Derek Sivers Needs To Get Out More
Originally published at The Null Device Blog. You can comment here or there.
.com maven-turned-internet-culture-wonk Derek Sivers has recently posted a blog entry about how everyone really needs to relax and remember that when you’re angry at something on a computer there’s a real person on the other end.
Okay, that’s all well-and-good, but he goes on to use some frankly asinine examples.
The first is about a woman who runs a mail-order company, who got a vitriolic email to customer service that made her cry. This is one of those things that makes me wonder if said person is really suited for the kind of job that requires dealing with customers. Sivers uses this as an example of how people overreact on the internet, sending angry emails whose bloviating far outclasses the infraction. I think Sivers needs to get out more. He’s been an internet gazillionaire for a decade now, so I suppose he doesn’t have to mingle with us peons anymore, but anyone who’s spent time in an airport has probably seen some sweaty, balding businessman from Schaumburg ranting and raving and berating some poor 19-year-old ticketing clerk at the gate because his plane is snowed in in Rochester. Or perhaps, since it’s been so long since Sivers has worked in traditional customer service, he’s forgotten about the frankly bizarre angry letters addressed to the “president of the company” or the abusive phone calls demanding to talk to a manager over some perceived slight, like not allowing a customer to pay their bill 5 months late. The internet may make it easier to send an angry screed to customer service, but it is hardly the only method, and by no means is the angry tirade a new web-2.0 phenomenon.
I also ask…geez, how long have you been on the net now, Derek? I mean, even when I got started, back in the pre-boom early 90’s, the flame war, the angry message, the name-calling, the invocation of Godwin’s law…these were well-known things. The third email I ever read was aimed at someone on a Star Trek mailing list I had just subscribed to - “Brent Spiner is not [expletive] German, you [expletive] [expletive] [obscene gerund].” It became clear very quickly that incivility was sort of the stock-in-trade of internet communication, and it was to be taken with a grain of salt. This is not to say that this is a good thing, per se, but…geez, it’s 2010, we should all be aware that this is just the way things are and this touchy-feely “remember there are real people out there!” thing that Sivers is advocating seems sort of naïve. If you can’t handle a flame war, perhaps the internet is not the best place for you to be hanging out. All the Derek Siverseses in the world are going to have a hard time changing the behavior of a few million people, so until they do, it’s either grow a thick skin or unplug the laptop.
His other example (he only had two, really. Statistical analysis, this is not) was of a friend who was trying internet dating, but only lukewarmly, and was deleting a lot of messages from “losers” without reading them. Sivers saw this as callous and unfeeling, since these guys had clearly spent a lot of time crafting messages to her, hoping to win her attention and her heart. Um, dude? Internet dating? That’s your example? Yeah, it’s a step up from Craigslist’s “no strings” section, but still, you can’t be so naïve to think that every one of those guys read her profile and decided she was Their One True Soulmate and their fragile self-esteem is riding on her response. He also can’t believe that she was the only one they sent messages to. The whole point of an internet dating site is to provide a larger pool of potentials, and get the ball rolling by offering a method of safe, reasonably anonymous contact. I’m guessing most of these guys have gotten ignored before, and have done their share of the ignoring as well. And…hell, even in the real dating world, “uh, yeah, I’ll call you!” is the way of the world. Nobody walks into a bar and politely informs every guy nearby on the dancefloor “gosh, you seem like a nice guy, but I’m really not interested in you” or agrees to go on a test date because a guy clearly put in enough effort to come by and say hello.
I’m not even trying to sound cynical. I’m not saying civility and politeness are dead. I’m quite fond of them, myself. But the cold hard fact of the matter is that in a lot of situations, people act uncivilly, or it’s just not appropriate to do so, and those of us on the receiving end - especially those of us who create subjectively-perceived things open to criticism like art and music - simply cannot expect to be glad-handled by every internet user, customer, consumer, listener or patron in every situation. It’d be great if everyone in the world were unflinchingly polite and measured in their responses, but never in human history has it ever actually happened, so why Derek Sivers thinks imploring people to “remember that there’s a real person on the other end” of the computer is going to change a few thousand years of social conventions.