Well That Escalated Quickly

Well That Escalated Quickly

Adult Memoir
Quite a few years ago I walked into my daughters' room to
deliver clean laundry. I saw my older daughter staring, horror
stricken and seemingly frozen, at one of her electronic devices. I
asked what was wrong.
She said, "Mom, they're saying terrible things about you."
She'd stumbled on the comments section of the Bangor Daily
News. I'd had an op ed or letter to the editor published. Other
writers had warned me to avoid comments. I'd been happy to follow
their advice. Now I was gazing at a swamp of poorly spelled,
ungrammatical verbal venom.
Back then I didn't know trolls from haters. But I did know that
these were unhappy people with a lot of time on their hands. I
advised Amber to ignore these people who felt emboldened by the
anonymity of the Internet to say things they probably wouldn't in a
face to face conversation.
That experience of dipping my toes in left me with no desire
whatsoever to go for a swim in social media. But most of the people I
go to class, work, and socialize with spend a lot of time doing laps.
So I'm really glad I got my hands on Franchesca Ramsey's Well, That
Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist.
Like my Kids, Ramsey had the great good fortune of growing up in
an online world (as opposed to starting graduate school abysmally
behind in computer skills like guess who). In high school she was
blogging. As an adult she spent hours making videos for YouTube both
after and during work. When one of her videos went viral she quit her
day job for full time internetting and acting. She learned a lot
blazing herself a path.
"In other words, I didn't set out to be an activist, and I've
made a lot of mistakes along the way. And precisely because of that,
I think I have a lot to teach folks who find themselves on this same
journey, struggling to find their voice and stand up for what they
believe in without screaming at some guy who calls himself
LethalDUMPS22 on Twitter that he doesn't know your life..."
Most of us are on this journey. I know I am. Ramsey gives a
lot of good advice on navigating the pitfalls of social media that
also has implications for offline discourse. Here's my favorite gem
from the book:
"One thing that I've learned during my time in the trenches of
content creation is that genuine apologies are very, very rare. If
you can perfect the art of saying sorry, more often than not people
will be willing to give you a second chance. A genuine apology is
made up of two parts: (1) taking responsibility for what you've done
and (2) committing to change..."
Have you ever before seen this concept defined so clearly? I
think we've all heard these "Sorry I've hurt your feelings" (meaning
your overly sensitive feelings are the only thing that's wrong)
apologies. Now we have the concept to explain why they just don't cut
it.
Ramsey also has a lot of important advice to give on racism,
sexism, and the other isms that hurt groups of people including a
really comprehensive glossary at the end. Well, That Escalated
Quickly is an excellent read for all us imperfect people on our life
long journey to becoming better.
On a purrrsonal note, it was a pretty quiet week. Tobago and I have
been enjoying the longer days and warming temps. We're expecting
temps in the 60s soon. Woo hoo! I always celebrate the first day I
can hang laundry outside, even when we don't have a pandemic going on.
(Jules)
Snow is melting
Off the car
Wonder where
The birdies are.
OK we have a truck but it doesn't rhyme. So I took artistic
liberties. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to you, dear readers, in hopes that
your favorite signs of spring will be arriving soon.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway



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