There's a reason I chose writing as my medium, forever ago: it allows me to be certain that I'm expressing things the way I want to, and that I then get to be "heard" from a safe distance.
"Safe" in this context means "anywhere further away than in person, at which range I have to react appropriately in real time."
I'm really well-adjusted that way.
But no matter how carefully you say it, you can't control what people take away from what you say (as a person OR a writer).
I think it's maddening, on the one hand, because I can spend literally hours trying to fix a single sentence (OCD, people), hours which, apparently, may mean nothing, since someone will read my crystalline creation and say "see, this is just like the problems with Obamacare."
But on the other hand it's fascinating. A friend recently published a controversial piece in which s/he acted poorly. It's clear throughout that this person KNOWS s/he acted poorly, but the reaction online, even in writing communities, wasn't about the story, or the skill in telling it, or even the bravery in admitting to it (some of the discussion focused on that, but it was the minority). The overwhelming majority of people got angry at the first sign that a line had been crossed, focused their entire reaction on the nature of that line-crossing, and eventually resorted to ad hominem attacks about the writer in question.
None of that was what the writer was trying to say--that was the up front, "this is a given" mea culpa that I think s/he thought was understood by everyone to be the starting point of the piece, not its ultimate takeaway.That was supposed to be something deeper.
But people didn't pay attention to how beautifully constructed the metaphors were, or the careful pacing of the plotline.
They just got pissed off about what actually happened.
Ugh.
I know there's no way to control for this (you can't cure stupid!), but I'd love to know if there's any way to mitigate it, even slightly.
I'd always thought the distance of "these are written words" was a bonus, but as far as hearing each other goes, I wonder if it isn't occasionally just as much a handicap...
Do you think this is because people are more primed for outrage than before? Or is it that people don't generally process disclaimers like the one in your friend's piece when it is in print, but we are only aware of this disconnect now because of feedback that is in comment sections? For instance, would someone who processed letters to the editors twenty years ago think that people barely read the pieces that they are complaining about?
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the mea culpa is more likely to be processed and frame the rest of the story if it is told in person. If so, why? Are we more empathetic when hearing someone in person, rather than reading their account in print? And if so, how does that affect the way that we process the world around us.