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Last night, walking to the tube station after my very Zen (apart from the ‘fun’ stomach crunching) yoga class, I listened to a voicemail from my brother asking me to text him a number. As I dutifully started doing this, a fairly young guy in a suit walked past me, leant in close and said “Get a life” and walked on by…
Now, tell me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure mobile phones and the concept of texting has been around for more than a decade now. Thinking about it more closely, it may well have been me groaning out loud at my iPhone 4 for not letting me do what I want to do that spurred his comment (I can tell you that living in a technophile world can ruin a girl’s Zen state pretty fast). Or, maybe it was just a general judgement in passing he wanted to share with me.
Regardless of the reason, if only I’d run after him to give him a stern ticking off for being judgemental, arrogant and aggressive, which would naturally left him quaking in his lace up shoes, I could have then explained to him the irony of the situation.
The online world has allowed people to use the anonymity of their online profile to be verbally aggressive and abusive to and about whomever they like. Sometimes, the kudos of having a well known social media profile gives people the equivalent of an alcohol-fuelled swagger, and they are merrily excessively harsh – knowing that the backlash will be minimal. By being judgemental and unnecessarily rude, this man has actually embraced the darker side of social media. Well done him!
As it happens, I thought (after the immediate *insert rude word here*), how sad that he gets so wound up by something that is now a part of every day life and wholly unrelated to him.
Get a life yourself young man.
* Interesting / pleasing to note that I’m not alone in thinking online world can breed unwarranted aggression. Andrew Marr recently hit out at angry bloggers and angry citizen journalism (the latter is a whole new blog post). The result? Lots of aggressive backlash in cyberspace. Oh the irony…
