In Writing
I read a mesmerizing in-depth breakdown of a recent court case that's attracted some attention from newspapers and a great deal of discourse on Twitter. It was written by a blogger who'd read through the court filings. That writer has since pulled down her tweets on the subject as well as the blog posts; perhaps a sign that the time to discuss this particular subject is over. I will not attempt to recap it here.
But the process of discovery in that court case meant that large volumes of written conversations -- email exchanges, Slack server logs, and so forth -- had been entered into the public record. One of the things that struck me, in reading direct quotes from these exchanges, was how awful these people sounded. In their own words -- not just pull quotes of a sentence or two, but sections of several hundred words -- they came across as cruel, vindictive, petty, two-faced, and self-centered.
It made me think about my own private chats with friends, in email or direct messages, or on Discord servers or in Steam chat. If the logs of those were put into the public record, how often would my own words indict me as petty or vicious? I am more careful with my public blog posts and tweets, but even those have venom in them on occasion. I daresay it is unlikely that anyone will ever have cause to comb through the detritus of my digital life in search of dirt to uncover. Even in this case, the person who came across the worst was the one who had initiated the lawsuit and in so doing triggered discovery. They had brought it upon themselves. (Although their friends, who also sounded terrible, got dragged down as a result of that decision, too.)
Still, it’s a reminder that it would be nice to live in such a way that there would be no dirt to find. I am definitely not that person. There are things I've written in private that I would be embarrassed for the world to see.
But it's something I think about. How would I feel if someone other than my intended audience saw the things I put in writing? If I’m discussing a third party, how would the subject of that conversation feel? You never know what might be forwarded by mistake, or glimpsed over a shoulder, or passed along by rumor.
It’d be nice if it was all loving and kind, wouldn’t it? And hopefully not intolerably sweet. n_n
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