Editorial:

Think twice before posting online

Posted 6/11/19

The internet has opened up the opportunity for anyone, anywhere to share their opinion about anything.

In many ways, that’s been a good thing. The internet and other technologies have made …

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Editorial:

Think twice before posting online

Posted

The internet has opened up the opportunity for anyone, anywhere to share their opinion about anything.

In many ways, that’s been a good thing. The internet and other technologies have made it easier than ever for someone to tell their story, share their experiences and gather an audience. But perhaps it’s too easy.

Rumors and knee-jerk reactions that, in years past, might have simply been shared with a nearby friend are now blasted out to thousands of people via social media.

If your experience is anything like ours, you’ve seen the negative results: endless waves of outrage, unkindness and misinformation.

In one recent example, someone took to a local Facebook group to complain that Cody High School officials were prohibiting U.S military-bound students from displaying sashes from the Armed Forces at their graduation. That wasn’t accurate, but dozens of commenters quickly offered their criticism before school officials could respond.

In some ways, it’s nothing new. After all, it was roughly a century ago — well before the dawn of the internet — that someone observed, “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.”

Thanks to social media, though, it seems that bad information can now circumnavigate the globe before anyone bothers to alert the facts that there’s a race.

We see it on a near-daily basis on the Tribune’s Facebook page, too, where some people are quick to weigh in with a strident take, but apparently don’t have the time or interest to learn about what they’re commenting on. Facts seem to come second to reactions.

And then there’s the undercurrent of meanness and disrespect in so many online forums.

Consider the weekly “Warrant Wednesday” posts on the Park County Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page. Created to highlight some of the people being sought for arrest, the comment threads tend to more closely resemble a pillory than a manhunt; for many commenters, working to bring a perpetrator to justice seems to take a backseat to crafting the most creative insult they can muster.

We could also pull plenty of examples from the Tribune’s Facebook page. One Cody man recently posted on an article that, “You [expletive]ing liberated [expletives] need to leave [expletive] the [expletive] alone!!”

It’s the kind of tone that makes you wonder what kind of place we live in. Of course, we know such flashes of anger aren’t truly representative of our friends and neighbors, who are best measured in the care and generosity we see so often. But we still have plenty of room to improve our community, both on and offline.

“If you see something, say something,” is a great rule for issues of national security and public safety, but it is not for social media. If you see something you don’t like online, it can be better to let your annoyance pass rather than to fire off a bitter retort. When you do need to speak up, making an effort to be constructive can go a long way.

It’s also worth taking the time to make sure you’ve got your facts straight. That might mean clicking a link and doing some reading or digging into a topic before posting a comment. But while it might take some time, you’ll never regret taking the high road or having the facts on your side.

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