Last month I wrote a post for a personal blog that I have.\u00a0 It was an open letter to the new school Mums of 2020, and I was fortunate that the article was published on the Mamamia network.\u00a0 Mamamia then shared it to their Facebook page.\u00a0 They chose a heading that was a quote from the article.\u00a0 The headline was only a tiny piece of what I wrote, and it quickly became evident that of the 150 odd comments that soon followed, 95% of those commenting were commenting on the headline and not the article.<\/p>\n
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When something I wrote is published online I acknowledge that there can be comments, both negative and positive in response to what I\u2019ve written.\u00a0 That\u2019s kind of the point; to have an intelligent and diverse debate of opinions.\u00a0 But on this occasion the comment thread was littered with knee jerk responses that missed the point entirely.\u00a0 Some commentators who had read the article stated the obvious and suggested that people should read first before commenting.<\/p>\n
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Anyway, it turns out that this is what is referred to as \u201ccomment culture\u201d, whereby people are invited to weigh in on issues where expertise is devalued and people are compelled to \u201cwrite before they think.\u201d\u00a0 This takes the thread down a rabbit hole of meaningless conversations and moral outrage entirely missing the original point that was being made.\u00a0 According to Mamamia\u2019s Commissioning Editor it is something that they struggle with endlessly.<\/p>\n
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It would never occur to me to comment on a social media article had I not first read the article, but it made me think about what this translates to offline and into real life.\u00a0 Then I realised it is the very nature of what we\u2019ve become.\u00a0 You could argue that social media and our phones are to blame.\u00a0 These platforms are changing the way our brains are working but perhaps it\u2019s also the nature of what we have always been.\u00a0 In 1989 Stephen Covey wrote what was to become an international best seller,\u00a0The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.<\/i>\u00a0<\/i>\u00a0The premise was for the reader to understand perspective and that two people can see the same thing yet have a difference of opinion. \u00a0The fifth habit, seek first to understand, then to be understood which you could simply translate as \u201cthere is always another side to the story.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The use of social media has changed the way we communicate. \u00a0Information is constant and instant, and people are moved to react and respond quickly and urgently without a taking a moment to stop and consider. \u00a0The content is interactive and often contentious.\u00a0 Our social stories only tell what it is we say, and often they are flawlessly photographed and curated for our Instagram viewing.<\/p>\n
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We have become very quick to jump to a conclusion and make assumptions without truly understanding, and most people would agree that the comment culture on social media is largely to blame.\u00a0 The internet is loud and shouty, twitter is mostly argumentative and narky and other platforms encourage, promote and reward likes, shares and comments.\u00a0 No topic is exempt, no thought is immune. \u00a0If you have an opinion and a keyboard you can become a self-proclaimed expert so suddenly expertise is devalued.\u00a0 Nothing is off limits \u2013 politics, pop culture, Jennifer Anniston\u2019s fertility, climate change.<\/p>\n
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For those who are publishing content, comments become a measure of relevancy.\u00a0 The more discussion the more engagement. \u00a0Which would be fine except that it seems people aren\u2019t interested in having civilised dialogue or debate.\u00a0 They just want to see their own words and opinions aired.\u00a0 Reactive and immediate, virtue signalling and outrage and uproar without knowledge of the whole story and context to the narrative.<\/p>\n
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This is already problematic, but the real trouble with comment culture is the way in which it is permeating itself into real life. \u00a0Our personal lives and into the workplace.<\/p>\n
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In recent times, much has been spoken of the importance and significance of emotional intelligence (EQ) and resilience in the workplace. No longer corporate speak or fashionable buzzwords, we can\u2019t argue that these qualities are to be highly valued and help us to build and maintain relationships, to manage change and to cope when life tosses us around like a salad. \u00a0It\u2019s starts early, my current reading list includes \u201c9 Ways to a Resilient Child.\u201d But I\u2019d like to add listening skills to this list of crucial competencies and specifically active listening which means \u201cto fully concentrate on what is being said rather than passively hearing the message of the speaker.\u201d \u00a0To listen with all of the senses.<\/p>\n
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Ranting and venting is easy and sometimes even cathartic, but what is more respectful and more powerful is to listen and to understand. \u00a0This doesn\u2019t mean you have to agree, but rather seek first to understand, then be understood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On ‘comment culture’ and our eagerness to speak first and listen later. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14170,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puresource.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puresource.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puresource.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puresource.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puresource.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14167"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.puresource.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14786,"href":"https:\/\/www.puresource.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14167\/revisions\/14786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puresource.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/14170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puresource.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puresource.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puresource.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}