The Internet Comment Trap

First published on September 20, 2018

There's a feeling I get. In fact, I've got it now. I used to get it much more, but it's still there on days like today.

It is nicely summed up by a little cartoon I saw a few years ago of a man hunched over his computer. His wife called down from upstairs, 'Come to bed, darling, it's late.' 'I can't come up yet,' he replied. 'Someone on the Internet is WRONG!'

But whilst the cartoon is funny, the feeling is not. It can range from frustrated and angry, to upset, to anxious, for me at least. There's a kind of righteousness in it, sometimes. 

I'm in it now because someone commented on something I wrote. There was criticism in there, and I feel misunderstood. I'm tired, too, which doesn't help. And this piece, in particular, carried vulnerability - about a new piece of work I have recently launched and, deep down, I know its a little more controversial than most of the things I write or share. I knew when I wrote the piece that some people wouldn't like it. That's why I've shied away from it for so long. Maybe where the feeling comes from, really, is that the comment played into the doubts I had myself. Am I the right person to do this work? Or not? Maybe that's where this feeling always comes from, a fear that I might be wrong, of being caught out.

I was having dinner with someone once, who was being quite argumentative. Later, someone shared, 'It didn't feel like they were arguing with us, it felt like they were arguing with someone else, or themself, from long ago.' 

Maybe this is what is happening when we feel this rising feeling. I have watched others dealing with this - particularly those with big twitter followings, and wondered if they feel the tension I do when people are disagreeing with them. And mostly, over time, I've come to the conclusion that they sometimes do and they sometimes don't. And that if sometimes they don't, then there is some work we can do to engage in conversations over the internet in a way that doesn't leave us feeling tension in a way we don't like. 

But also they are human, so mostly they do feel that. At least a bit. I don't feel it as much as I used to. Even though, this time, it's about something of mine, not a particular viewpoint seen from afar. I find, now, that I can enter into these kind of internet conversions, about my work and other things, with much more freedom and ease than I used to. But at first, each time, I have to breathe through it. Perhaps remember that they aren't arguing with me, but with the self, or something else from another time.

And, as far as I can tell, the greater ease partly came by sharing more of my truth - as I have done a couple of times this year - with the world than before.