Etiquette and Communication

As week two draws to a close I find myself reflecting back on my own practices once again. This week we delved into netiquette and online presence. While netiquette was nothing new to me, this week had me looking at it purely through a different coloured lens. However, online presence is almost as foreign to me as killer bees!

Shea (1994) outlines the core rules of netiquette on her webpage. While there are some that I feel are outdated, her number one rule is to “Remember the Human”. Wow. Remember the human. How much more real can you get than that? When you boil down every other rule anyone can name for netiquette can’t it really just be centered around this one? Respecting privacy, helping to keep online wars under control, be forgiving of mistakes. If you just remember the human before you post, can’t all of these other rules be managed? I would argue yes. If you remember that there is a living, breathing human behind every screen then netiquette really is just remembering the human. I need to remember this with every online keystroke I make. More importantly, this needs to be my focus within my classroom and with my own children.


Boyd (2014) really had me thinking this week. I’m not sure if you remember, but in my last entry, I spoke about the ‘light’ and ‘dark’ side of digital citizenship. Boyd’s chapter this week changed my perspective about the light side of the digital world. How many people have felt this way about someone in their life?

I know I am guilty. I often wonder why people portray themselves as they do. Why do they intentionally try to make their lives look perfect? Is it because they’re falling apart at the seams and refuse to acknowledge it? Is it because they’re trying to ‘keep up with the Jones’s’? Is it because everyone else is doing it? I didn’t think too much about it before, just rolling my eyes and continuing to scroll to find reality.


However, Boyd introduced me to an entirely new perspective. Within her first paragraph, she had spoke about a young black man who was being considered for an Ivy League school. However, when the admissions officers checked out his online profile, they found affiliations with gangs, which is exactly the opposite of his stance in his admissions essay. Instead of taking that at face value, Boyd offers a reason for that: perhaps he is using it as a survival tactic. Very interesting and very reasonable. Maybe the different personalities people portray online is a survival tactic in whatever way they need. Just think about that for a minute. Their online personalities are a survival tactic for whatever they need in life. Let that sink in. Maybe, just maybe, we need to be a little more lenient and forgiving with the online personalities of the people we know and love.

References

Boyd, D. 2014. It's Complicated. 1. identity: why do teens seem strange online? P.29-51.

Garrison, C. 2009 [Image]. https://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2009/08/11/a-new-take-on-killer-bees-wash-u-researchers-use-bee-venom-to-fight-cancer

Shea, V. 1994. Netiquette. Albion Press. http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html

Social Media vs Reality. [Image]. https://me.me/i/social-media-reality-nailed-it-2910909


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