You have the right to offend me

On one of the social networking sites where I hang out, they've introduced a "report abuse" feature for comments on posts. Yesterday I saw a post by someone trying to be helpful and to explain this new feature to others, saying they should report it if they see "naughty" comments, and later, when asked about what he had meant by that, he said he had used the word "naughty" to refer to "anything that a person would not like to see in a comment."

I'm seriously hoping he didn't really mean that. Taken literally, I could report his comment on that basis: I really would not like to see people suggesting that people should report others for saying things simply on the grounds that it's something they'd rather not see.

But this got me thinking: what would it be ok to report people for?

It's very easy to say: report comments which are racist, sexist, hateful. It's easy to say that, because this is what western culture currently says is unacceptable. Just as there were times when racism was the social norm, but blaspheming against God could get you burned at the stake. (Which seems to me a blasphemy against God, but that's another story.)

It's also very easy for me to say this because I'm a woman and I'm Jewish, so racism and sexism are serious issues for me personally.

But here's the problem: I want the freedom to express myself, to say what I think without someone forcing me to shut up. And this means I have to give that freedom also to those who would say things that offend me.

Sure, there are things I hear (or read) which offend me and personally I'd rather people didn't say. Like I said, I'm a woman and I'm Jewish, so I get offended by some stuff that objectifies women and I get offended by negative stereotyping of Jews; I'm an Israeli, so I get offended by some of the stuff I hear said about my country; I'm a follower of Jesus, so I get offended by anti-God stuff and by... hang on a minute, this is where it gets kind of interesting...

You see, as a follower of Jesus I get offended not just by vile things people say about Jesus or about his followers - as a follower of Jesus I get offended by unloving attitudes that people show towards one another, and I get particularly angry when these attitudes come from people who claim to be Christians. When I hear people spewing hatred towards a group of people and claiming to do so in the name of God, to me this is blasphemy.

But back to what I was saying before: there are things which offend me and personally I'd rather people didn't say them. But there's a major difference between saying "personally I'd rather you didn't" and saying "thou shalt not". You see, there are things I say that offend other people, and just as I don't want someone to force me to shut up, I don't want to force others to shut up either.

Some of those who read my posts over there may at this point say: so why did you yell so loudly about those boob pictures? and I will say again: there's a major difference between saying "personally I'd rather you didn't" and saying "thou shalt not" - I won't tell you not to, but just as you have the right to post things that offend me, I have the right to point out that they do offend me. And, once you know I'm offended, you might or might not change your behaviour as a result - it's up to you: there is no automatic "someone is offended by X, therefore I mustn't say X" - human discourse is such that as soon as we open our mouths we may offend someone somewhere, and we won't get very far with debate if causing offence would automatically make us shut up. I blog about my faith knowing that what I say is offensive to lots of people - being a Jewish believer in Jesus is something that some would prefer to sweep under the carpet and pretend there's no such thing. And saying that I believe Jesus is the only way to God - that is obviously offensive to people who believe in other ways. But this is what I strongly believe, and it's important to me to talk about it openly.

So, just as I value the freedom to say things that are offensive to others, I will fight for the right of others to say things that are offensive to me.

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p.s. I do, however, reserve the right to moderate comments on my own posts - my focus here was on what people say on their own or on other people's posts (or what they say offline). Still, I don't often remove comments, it's not a decision I take lightly, and certainly not just on the grounds of the content being offensive to me personally.

Like-minded people? There's no such thing.

I've been exploring a new social networking site and getting to know new people. It's great fun. One day I stumbled upon a thread where, in the context of this SN site still being invitation-only, someone wondered if maybe it would be nicer if it stayed that way, so that he could keep interacting with like-minded people.

Like-minded people? Really? Is there such a thing?

It must be weeks since I saw that comment, but it has stayed on my mind. It has haunted me as I've been getting to know more people, people who are fun and interesting and inspiring and yes, we have some things in common but in other areas we are miles apart, and that's cool - that's part of the joy of human interaction, getting to hear different points of view, getting insights into how other people see things, getting to know someone who is - gasp! - of a different culture, different faith group, different political persuasion, different mentality... getting to know people with different preferences, people whose favourite colour is green when I really like pink, people who love eating stuff that I can't stand, people who are into different hobbies, different genres of literature, different tv programmes... Like-minded? yes, no, maybe... you normally start from something you have in common, yes, but then as you get to know a person you discover other aspects, you discover the differences, and if you're both grown-up about it, you can build friendships with people without having to pretend you agree about everything.

The thing is, there is no chance that I will ever find another human being on this earth who will agree with me about everything. I can find people who are like-minded in one sense or other, for example when I go to church I meet with people who share my faith so we are like-minded in one aspect, but that doesn't mean we can't find stuff that we see differently. People join all sorts of groups where they meet with people who share their political view or their love for a hobby or whatever, and if they keep to that subject they might be able to remain under the illusion that they are in the company of like-minded people, but once you scratch the surface you will find that there is no such thing as two thinking people who are of the same mind about everything. And whilst the like-mindedness may be the starting point, whilst it might be what draws you to start talking to someone, it's actually the differences that make it interesting to carry on. If all the other person ever said was "oh yes, me too" it would get boring.

There is sometimes a comfort in talking to people who you know agree with you about something in particular, when you're weary from debates it's quite nice to be able to retreat into a little huddle with a few friends and sigh together about those out there who "don't get it"... but living life like that all the time would be so vanilla... and anyway, it's impossible unless you switch your brain off and find others who have done the same.

great expectations

or: just because you got hurt, it doesn't mean they're nasty

sometimes people hurt other people not because of any nasty intentions but simply because of the two parties having different expectations of whatever-it-is that they're getting into.

I remember years ago when I had a mad crush on a very charming Irish guy and I came across a book that was a tongue-in-cheek attempt to tell you all you ever needed to know about Irish men. The one and only thing I remember from that book now was this: when an Irish guy says to a woman "I'll call you" - she hears "I'll call you tomorrow" whilst what he means is "I'll call you sometime between now and the day I die"...

I also remember another crush, this time over a colleague at work (yes, I know, bad idea, but I was young and foolish in my mid 30s) - a phone call from him asking if I'd like to come for lunch at some trendy new place round the corner certainly got my expectations up!!! but he hadn't said "just you and me", so I couldn't blame him when I was upset to find there was a whole bunch of us round the table. I was hurt, but he hadn't set out to hurt my feelings. (at least I don't think he had. of course I did also meet some guys along the way who were actually nasty, but I don't think this one was.)

but this isn't just about romance - the expectations thing happens in all sorts of situations. I think there's tons of scope for it to happen on social networking sites - Jane invites Diane to be her "friend" on an SN site, Jane being the kind of person who collects online contacts with no particular intention to build relationships, and Diane being a very needy person who has suffered lots of rejection and looks at every such invitation as a promise of undying friendship.

it's tricky, because so much of this stuff goes unsaid. people don't often state clearly what their expectations are. often we just assume that everyone else sees things the same way we do. sometimes we're embarrassed to confess to our weakness, so we don't state our needs - what if I say I'm looking for really deep friendship and it turns out the other person wasn't, I might feel I'd made an idiot of myself.

no contracts, no signed agreements, no listing of the ground rules - therefore plenty of scope for misunderstandings and for disappointment. we let other people down sometimes without being aware of it at all - like that guy at work who invited me to lunch, not knowing what I was hoping for...

and so, when we get hurt because someone didn't live up to the hopes we had, the thing is to look at the situation realistically and ask ourselves: did X actually promise us this rose garden that we were hoping for, or is it just what we allowed ourselves to believe?

it's hard to do that - to separate out our hurt from the people who hurt us. but if someone steps on my toe when they don't even know my toe is there, I can't really blame them.

so one goes somewhere quiet to weep, and forgives them for they knew not what they were doing.

so fed up with all this "93% won't" nonsense!

once again I get an email supporting a good cause but absolutely doing my head in with the emotional blackmail that's added in: 93% of people won't forward this... will you be one of those who... yada yada

if only they didn't include this rubbish, I might have actually read the whole thing, and who knows, I might even have chosen to forward the email. but I'm afraid I get so annoyed when I see these things that I just press Delete.

maybe this is why 93% won't forward it? because 93% are fed up to the back teeth with the amount of emotional blackmail they get from their friends on the email? (not to mention all those facebook status update things.)

how about a slightly more respectful approach? how about emailing and saying: you know, there's this cause which I feel is important, I wonder if you'd like to support it to by forwarding the email to others? I wonder what percentage of people would rise to that...

Ever thought of social networking sites as virtual coffee shops?

What makes people happy? The Times got a bunch of writers to each say something about what it is that brings cheer to their lives, and I particularly enjoyed Caitlin Moran's response, which was all about Twitter. Granted, I don't use Twitter in the way she does, I use Multiply and Facebook for these purposes (whilst I use Blogger purely as a soapbox), but I can identify with a lot of what she says.

She talks about being a writer who not only works from home, but also values the way that in writing you have time to think about what you're going to say, as opposed to what happens when she does venture out of the house and meet people face to face. "That whole talky-to-people's-face thing - that's, like, constant improvisation. It's like a gigantic, lifetime-length episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Very stressful. There's no 'delete' function. You can't google a salient, point-proving fact." As someone who loves the "edit" feature (and I feel so lost without it on fb), I am so so with her on this!

Seems to me that the things she loves about Twitter are things that I could equally say about Multiply, they're just typical of online social networking. Twitter allows her to exercise her chattiness in a way that works a lot better for her. "Unlike life, you can simply lob in a comment to someone else's conversation without it seeming rude... And also, unlike life, you can simply ignore people you don't like. It's so benign." and she talks about others she knows who are also writers working from home, who "use Twitter as some magical coffee shop in the sky, where one can repeatedly drop in and while away 20 minutes, before knuckling back down to a deadline."

At which point I raise my eyebrows and say: only 20 minutes? what self-discipline, what willpower :)

For the full article in the Times click here.

Privacy problems on Facebook (stop me if you've heard this before...)

and this time, dear readers, we'll focus on photos and tagging.

Facebook very kindly gives us the option to choose privacy settings for each photo album. Nice, I thought. Except that they then totally ignore those settings if someone is tagged in the album.

Here's a live scenario I've got right now. (except that I'll change the names of the people involved, because, unlike a certain mark z, I do care about people's privacy...)

My live news feed tells me about one of my contacts, let's call her Elizabeth Hopkins:

Elizabeth Hopkins was tagged in an album.
It then shows me the photos in which my contact was tagged, and underneath that there is a live link to the album in which she was tagged.

I click on that album and get to see all the photos in that album, as well as any comments (by people I don't know) and the full info about who else was tagged there (again, mostly people I don't know).

Now, the album was posted by someone - let's call her Orla Edwards - who is not a contact of mine, in fact she and I don't even have any contacts in common, and she has set the privacy for this album so that I'm not allowed to see it. How do I know? When viewing this album - which I reached through the notice about my contact Elizabeth being tagged - there's a link at the top which says "Back to Orla Edwards' photos", and guess what happens when I click on that link? I get a message that says:

This content is currently unavailable
The page you requested cannot be displayed at the moment. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page.

Seeing as I've just been viewing this album, my guess is that it's the last option: "you may not have permission to view this page."

So, Facebook, if I do not have permission to view it, why did you just show it to me?

and by the way, just to make double sure that I really do not have permission to view that album, I visited Orla's profile and, no, there are no photos viewable to me.

so, to sum up, what I have found is this: if person A (in my example Orla) posts an album and sets it for friends only, and someone then tags person B (in my example Elizabeth) in that album, each and every contact of B's can see the whole album which person A set for her friends only.

and they call this privacy?