Be Decent

About a year and a half ago, something amazing happened to me on Twitter. Yes, that place. It’s still there.

An acquaintance—or at the very least, someone who follows me and I follow them right back—someone I interact with occasionally, (is there a word for that, yet? If not, there should be) tweeted about a recent experience, and then expressed a commentary about said experience. (I'm being intentionally vague with the details here, so bear with me.)

Since it's the internet, I felt like my opinion on the matter needed to be shared. Turns out, it didn't. Not long after I tweeted my responses that disagreed with this user's commentary, the user came back and kind of exploded at me. The guy was a little salty but generally cordial. He wasn’t a complete badger or anything, but the message was clear: my opinion and disagreement were quite unwelcome.

Now the ghosts of Cameron’s past (like 5 years ago me) would have spent the rest of the night researching his point and proving why his opinion was the correct one. That Cameron would’ve went on a tirade about why I didn't deserve to be internet-yelled at when I was on the right side of the argument anyway. That Cameron was awesome, yeah?

You know what I did instead?

I went to sleep.

Well, I tried. Sure, I thought about a million or so things I could say to really stake this thing in the ground and secure my rightness (though it really wouldn't have). More than once I grabbed my phone with intent to kill the argument, but after awhile, I cooled off and slept. And then I woke up the next day and did something I don't normally do.

No, I'm not talking about going to the gym.

I opened up Twitter and apologized.

Yep. I said sorry. That word that everyone hates. 

I shared that I still disagreed and had a differing opinion, but I conceded that I had caused offense when I didn't intend to and I just wanted to have a conversation. I admitted that it’s clearly a sensitive subject, and my opinion wasn’t helping the situation, so I wouldn't bring it up anymore.

I was ready. I was ready to receive a lashing because I've seen how the internet is. There's no forgiveness. It's eat or be eaten out there. I was ready for OneRepublic to @ me and tell me that it was too late to apologize.

Then it happened.

The other user apologized for snapping. The user admitted that he perhaps jumped too quickly, and recognized that it wasn't okay. And you know what? We're still twiends today. (That's the word I'm going with.)

You see, he was coming from a place of hurt. And though we disagreed about the political details of this scenario, at the end of the day, it didn’t fix his very real and very frustrating problem. There was a human being on the other end of that @ symbol that was hurting, and me arguing with him about red vs blue didn’t help the situation.

We still follow each other. I think I even added him on Instagram. He probably doesn’t even remember that interaction, but it completely changed how I view online interactions. When I see him pop up in my Instagram feed (I don’t jump on Twitter much these days) I know that we have differing opinions, in a lot of subjects, but that’s okay.

We've decided that sometimes, it's better to be a decent person than to be right.

This really isn't a post about how awesome I am, or how to be more like me (but I mean, come on). This is a call for us to just be good.

The internet has a name for being a place where trolls don't have to hide. Everyone is so angry with everyone all the time because it's easy to say things when you're anonymous behind a screen. Everyone is more assertive and aggressive about their opinions when it’s only text and pixels.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

You can remember that there is a human being on the other side of that device. There’s an actual person, and they’ve been hurt somehow. Opinions aside, let’s be honest, we’ve all been wounded. Yeah, they might be wrong. You might be wrong. But does it help to argue? Sometimes it might actually just be a call for help. 

Obviously, there are areas to hold your ground. Hold to what's morally right. Hold to things that are life or death. I will defend my faith until the end of my days. But you know what?

It's okay to disagree.

Let there be disagreement, and treat it with cordiality and respect. Because we're human beings. And we can have different opinions.

To quote Morgan Freeman's Judge Leonard White, "Be Decent."

You can do it. And maybe the internet can be a better place because of it.