Policing kindness

Finding the line online

I have been told to be kind a few times recently. The first was when I put up a photo of Boris Johnson slouched over at a Remembrance Day service on my Instagram stories and said something flippant about how it put me in a bad mood. I’m not really one for patriotic displays, but it still struck me as a fairly disrespectful (not to mention arrogant) way to behave as the leader of the nation. It was a kneejerk post. I didn’t need to share it of course - what did my brief caption add to the world? But that’s what we do isn’t it? We are conditioned to post regardless even when we don’t have to. The photo went up and someone immediately sent me a DM saying “Whatever happened to Be Kind?”

The second time was when I put up a set of photos critiquing the Trump family’s sartorial choices. Some people thought it unfair to mock women for their style. Two people told me that as a feminist I was supposed to be kind to all women and never use their clothes to attack them. “Be kind, we don’t know what’s going on in their lives.” 

These replies kicked off some low level frustration in me which has simmered gently ever since. Asking me to be gentle to Boris Johnson while ignoring his many unkind policies seemed like a strange place to direct attention. Asking me not to joke about women who have fully supported and profited from a racist, sexist monster of a human is not (to me) anti-feminist. It felt like I was through the looking glass. 

The hashtag #BeKind was started by a woman called Lucy Alexander, who wanted to highlight online bullying after her son sadly committed suicide in 2017. The phrase became more widespread after Caroline Flack took her own life last year. Many were understandably angry and upset at the way the media had covered the TV presenter for years. They saw how cruelly invasive the coverage of her personal life was, and felt that harsh comments about her online had contributed to her unhappiness. Pleas to “be kind” flooded social media as a tribute to Flack and a helpful reminder to others that you never know how your careless comment might affect another person. 

Certainly this was a reaction to something very real. The internet is a place where you can say anything about anyone without stopping to think about whether it’s hurtful or unnecessary. Online, we can act in ways we would never dream of behaving in our physical world. The screen is a buffer which breaks any potential connection between us and those we judge. If called out on said bad behaviour, most people feel some level of remorse, acknowledging that they would never have said such things in “real life.” Dame Mary Beard once publicly named and shamed a troll who had sent her absolutely disgusting messages. After he apologised, they developed a friendship of sorts. “Now when I have a bit of internet trouble, I get an email from him saying: 'Mary, are you all right? I was worried about you,” Beard wrote. 

We could always do with reminding ourselves to pull back, to not say the mean thing we’re dying to spit out, however funny or cathartic we find it. But we’ve never really had decent balance on this stuff, and somewhere the line seems to have been blurred on what is valid commentary, what is humour and what is outright nastiness. 

It feels like the rules on personal abuse online should be fairly simple really. I’m not talking about issues like racism and sexism - those shouldn’t be tolerated anywhere full stop. It’s the quality of discourse that feels pretty clear to me as I get older - Don’t @ someone directly with unsolicited abuse - why would you do this when you wouldn’t dream of behaving like that face to face? Don’t punch down - ie don’t pile on someone with less power than you. Don’t speculate about someone’s face or body or health. Don’t dox someone (giving out personal information like a home address). Don’t be the kind of nasty that someone might see and feel hollowed out and sad. It should be obvious, but that buffer between us and the screen makes it hard sometimes to see when we’ve gone too far.

I’m no less guilty of slipping up here than other people. In my constant and tiresome rush to be funny I’ve landed on the wrong side of the fence a fair few times. But I think that posting Be Kind in response to anything you find disagreeable negates the whole idea behind it. Real internet trolling is an undeniably awful thing. Teenagers who gang up on each other, women who are repeatedly targeted with death threats, endless forums which tear apart people’s appearances - all this stuff is really grim. Online bullying of a vulnerable minor, well, we shouldn’t need a campaign to tell people to stop contributing to that. It’s appalling. Even those who participate in it would know that deep down. I suspect that it’s intoxicating to a point, and hard to pull away from. Whipping up a group of people into a slightly hysterical online chorus probably feels oddly exhilarating, as though you’ve found your tribe and can call out people honestly for the first time. 

The thing is, most of us are fucking mean sometimes. We sometimes make connections by complaining about other people, by gossiping, by laughing when someone we dislike does something objectionable. Sure it’s uncomfortable to say that, and I know that there are people who will vehemently disagree with this, and argue that these things leave them cold. I can believe them. I still think they’re in the minority. 

I hate uplifting quotes. I don’t believe in positive vibes only, and I’m not someone who believes that “if you’ve got nothing nice to say then don’t say anything at all.” I don’t want platitudes from Paulo Coehlo hung on my wall and I don’t think I have to see the best in everyone. That boy and the horse drawing that everyone went mad for last year left me cold. I think criticising elected politicians when they behave badly is completely fine, and I think pushing back against celebrities who spread anti-vax crap online is a positive good (notice how many influencers sunning themselves in Dubai have implored people to BEKIND when faced with valid fury at their blatant flouting of rules). None of this has anything to do with kindness in my eyes. I wrote a book about my mental health, perhaps that suggests to some people that I’ve grandly appointed myself some kind of guru on this stuff. I have not. Mental illness can be messy and dark. It calls for acceptance and understanding. But I personally don’t think it means that dark jokes and snark aren’t allowed. In fact, I rely on them. 

There is space for an honest admission that sometimes we can be mean spirited. That sometimes it feels good to message a mate and complain about someone or make a throwaway joke. That’s not to say it’s particularly admirable or something you shouldn’t check yourself on from time to time, but online, we seem to have reached a place where there is little room for a person to admit this without being consigned to a bad place. 

I took my email address off my Instagram page after one too many incredibly abusive messages (be kind, the people who’ve told me I’m a talentless cunt who only gets attention because of my husband!). I’ve blocked people on Instagram when they’ve sent vile messages. Again, pretty simple - I don’t think it’s ever valid to directly message a stranger with the express purpose of hurting them. I’ve also made the mistake of looking on gossip sites and had my heart drop into my stomach at even a tiny mean mention about me. I am myself completely terrible at taking criticism or abuse. But why did I go there in the first place? If it’s not coming into my inbox and intended to hurt me, then really it’s not for me to concern myself about. And there is something in me which understands why these places have sprung up, especially this year. Social media is awash with wealthy and privileged people showing off and sponconning. The newspapers show celebrities flying around the world, breaking the rules that everyone else is playing by, and splash on special advisors fleeing to second homes when they should be quarantining. Biting ones tongue has been strongly tested by such behaviour. I can understand the desire to vent. 

Encouraging a kinder society is a worthy endeavour, but how do you do that most effectively on the internet? Mary Beard did a gracious thing by befriending a troll but she cannot take every single abusive account holder out to lunch in an attempt to make them see that she’s a human being who deserves respect - she has fucking books to write and ancient worlds to explore. 

Policing kindness in individuals seems like a futile endeavour. Most people don’t want to be abusive or cruel. Those that do have the urge to be a little mean usually do the normal thing, take it offline and text a friend privately. If you’re looking for really egregious acts of unkindness, they normally start at the top - relentless tabloids, cruel government policies, big corporations refusing to help their workers during a pandemic. 

“In a world where you can be anything, be kind.” Kindness is important. So is nuance. So is understanding. There are many ways to be kind, and there are also many people who deserve your kindness more than others. Be kind by all means. But don’t use it as a cudgel to beat down any comment you disagree with when you’re idly scrolling. There is a vast chasm between vicious trolling and someone making a joke you or I might find near the knuckle. Intent matters. Everyone will make mistakes in tone from time to time, but that is vastly different from deliberately setting out to hurt or bully someone on social media.

When people have strongly disagreed we me with about stuff I’ve posted on social media, I’ve had really interesting (and sometimes robust) discussions with them via private message. Normally we meet in the middle somewhere and leave with some mutual middle ground. I’m sure a few of you will disagree with what I’ve written about here so please do feel free to comment below if you want to.

Meanwhile:

To watch: “Call my agent.” Four seasons of pure joy on Netflix now.
To listen: Hidden Homicides. A brilliant but tough series on the women whose possible homicides went unrecognised.
To buy: Alpaca socks. Bless the alpacas for making the warmest wool known to man (woman, me).
To read: “My mother died when I was 7. I’m grieving 37 years later.” An essay on loss and love.