Shower Thought 🚿 #3 — Universal Chat Room
“It’s a dialogue, not a monologue, and some people don’t understand that. Social media is more like telephone than a television.” — Amy Jo Martin (Founder and CEO of Digital Royalty)
Welcome to my third shower thought story. It’s a type of story where I try to share with you a particular topic that is bothering me. Usually, this thought is coming when I’m taking a shower; hence the name. Let’s start with this simple sentence:
Social media is a universal chat roomIt is outrageous seeing how people behave on social media. I’m talking about Facebook, Twitter, and the most controversial to me: Instagram. People can post anything, that’s why we have a new world problem — “hoax”. But in this story, I would like to talk more about the comment section.
I’m surprised to see people’s behavior when they commented on a certain post on social media. I noticed how cruel it is the so-called “mouth of netizens”. They had no filter when they throw a comment on a certain post. People are falling victim to bullying. Some may throw really cruel curse words. Some even do sexual harassment comments. That kind of thing leads to many getting arrested due to ITE law violations.
Social media as the name implies — is a media for people to socialize. It’s the same as when you’re in a bar or having coffee with your friends talking to each other. The main difference is the media, now it’s online and has a lot more people connected to it.
Do you notice when you leave a rude comment with curse words in it or a sexual harassment comment, it’s equivalent to saying it in front of the post creator’s face? I strongly believe you wouldn’t have the guts to say what you write in the comment in real life to the post creator, would you?
Worse, you also let other people hear (in social media context is “see”) it. It’s the same as shouting in the middle of a crowd of millions of people to hear.
What I’m trying to say is… we shouldn’t bring our way of socializing in real life to social media. It’s a different situation with different cases, we can’t treat it as the same. Honestly, I’m also trash-talking a lot in my daily life with my friends. But we never encountered any issue or getting an arrest warrant. Why? Because we are the only ones who heard it! We don’t broadcast it to the world.
I see that social media is like a platform, a universal chat room. It’s like you’re in this big giant room with millions of people.
When you leave a rude comment, it’s like you shouting it to all the other people inside the room to hear. I’m not saying it’s forbidden, I really support freedom of speech. I’m saying that there’s no guarantee everyone will agree with what you’re saying. I think most people are forgetting that notion. If only people are more aware of this, I strongly believe we’ll be more respectful when leaving a comment on social media.
