Everything is Real, Right?

I am real. You are real.

This is a real article you are reading.

If you read it on your phone, it is still real. If you print it out, it will be real too.

I don’t want to labour the point, but everything about this is real.

During media coverage of the terrible murder of British MP Sir David Amess, there has been much hand-wringing about physical abuse that members of parliament have received “in real life” and the abuse they have had online via social media.

Always this odd distinction that someone shouting curses at you in the street is “real” but the same person typing out those same words and @ you on twitter is not real.

Well, its 2021 and we have had the Internet for a while now.

I’ll let you into a secret. The Internet is REAL.

Real people use it. They create websites. They write posts on social media. They order hummus from Waitrose and make-up from Boots. Hummus and make-up arrives at their real homes a few days later and real money comes out of their bank accounts, because I’ll whisper it again, the Internet is real.

The sooner every commentator, talking head and columnist gets their head around this basic fact, then we will all be better off, because real means real consequences, real benefits and of course real harm.

If you dehumanise your comments and posts on social media, if you disconnect what you are writing with the impact it might have on the person who is reading it, you can act with impunity. It doesn’t matter — it is not real.

Just like some people suddenly adopt an aggressive, abusive persona when they get behind the wheel of their sealed-off air-conditioned car and start to interact with other drivers, people sit behind a keyboard, sometimes also behind a mask of anonymity and spew out their thoughts and bile with no thought to the very real consequences they might have on their subjects.

Only when everyone — victim, commentator, journalist, perpetrator, celebrity starts to understand that what they say and do online matters just as much as what they say and do physically will a better balance between online and offline behaviour be possible.

Harmful behaviour won’t disappear, just as it never will in the high street, but at least we must try to import as much of the civility of our daily personal interactions into our online lives as we can.

Of course, human nature being what it is, maybe it will go the other way and people will start trolling us offline, shouting obscenities and obscure view points at complete strangers in the street, like anti-vaxxers outside a school…