#BeKind*

I’m not entirely sure what this year has down to our collective consciousness. I don’t know what the long-term effects of social media will be for us. I think, if we make it that far, in years to come we’ll look back and see that we were openly allowing people to use the most addictive drug of all time on the daily, without any restrictions or mediation. There was a time, in the early days of social media, where it was used exclusively to chat to friends and family. There isn’t any version of social media where that is the primary goal anymore. The purpose of social media now is to make us all angry, and scared, and divided, and it’s working.

The evidence for this is clearest is cases where people shout down others for asking people to stop being angry, and to be more compassionate. In April of this year, a hashtag emerged in the wake of the death of Caroline Flack, a hashtag that asked others to stop being abusive and horrible online. The effects of the #BeKind trend lasted for all of about 3 days, before people went back to wishing bad outcomes, illness, and death upon people they didn’t like. It proved to some degree that the affect of social media to cause us to turn to hatred as our first call of action was stronger than any superficial trend or hashtag could be.

What astounds me most about #BeKind was that the people who championed the hashtag in the beginning can sometimes be the most hateful of all people in the online world. ‘Be Kind’ doesn’t have an asterisk attached to it. It isn’t conditional. ‘Be Kind’ implies that you should treat all people with kindness, whether you like them or not. There is no caveat that allows you to be kind to some people and be hateful to others, but a lot of people will have you believe this is true.

Furthermore, there’s an argument that because a person acts horribly to others, we then have the right and the wiggle room to act horribly back to these people. Unfortunately, that’s not how morality works. If someone is being a prick, and your response to them being a prick is to be a prick yourself, then you are no better than they are just because ‘they deserved it.’ All that’s happened here is that you’ve proved that you have the capability to act exactly like the people whose behaviour you claim to despise. Meeting bad behaviour with more bad behaviour doesn’t make you virtuous, it makes you the direct opposite.

#BeKind was a wonderful idea that very few people sought to keep going after it stopped getting them attention online. It seems to me that the number of people who will only be kind if people are watching is on the rise. But what really worries me is not how few people can be kind with sincerity. What worries me is how many people can openly be brutally hateful and rage-filled and and horrid, all in the name of bringing about a better world. Whatever your beliefs, we don’t get to a better version of today through the vector of hate, and I know that you know this.

Be kind, but more importantly, stop being a prick.