Nerd Church - Online Responsibility (All The World's A Stage)

I think one of the primary responsibilities we have in life is to not hurt people.

The thing is, not everyone agrees on what, exactly, that entails.

A lot of people don't think that that responsibility to not hurt people covers saying cr*p online, for example.

It may not hurt someone physically, but what we say online can have serious repercussions. 

And the more 'influence' we have - online or in the mainstream media - the more responsibility we have to consider the consequences of our actions.

The world is full of nuance and 'what ifs' and 'but what abouts' - I'm not going to deny that. It's the way things are.

But I think that, in general, you have the responsibility to think about the ramifications of your words before you say them (whether that's verbally or online or whatever.)

'You're asking people to censor themselves!' - kind of, yeah.

I'm asking people to know when it's appropriate to joke, and when it isn't. 

I'm asking people to understand that what you say to a crowd of small children is different to what you might say in a university lecture hall, and hopefully extremely different to what you'd say at a strip club.

I'm asking people to realise that screaming abuse at other people in a public restaurant is likely to get you kicked out.

(Yes, Twitter is the restaurant, ok?)

I'm not going to pretend I always do or say the 'right' thing. I'm sure that's not true - I'm only human, after all (at least that's what they tell me 😉).

But what I try to do, with my moderate-sized online platform

 - one which seems big to people with small followings, and small to people with big followings - 

is to be responsible, and to think before I speak.

Because the very last thing I want is for people to get hurt because of something I said or did.

Imagine you're standing on a stage of a hall or theatre. 

And the people in the audience have come to see you and you alone. 

That's what your online platform is. 

Whether it's Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, your own blog, or a combination of social platforms, they can all be represented by that image of a stage.

(Yes, I know I said Twitter's a restaurant - it is. We're mixing metaphors. Just go with it!)

When you have a tiny platform of less than 100 (and we all start somewhere! You have no idea how chuffed I still get when I first hit 100 followers on a social platform,) it's relatively easy to explain to your audience what it is you're trying to say.

Via Giphy

And because there aren't a huge amount of them, you can 'read the room' and realise when you need to clarify things, and when you don't. 

You may know that audience quite well, even - a local performance in your school or home town has more of a shared cultural experience, and more knowledge of how your audience may interpret your work.

If needs be, you can even go around everyone after the show and answer questions.

When you have a few hundred, or a few thousand, followers, your responsibility grows accordingly.

From where you're stood though, on the stage, (now a packed crowd, though you're still playing the same venue,) you can still see almost everyone who's watching you.

You can look out at your audience and be aware that amongst them are people from all sorts of backgrounds and with all sorts of experiences.

You start to become aware that some of the people in front of you have been through a lot, so it's worth warning them if one of your shows has some content they may not wanna see.

(You should also be considering how good or bad your disabled access is, and whether your venue is a welcoming environment for LGBTQ+ people and People of Colour/BAME people. #JustSaying)

There's no watershed on your stage, and no age restrictions at the door, so you need to be responsible for making sure people are aware of what performance you're staging. 

Some of your plays are like Care Bears, but some are a little more like the Saw films, or 50 Shades of Grey and you really don't want those audiences not knowing which is which!

So you need to tell them at the ticket office if things are gonna get graphic and/or sensitive.

You can still meet people after the show, sometimes.

But it becomes more difficult to know your audience as completely as you did when you were playing to those small and intimate crowds of 100 people or less.

Still, you try to wave at your regulars, and go to some of their performances too. You take time to go to other people's plays and hear their stories. 

The crowd in front of you is made up of individuals, and you remind yourself that.

Via Giphy

I've never played the larger venues - those in the bigger towns and the cities which can hold tens of thousands of followers.

I imagine that's it's more difficult to control a crowd that size. Looking out at them must sometimes seem like controlling an army, or watching waves crash against the shore.

There are some performers, though, who are able to still pick out the individuals in the metaphorical crowd. 

These are the best kinds of performers - those who don't forget that that audience is made up of people, messy and complex and all with their own lives to live.

These best kinds of performers, though, also know that they have the responsibility that this size of platform brings - you need to think about what you wanna say and how you wanna say it.

That doesn't mean that you can't say controversial things, or that you can't 'push the boundaries' a little.

But you should be aware that you have a devoted audience now, who will take what you say and run with it, maybe to extreme degrees. So you need to be very conscious of what you're doing.

You should also be aware that standing on that stage does not mean that everyone loves you - if the crowd dislikes the performance, then they'll boo and heckle their butts off, guaranteed.

New people might not come to see you. The metaphorical theatre critics might go on the offensive. 

You can still say whatever you want, but that doesn't protect you from the consequences of people disagreeing with you.

Once you're at the huge festivals and stadiums, playing to millions, then it's like you're the de facto leader of a small country.

My country (Wales,) has a population of a little over 3 million people. 

If you have millions of followers, you are speaking to your very own little online nation. Don't become the corrupt government of your fandom-state.

I imagine it's difficult to remember that ALL of those people are still individuals - they have their own lives, loves, desires, fears, etc. 

But from where you're standing, they all look like little dots. You can't even see all of them any more.

If you're talking to that many people, you also have a responsibility to think through all the ways this sh** could go wrong.

Because when you're talking directly to that many people, that sh** will go wrong, and you need to mitigate the damage.

Your words will be mis-spoken, misunderstood, and/or used as justifications for harming others.

I have no idea how you would even begin to control that level of social power.

But you have to. Because, as every Marvel fan knows, with great power comes great responsibility.

So... have I thoroughly confused you all?

Do you see what I'm getting at?

Or do I need to work on my muddled metaphors?

Talk to me! 😊💬

You can follow me on Twitter @CeeDoraReads, on Pinterest, and on Dora Reads @ BlogLovin. For more ways to support me, check out the Support Me page

Related Reading:

• Nerd Church - Power and Privilege in 2020

• Nerd Church - An Unpopular Opinion on the 'Don't Feed the Trolls' Campaign

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