Just Calm Down
I know this will be a shocking revelation to you all, but there's something about the internet that I feel it's time to reveal to the world.
On the internet, you can't hear vocal inflection, see facial expressions, or intuit body language.
I know, it's big news. If you're not already sitting down, you might want to now.
This means that, in the absence of words that describe one's emotional state, it's not actually very easy to determine someone's emotional state. Without someone saying "I'm really angry with you right now", the likelihood of you guessing correctly that someone is angry is, if precedence is any predictor, abysmal.
There are certain types of speaking styles that, in text and without the benefit of knowing the person or getting those other clues, often mislead people into thinking that the writer is feeling a particular emotion when they aren't.
For example, if I write a response to someone online in as dry a manner as possible, citing sources, not using personal references like "I" or even "you", and if I rapid-fire off responses because I happen to be online at the moment with nothing else pressing & it's a topic that I have responses or sources at hand, I am often accused of being angry or upset when nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe it's a topic I'm passionate about, or maybe it's a topic that I just happen to know something about, but I most likely am not feeling any particular emotion when I write that way.
When I'm angry, you'll read a lot more ad hominem attacks, a lot more cussing, and a lot more capital letters.
Unfortunately, while that may be a generally accepted convention for conveying anger, it is also not a universal convention. I have seen far too many people who always type in all caps, and, even more annoying, people who capitalize every word. At work, my coworkers and I use cuss words in place of pauses for breath, for punctuation, in place of "um", and, well fuck, sometimes as the spaces between words. Hell, sometimes we'll add spaces in the middle of words, just so we can put a swear word in there! Also at work, insulting someone is how you show you like them. The nicer we are to each other, the less likely it is that we like the person.
The reason I bring all this up is because there is a bad habit of people online to get into discussions with others, to misinterpret the tone somehow of the other person, and to then tell the other person what she ought to be feeling right now. Usually, it comes in the form of "just calm down, it's not a big deal."
Well, sometimes it is a big fucking deal and the person has a right to be upset about it. Other times, whether it's a big deal or not, the person is not actually upset. But I can almost guarantee that, in those cases, telling the person to calm down is a very good way to make them upset.
For some people, and I'll go out on a limb and say it's probably common among women, being told to calm down has a lot of repercussions to it that the person telling them to calm down doesn't understand. For some people, being told to calm down feels dismissive. It's like telling the person that what she feels isn't important or is out of place. Maybe it is out of place, but that's usually not the best time to point it out. For some people, telling them to calm down is a way to disempower them, to disarm them, to take control of the discussion and derail it. Whether the person doing the derailing intends to or not, being told to calm down can have that effect anyway. And, even worse, the fact that the person doing the derailing isn't intending to be, or even aware that he's dismissive or disarming is only a symptom of that exact problem (read the parable of the dog & lizard, for example).
Depending on the context, it is often used to cast a disparaging shadow over the other person by painting them as hysterical or emotional, which is immediately conflated with "wrong", or at the very least, not in a position to be debating her point. If someone is judged as being emotional when the listener thinks she shouldn't be emotional, that is often enough justification to dismiss or ignore her point. "At least until you calm down", maybe they'll say sometimes.
I have news for you. Being angry, upset, or "emotional" does not automatically mean that someone is wrong. In fact, it just might be a signal that what they have to say is really, really important*.
Anger, frustration, outrage - expressing these things have a purpose. How and when they're expressed can be a topic of discussion, and I'm not particularly interested in debating the minutia of exactly when exactly which response is appropriate and not. All I'm saying is that telling someone to "calm down" is like roller skating through a minefield and you're better off not doing it. Sometimes those emotions are appropriate and need to be expressed, and sometimes those emotions aren't there at all and you're totally off-base for suggesting that someone is feeling them.
If you want to ask someone if they're feeling something, well, OK, that could lead you towards a resolution by knowing for certain what they are feeling and why. If you know the individual personally and have certain cues to work from and you know this is the right tactic with them in this situation, that's also different. And I don't mean that you have met the person a few times, I mean that you know them and have some sort of established pattern of handling them when they get excited.
Just please, stop telling people online to "calm down" when they have not actually expressed their emotional state. If they have not said "I feel ..." or they have not used an emotional word like "angry", "resentful", "sad", then they have not expressed their emotional state. One of the fastest ways to piss me off when I'm not already pissed off is to tell me not to be angry or to tell me what my emotional state is, either, when I have not said so or in direct contradiction to what I have said. And I know I'm not alone.
I think you'll probably see a decrease in flame wars if everyone removed "calm down" from their internet vocabularies. Especially if they remove all the phrases that mean the same thing but use much more condescending words like "don't get your panties in a twist" or "stop being hysterical" or "geez, who put the burr under your saddle?" or "take a chill pill". And most especially if those sorts of commands aren't followed or preceded by statements lumping the allegedly-angry person into some category or another where being "hysterical" or "irrational" was assumed to be a standard trait (i.e. "just like a woman to get all pissy and not have a rational conversation!" or "that's why I won't vote for a woman politician - they let their emotions run things" - yes, that's a real quote, directed at me ... by another woman). We won't eradicate the flame war, of course, but I think a lot of online arguments could have avoided escalation if the participants weren't so busy telling each other how the other feels and how they ought to feel.
Also, trying to say "calm down" as a joke or just to lighten things up a bit even if you actually agree with the person, not only tends to have the same effect, but if the mood needs to be lightened, the the person you're telling to calm down probably is really angry and probably thinks he has a damn good reason to be angry, and we're right back to "dismissive" again.
So don't fucking tell me to calm down. Either I'm angry for a reason and I believe I'm justified in feeling angry, or I'm not angry at all and you just pissed me off for trying to tell me that you know what I'm feeling when I haven't told you how I'm feeling. I'll calm the fuck down when I want to calm down. How about you try not being a condescending asshole instead? What? I got that wrong? You're not trying to be condescending? Well, imagine that - tone and intentions didn't come through clearly in pure text. Huh, I wonder how that happened?
*When I say "important", it doesn't mean that what they are upset about is necessarily the truth. One can be upset about something that did not actually happen, if one's perception is off in some way. Just because you feel hurt, it doesn't mean that someone hurt you. But feeling that emotion can be used as a red flag to show where something is wrong. Maybe the other person really did not hurt you & it's all in your head. That just means that we now know where to start working on the problem - it's not with the other person, it's with you. There *is* a problem, it's real, it just might not be the problem we thought it was.
On the internet, you can't hear vocal inflection, see facial expressions, or intuit body language.
I know, it's big news. If you're not already sitting down, you might want to now.
This means that, in the absence of words that describe one's emotional state, it's not actually very easy to determine someone's emotional state. Without someone saying "I'm really angry with you right now", the likelihood of you guessing correctly that someone is angry is, if precedence is any predictor, abysmal.
There are certain types of speaking styles that, in text and without the benefit of knowing the person or getting those other clues, often mislead people into thinking that the writer is feeling a particular emotion when they aren't.
For example, if I write a response to someone online in as dry a manner as possible, citing sources, not using personal references like "I" or even "you", and if I rapid-fire off responses because I happen to be online at the moment with nothing else pressing & it's a topic that I have responses or sources at hand, I am often accused of being angry or upset when nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe it's a topic I'm passionate about, or maybe it's a topic that I just happen to know something about, but I most likely am not feeling any particular emotion when I write that way.
When I'm angry, you'll read a lot more ad hominem attacks, a lot more cussing, and a lot more capital letters.
Unfortunately, while that may be a generally accepted convention for conveying anger, it is also not a universal convention. I have seen far too many people who always type in all caps, and, even more annoying, people who capitalize every word. At work, my coworkers and I use cuss words in place of pauses for breath, for punctuation, in place of "um", and, well fuck, sometimes as the spaces between words. Hell, sometimes we'll add spaces in the middle of words, just so we can put a swear word in there! Also at work, insulting someone is how you show you like them. The nicer we are to each other, the less likely it is that we like the person.
The reason I bring all this up is because there is a bad habit of people online to get into discussions with others, to misinterpret the tone somehow of the other person, and to then tell the other person what she ought to be feeling right now. Usually, it comes in the form of "just calm down, it's not a big deal."
Well, sometimes it is a big fucking deal and the person has a right to be upset about it. Other times, whether it's a big deal or not, the person is not actually upset. But I can almost guarantee that, in those cases, telling the person to calm down is a very good way to make them upset.
For some people, and I'll go out on a limb and say it's probably common among women, being told to calm down has a lot of repercussions to it that the person telling them to calm down doesn't understand. For some people, being told to calm down feels dismissive. It's like telling the person that what she feels isn't important or is out of place. Maybe it is out of place, but that's usually not the best time to point it out. For some people, telling them to calm down is a way to disempower them, to disarm them, to take control of the discussion and derail it. Whether the person doing the derailing intends to or not, being told to calm down can have that effect anyway. And, even worse, the fact that the person doing the derailing isn't intending to be, or even aware that he's dismissive or disarming is only a symptom of that exact problem (read the parable of the dog & lizard, for example).
Depending on the context, it is often used to cast a disparaging shadow over the other person by painting them as hysterical or emotional, which is immediately conflated with "wrong", or at the very least, not in a position to be debating her point. If someone is judged as being emotional when the listener thinks she shouldn't be emotional, that is often enough justification to dismiss or ignore her point. "At least until you calm down", maybe they'll say sometimes.
I have news for you. Being angry, upset, or "emotional" does not automatically mean that someone is wrong. In fact, it just might be a signal that what they have to say is really, really important*.
Anger, frustration, outrage - expressing these things have a purpose. How and when they're expressed can be a topic of discussion, and I'm not particularly interested in debating the minutia of exactly when exactly which response is appropriate and not. All I'm saying is that telling someone to "calm down" is like roller skating through a minefield and you're better off not doing it. Sometimes those emotions are appropriate and need to be expressed, and sometimes those emotions aren't there at all and you're totally off-base for suggesting that someone is feeling them.
If you want to ask someone if they're feeling something, well, OK, that could lead you towards a resolution by knowing for certain what they are feeling and why. If you know the individual personally and have certain cues to work from and you know this is the right tactic with them in this situation, that's also different. And I don't mean that you have met the person a few times, I mean that you know them and have some sort of established pattern of handling them when they get excited.
Just please, stop telling people online to "calm down" when they have not actually expressed their emotional state. If they have not said "I feel ..." or they have not used an emotional word like "angry", "resentful", "sad", then they have not expressed their emotional state. One of the fastest ways to piss me off when I'm not already pissed off is to tell me not to be angry or to tell me what my emotional state is, either, when I have not said so or in direct contradiction to what I have said. And I know I'm not alone.
I think you'll probably see a decrease in flame wars if everyone removed "calm down" from their internet vocabularies. Especially if they remove all the phrases that mean the same thing but use much more condescending words like "don't get your panties in a twist" or "stop being hysterical" or "geez, who put the burr under your saddle?" or "take a chill pill". And most especially if those sorts of commands aren't followed or preceded by statements lumping the allegedly-angry person into some category or another where being "hysterical" or "irrational" was assumed to be a standard trait (i.e. "just like a woman to get all pissy and not have a rational conversation!" or "that's why I won't vote for a woman politician - they let their emotions run things" - yes, that's a real quote, directed at me ... by another woman). We won't eradicate the flame war, of course, but I think a lot of online arguments could have avoided escalation if the participants weren't so busy telling each other how the other feels and how they ought to feel.
Also, trying to say "calm down" as a joke or just to lighten things up a bit even if you actually agree with the person, not only tends to have the same effect, but if the mood needs to be lightened, the the person you're telling to calm down probably is really angry and probably thinks he has a damn good reason to be angry, and we're right back to "dismissive" again.
So don't fucking tell me to calm down. Either I'm angry for a reason and I believe I'm justified in feeling angry, or I'm not angry at all and you just pissed me off for trying to tell me that you know what I'm feeling when I haven't told you how I'm feeling. I'll calm the fuck down when I want to calm down. How about you try not being a condescending asshole instead? What? I got that wrong? You're not trying to be condescending? Well, imagine that - tone and intentions didn't come through clearly in pure text. Huh, I wonder how that happened?
*When I say "important", it doesn't mean that what they are upset about is necessarily the truth. One can be upset about something that did not actually happen, if one's perception is off in some way. Just because you feel hurt, it doesn't mean that someone hurt you. But feeling that emotion can be used as a red flag to show where something is wrong. Maybe the other person really did not hurt you & it's all in your head. That just means that we now know where to start working on the problem - it's not with the other person, it's with you. There *is* a problem, it's real, it just might not be the problem we thought it was.