Taking back the internet with politeness

Mere moments before Christmas, and maybe, you’re fully in the spirit.

Maybe you’re downright packed with good will to the point that it oozes a little from your seams. You’re pleasant to all and sundry, your gifts are bought and wrapped, your work all finished up and your tree decorated.

Or not.

But if you are at least closer to a good mood than a bad one this time of year, here’s a way that, maybe, we could all work together to make next year slightly better, especially online.

Because a lot of the online world, particularly social media, is a dark pit of misinformation, hate and bile. Every day, insults grow and the borders that mark civility come closer to being overrun.

Just dipping into it coarsens your soul, and puts a mark on your mood that’s akin to the way the plaque hardens on your teeth.

To misquote British philosopher Thomas Hobbes, a large part of the social media world seems to be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short-form.

For some, the solution is simply to abandon social media as a Gutenberg-type experiment — putting the tools for instant publication into the largest number of hands — that has gone tragically and horribly wrong.

That’s a shame, because there is so much possible good there, as well. Broad-based communication between us all should make tyranny impossible. Instead, the credulous simply sample the things they want to believe.

There are those among us who think that you should respond to online hate with something close to hate yourself — but that’s a mug’s game.

This is not to say that you should simply ignore the trolls (though there is nothing they like better than a response, so they can take another remote whack at you).

But what we can do is to resolve — to be better than that. Let’s all commit to aiming for more light, and less heat.

Don’t make that perfect and withering riposte, no matter how good it will make you feel in the short term, nor how many “attaboys” you expect to receive as comments. Yes, a near-anonymous drive-by hating can give you a brief lift of spirits, the way coming up with just the right insult for a fellow Grade 4 student’s haircut briefly made you an 11-year-old version of a master of repartee.

Instead, if you must respond — particularly to clear up online mistakes, lies and errors, of which there are many — do it in a pleasant, matter-of-fact way, with links to accurate sources of information. Oh, and try to deliver your response in a non-accusatory way.

We know that’s hard, particularly if you’ve been thoroughly jeered at and insulted in front of the entire universe of the worldwide web.

But, there is a revenge.

Be unfailingly polite: in fact, be more polite with each passing jibe thrown your way, if for no reason than that it is the best revenge of all.

The bots simply can’t play that way.

Anyone who has spent any time in a job that deals regularly with the public — everything from retail to handling complaints about letters to the editor — knows that there is a sweet understated and private delight in responding to someone who’s coming at you with ever-growing offensiveness with your own overarching politeness.

Let’s make that the new standard for social media.

Do your part — turn the other cheek. Repeatedly. The best thing we can do is to do what we can to dial back hate.

And the only way we can do that is to dial back our own.