Louise McSharry on . . . being an internet jerk

I love the internet. I know there are those who will find it sad, but it is genuinely one of my favourite things about life in 2016. From the moment I wake up in the morning to the moment I close my eyes at night, I am essentially online.

You see, I have a thirst for knowledge. Okay, maybe it’s more a thirst for being “in the know”. When I was a child this meant a voracious appetite for books, and now it means checking Twitter 45 times a day. I need to know things before other people. I need to be able to mutter “saw that” to my partner when he mentions the latest cat video to go viral. The subtext, of course, is “saw that two days ago, you fool,” which he does not appreciate, but I am safe in the knowledge that I am in the know and therefore I carry on.

Do I sound like a jerk? I am a bit of a jerk. These days I find myself seeking out my people, fellow internet fans, who also live online and know exactly what I mean when I say I met someone IRL (in real life) who followed me on Snapchat and disagreed with me about the latest Kyshadow (make-up) release. I like it when I meet someone new and they mention that they saw something on Twitter that morning. I know it means that they too are up to date in the way that I am. We are evolved. Or we think we are evolved, even if we are jerks.

As you can imagine, I am the first person to defend life online and on social media when people write it off as frivolous. I have got jobs and built important work relationships online. I have friends whom I first encountered online and who are now a huge part of my life. I have a strong network of female colleagues who support and cheer me on from across a wide range of industries whom I would never have encountered outside of the internet. And yet, I have to admit, if we’re not careful we’ll all be jerks.

The comfy online world makes it easy for us to seek out like-minded people, which is wonderful, but it does result in cliques. We find people who agree with us, people who are reading what we read, who share our political views and taste in television. We like each other’s tweets and back each other up in arguments. All of these things have benefits, but they can also be dangerous. In such an environment it is easy to convince yourself that everyone is like you, that everyone should agree with you and that everyone should know what you know. If you’re not careful, you start to expect that everyone you encounter online is the finished product. Evolved, like you. Because you know everything.

The truth is, none of us knows everything. We are all learning all the time, online and offline. I am very grateful to the internet for having taught me about trans people, the struggles they face, and the correct terminology to use around the issues.

Via the internet, I have learned about make-up, music, cooking and how to correctly paint my sitting room. The internet is all about accessing new information, and yet, there is an expectation these days that everyone should be the finished product. As a result, there is little room for error.

Recently on Twitter, an Irish musician compared the removal of a Repeal the Eighth mural from a Dublin wall to the deletion of Milo Yiannopoulos’ Twitter account.

(Yiannopolous was banned from Twitter for stoking racist abuse against Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones.)

Why was one a crime against free speech when the other wasn’t, he wondered? The reaction was swift, as people pointed out that Yiannopoulos’ brand of racist and sexist bullying online could not possibly be justified, and it wasn’t long before the musician deleted his original tweet. “I was a moron,” he said, “I understand now the difference between free speech and hate speech.”

He replied to people who tweeted him to say they were offended, apologising and saying that he accepted his fault. He should have researched the context of the Yiannopoulos situation before tweeting, he said. Again, he was sorry. “I have learned a lesson,” he tweeted repeatedly.

You would think that would be the end of it. I mean, what more could you ask for? However, the storm in a teacup raged on and the musician was labelled a racist and a sexist as platform users continued to discuss him among themselves – many refusing to engage with him when he tried to join their conversations to admit his fault.

If I say something stupid online, I expect to be corrected. I want to learn from my mistakes, just as I do in real life. However, I don’t expect a torrent of abuse. It’s not a reasonable response, and it will result in a world where people are afraid to say anything, and then what’s the point?

I’m an internet jerk, but I don’t want to be that kind of internet jerk.