Virtual communities? Not really real

Posted in Sandi's blog on 15 December 2011 | 0 Comments

Over the past couple of weeks, two unpleasant slanging matches have played out very publicly over the Internet in the name of the web community and this has stirred up a wide range of emotions in me - from anger to despair and frustration to melancholy. Although there are people in the web industry who have become friends over the years, I certainly have never felt that I belong to any community, although I am painfully aware of how my ADHD restricts me from ever feeling part of anything. The difficulty i have in managing my emotions is something I am constantly having to contend with, and because of this i have learned how to detach and employ my cognition where my emotions fail me and that's what I have been doing as I have stood back and watched. So, now I am thinking. I am thinking and not feeling, being objective and not subjective. Of course, this is just my opinion, so it is not meant to be accepted verbatim, but it is not conjecture. It is drawn from both what I have experienced and what I have observed.

When I first decided to advocate around web accessibility, I approached people in the community for help and I had far too many doors shut in my face. But I persevered. Sure, I was a nobody but I wanted to engage, I wanted to participate and I felt I had something to say. If people didn't want to hear it or didn't think what I had to say was valuable, then I would have accepted it, but they didn't even give me a chance. I'm lucky that I have tenacity but I don't have a hard shell and that's what I have Mark for. So, I am lucky. I have the tools at hand to continue to persevere and push forward against adversity.

What exists is a hybrid web community. In its physical sense there are people who run conferences and events, people who speak at them and people who attend, and in its virtual sense, there are people who blog, tweet, research, educate, comment and suchlike, but this community is quite small and disparate.

Standing back, what I am observing is the human condition, people doing what they just do by virtue of being human. When we form a group, by nature a hierarchy evolves and the group will have its leaders and its followers and so on. That's what human beings do. However, those in the community assert that the group is open and egalitarian, but that's just not true.

My experience of the community has been fraught with difficulty. I know that my ADHD ways and my strong opinions sometimes do me no favours, but it isn't a popularity contest. Well, not to me it isn't, and there needs to be an understanding and appreciation of the politics of human nature.

A community whose commonality is what its constituents do for a living can certainly be collegial, but by its nature is not conducive to forming the sort of bonds that happen in personal relationships.

Am I being cynical? I don't think so, but please tell me if I am. However, this blog post was born of two slanging matches on the Internet, both to which my immediate response was annoyance. I threw my hands up and uttered "Oy vey!". Twice in one week. I saw bruised and inflated egos. I wondered why on earth these people were joining together to gang up on someone when they clearly did not know the full story. I bit my lip and continued to observe. I couldn't see the point of all of the venom. It was so negative and it started to really bum me out. Where was the cause? Who was benefitting? Why expend so much energy on negativity? If such a community exists and is ready to rally, then why don't they do so around things that really matter? There are serious problems to attend to. So amidst all of this twitter bashing, ironically and coincidentally, I wrote a blog about freedom of speech and it was indeed very timely.

I strongly believe that people need to voice their opinions; real, honest and forthcoming debate is essential and incredibly healthy. People need to disagree and not placate or ingratiate, but aye, there's the rub. If you are working in an industry where your profile needs to help you further your career, then there will always be a quandary. I know this because I have to restrain myself from expressing how I really feel on a regular basis.

If I were to have written about my experiences trying to participate in the community and how people have treated me, it would certainly shock most, but I didn't need to do that. I have learnt from these experiences and taken these learnings forward in the work that I do. Nobody needs to know the finer details of the hurtful things that people have said to me, the way that I have been reduced to tears and made to feel utterly disabled by people who advocate around accessibility and how I have been gossiped about and ridiculed. Naming names and pursuing people with vitriol is futile and anyhow, I don't feel vitriolic as I cannot hate. Most people are fundamentally good, and when I had to confront these things, I did so with compassion alone. Although my emotions ran high, I let them flow. I didn't fight them or act upon them and soon they abated and my mind was clear. For whatever reason, It seems that a lot of people just don't like me; I know that my heart is pure and my intentions are good and that I do the best I can every single day. When I participate and engage with people who accept and respect me, I never feel disabled. When I engage and participate with people who don't, that's another story.

The complexities of human nature make it impossible for a virtual community to replicate a real physical community. The Internet is filled with opportunities and possibilities when people group together around shared interests, but if the web community is to flourish, it needs to change. If people working in the web industry really want everyone to have the best user experiences possible, then there needs to be a genuine foundation of openness, acceptance, respect and understanding. Interactions on social media rarely tell the whole story, especially in 140 characters or less. Debate should be encouraged. Slanging matches and character assassinations should not. It is not a competition. It is not a war. And I'm pretty sure that I'm way too old to still be in high school. We all need to earn a living. Sure. However, for those advocating and for those educating, it matters not whether we are friends or whether we like each other or even whether or not we agree with each other's opinions. What matters is that we have opinions and we're able to voice them without fear. If people disagree or people feel so passionately about something that they need to write about it, as long as its intent is not malicious, what's wrong with ruffling a few feathers? There should be no room for ego, and if ego enters the room it should do so at its own risk.

I shall continue to participate in my strange little way and expect to have more daggers thrown at me. But I shall persevere and now with even more resolve. I dream of living in a world where we celebrate each other's differences. But that is not where we are now. I have no expectation of achieving this in my lifetime, but what I do know is that I feel compelled to leave the world a better place then I came into it. I'm going to make a lot of mistakes along the way and that's just fine, because I learn from them and that's how us humans grow. I have had the good fortune to be able to help people along their journeys, to make others' lives that little bit easier. So, I couldn't care less about chatter. It's just noise to me. I live my life in service to others, however peculiarly, and the rest is just blah.

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