Torn Between Speaking Up and Staying Silent

For the past few months, I have been more silent. I was less present online, and generally spent less time in front of a computer. I feel relaxed and at peace with myself. It has been a very good time, and still is. I needed that time to find myself.

Now that I feel at ease with myself, I want to share my thoughts and opinions online again more often. I want to write more, participate more in discussions, and generally find my voice and have a voice.

But at the same time, I’m not sure if I actually want to.

I’m more and more disappointed with the “software engineering community” online. I’ve been part of this community for years, I’ve met lots of great people, I’ve learned a lot from them, found inspiration, and I am who I am because people in this community had shaped me with good opinions.

Lately, though, I feel ashamed to be part of this bubble.

There is so much asshole behavior on social media. Many of them are strangers, but what’s disappointing is that I see it from people I used to think are good people, have good opinions, similar opinions to me, who spread joy, or at least who I thought were generally nice and pleasant people, even if I didn’t knew them personally.

People in this bubble are behaving like absolute assholes online. Slandering others, making assumptions, twisting words, being super hostile, seemingly forgetting that there are other humans on the other side of usernames.

Of course there has always been some drama and odd discussions, but I can’t see the normal and nice side of this community anymore. The negative hateful side is so overwhelming that the other side has disappeared. I don’t recognize that community anymore, and I don’t want to be associated with that behavior.

What bothers me particularly is how often these discussions don’t even happen with the people involved. Instead of talking directly to someone about something they said, people talk about them with others. It happens in quote posts, separate threads, as replies to someone else’s opinion about the original opinion. Rather than asking the author for clarification or more context, they ask someone else what their take on it is. And suddenly, an entire discussion unfolds around wrong assumptions and lopsided opinions.

I find that cowardly. And I say that knowing that I’ve done it myself in the past. That I myself quote-tweeted something or discussed it in other threads, because I was too much of a coward to talk to the original poster. Looking back, I’m not particularly proud of it.

Social media ruined us. It gave us all the wrong tools to be a good society.

And I know: “But not everybody! ☝️” Of course it’s not everybody. I know too many genuinely wonderful people to believe that. There’s always a “not always” and “not everybody”. It doesn’t change my disappointment with what feels like an increasingly visible trend.

Which brings me back to my dilemma.

Part of me wants to be more present online precisely because of all this. I want to share my thoughts and contribute something positive, and to be a small counterpoint to all the hostility and lopsided opinions. I don’t want to leave it to the loudest and most aggressive voices.

But another part of me wants nothing to do with it. Because being visible online also means exposing myself to the very behavior that I’m sick of. I had too many idiotic discussions from people who maybe just wanted to ragebait, or troll, or are just assholes. And right now, after having spent some time away from all of this, I’m not very eager to invite that back into my life.

And frankly, I don’t even know what being a good counterpoint would look like.

Calling people out publicly for how they’re behaving online doesn’t feel right either. Putting someone on the spot and making them the subject of yet another discussion would just contribute to the same problem.

Whenever I see some idiotic argument online, I often find myself thinking: Why do you even care so much? People have incredibly strong opinions about situations even though they have absolutely no stake in it. They’re not involved, they’re not affected, and often simply don’t have the full context. Yet they feel this need to weigh in and spread hate. It feels like they’re more invested in the argument itself, rather than in whatever they’re arguing about.

I catch myself wanting to jump into these dumb arguments. To offer a different perspective, push back against the hostility, ask them if their employer knows how much of an asshole they are online, or simply remind them that they’re talking about actual human beings.

But before I take part in that discussion, when I think about it for a moment, I realize that I often don’t care that much about the actual topic either. I care about how people are discussing it. I care about the wrong assumptions, their blind spots, how fucking hostile they’re behaving, and their lack of any respect towards people. But I don’t really care about the argument itself.

So, what would I actually contribute by joining in?

Would I make things better, or would I just become another person taking part in a discussion they don’t really have a stake in? Isn’t that somehow exactly what frustrates me about other people?

I don’t know. Like, genuinely, I don’t know.

I realize I can also just write about things I enjoy, and share what I’m working on, and engage with people who make this community worth being part of in the first place. I don’t need to respond to toxicity to be a positive presence online.

But… it won’t make the disappointment go away. I will still think about it, and I will feel an urge that I should raise my voice against the toxicity. I more often feel ashamed to be part of this community, but I will also feel ashamed that I hadn’t raised my voice.

Maybe spending less time online has simply made me more sensitive to all of this. Maybe I’ve changed, too. Maybe it would help all of us to spend less time on social media.

There’s no conclusion to this. No grandiose revelation while I’m writing these lines. I’m just disappointed in what I’m observing, and torn between wanting to be more involved and wanting to keep my distance.