“Why don’t you say your piece?” I asked my friend. “It need not be public. Explain your concern. Open up in an email or private message.”
“Need not be public?!” His retort was visceral, a shock coming from my taciturn, soft-spoken, long-time minister friend. He and I often “visited” via text and, when possible, in person or over the phone. He had expressed concern with various online discussion groups: “They just stir the stink. It’s a grievance replay loop, finding fault and multiplying it with the plain, impersonal, seductive power of digital media.”
“Tell them!” I urged.
“What? Play that game? Once they have my response they will use it to their advantage or simply ignore it. There is no point.” I seldom saw my friend this upset. He spoke of a landscape of zero trust and constant hearsay, the perverse power of words divorced from real persons in space and time: no voice inflection, handshake, honest and open give and take over a table or in a job through years of caring and sharing common life.
“All that is blanched and forgotten with our so-called social media. There’s little social about it. People say as they will with impunity. Those who agree pile on, and detractors are, quite literally, damned.”
He’s gone now, my cautionary friend, whose imaginary words he might have thought but never spoken. He was too wise. But the angst won’t leave me. We have a Leviathan which, I fear, takes far more than it gives. Because we can, we do, and technology, as always, gives leverage to both good and bad. Would that we could overcome the bad with the good. And my dear friend would offer an abrupt solution before going his way: “Know when to hold your peace.”