear.
Digital grace doesn’t mean never speaking up or never saying things that make some people angry or uncomfortable. What matters most is that we are thoughtful and purposeful about our social media use, being clear with ourselves about what we’re hoping to accomplish when we post — and the possible outcomes when we do.
A few days ago my daughter created a piece of protest art in response to the leaked Supreme Court opinion stripping away protections for reproductive rights. I’m thrilled that she’s paying attention to important issues, forming her own ideas about them, and using her artistic abilities to express her views.
When she asked me if she should share it on her Facebook page, I told her I didn’t have an answer, but asked a series of questions to help her find the right answer for her:
what do you hope to accomplish by posting the art?
are you okay with people making assumptions about you or getting mad at you because of the art?
are you willing to engage in dialogue about the art, or do you want to make it clear with your post that you’re making a statement, not inviting debate?
She’s still thinking through those questions, so she hasn’t posted yet.
For me, the first question (what do you hope to accomplish?) is the biggest reason I don’t respond quickly on social media to things that outrage me. My goal with social media is to build bonds and find common ground so we can move forward together. But that’s hard to do when posts are both personal and public. Anything I say feels personal to people in my network, but in a public setting there’s no way to adequately address the nuanced views and experiences of everyone the post will reach.
“[M]ost people have complex, ambivalent feelings” about complicated, controversial issues, says Ripley. Quick responses on social media tend to signal alignment with a category, creating a sense of us versus them. Whereas our complete thoughts on an issue may reveal spots of agreement, shared values, and empathy for perspectives different from our own.
Articulating our complete thoughts on complicated issues, however, requires a lot of time and emotional energy.
Take for example, this speech by a parent responding to a school board member’s proselytizing e-mail to her child. I’ve coached public speakers long enough to know it’s the result of careful writing, editing, and practice. She isn’t saying the first thing that popped into her head. While she’s clearly passionate, her emotions aren’t guiding her presentation. She’s considered her audience and the most effective way of making her points in ways that might resonate with them. She’s trying to change minds and influence action, not vent her frustration.
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No one has the bandwidth to do that for every truly outrageous thing. We have to decide which issues matter to us enough to craft thoughtful, comprehensive responses — and which ones matter enough to us to deal with whatever fall out comes from speaking up in online spaces.
While I am deeply concerned about the likely reversal of Roe vs Wade (to pick one outrageous thing), it would take me considerable time and emotional energy to thoroughly articulate my thoughts. They’re the result of a lifetime of learning and a significant change in perspective. A previous version of me — the one who graduated law school 20 years ago this month — would have been elated with the Supreme Court decision. The current version is horrified.
In those two decades a lot happened to change my mind. I learned how much I didn’t know (because I had never been taught, and, with some things, been lied to) about my own body, conception, pregnancy, motherhood, marriage, divorce, misogyny, racism, religion, systemic inequity, and the lived experiences of other people … to name just a few. I wrote an LLM dissertation comparing fetal rights in the United States, Ireland, and Germany. I argued in court that Texas’s marijuana statute was unconstitutional because the abortion cases establish a fundamental right to medical self-determination. I listened to story after story (in person and on social media) of heart-breaking experiences with miscarriage, dealing with unwanted pregnancies, having to terminate wanted pregnancies, the rarely discussed dangers of pregnancy, and much more. I experienced pregnancy, motherhood, divorce, single motherhood, misogyny and more.
I had a daughter.
Explaining how each one of those experiences (and so many more) changed me, while also demonstrating my understanding of and empathy for those who hold the views I used to hold is hard, exhausting, and time-consuming. It took me two weeks (off and on) to write that brief summary, and to decide I can handle whatever responses I might receive. (Full transparency: I’m still nervous about clicking the publish button.)
On most of the issues I care deeply about, I was once them. I’m slow to respond to outrageous things because I never want my posts to make anyone feel like a them. That only makes it harder to find our way to us. Complexity and nuance, however, blur categories and show us our common ground.
NEW BOOK from Lauren M. Hug — Digital Grace: Embracing Benevolence in an Outraged World.
Also, Digital Kindness: Being Human in a Hyper-Connected World.