When you’re tired, and you’re not in a great headspace…
It’s hard to be at the top of your game. We can forget, in those moments, to “practice what we preach” or to “lead by example.” Nothing bothers me more than a hypocrite… except a hypocrite who can’t admit when they’ve messed up. Especially because we all mess up. So, let me share my most recent mess up 🙂 There is a bit of back story but I’ll share with you what I did, and the things I was reminded of afterwards.
I have been really cutting back on social media lately.
I’ve been doing that because, at the end of the day, I’m tired. Social media is one of the biggest challenges for mental health – the algorithms are designed with incredible investments into the psychological understanding of people. They use that information to manipulate our behavior; primarily to keep our attention for as long as possible. This means that the things that grab your attention (like controversial and dramatic headlines, videos, and graphics or images that catch your eye) cause you to click or watch that video till the end, before scrolling. The more you seem “hooked” the more those things are going to be what the algorithms show you.
The algorithms are changing the way we behave.
We’ve learned so much about “algorithms” that we’ve learned to shorten the word because talk of the “algo” can push engagement down which hurts how many users your videos are shown to. Your length of watch time, whether or not you liked something, if you left a comment, or read other comments… All of this engagement drives up a post’s “trending” profile. Businesses pay premium dollars to access more people. Companies like Facebook and TikTok compete not only for your attention but also for your data because all of that information allows them to monetize their platforms.
Eventually, though, there’s a limit to what businesses will pay them for prime-time access to you, and that monetization then changes the algorithm through marketing “boosts” and “promotions” to people like you. This cycle of you watching and engaging, coupled with the data that the platform wants to collect, and partnering then with businesses that want ad space on your screen, results in you seeing things in your news and program feeds that aren’t always best for YOUR design.
I’m telling you this for a couple of reasons…
If you don’t already know that information, I hope you see how important it is to monitor your feeds and work to create as much control over them as possible. I’m also telling you all of this because earlier, when I said I fucked up, It has to do in a large part with all of this. I messed up by dropping a comment in a post that social media supplied for my feed. But the post had no context, and I’ll explain more about that in a bit. Lastly, I’m telling you this because my algorithm, and my failure to manage what was popping up for my feed, is exactly why I have been so tired and not in a great headspace. I know that, but many people don’t, and when you know that and still mess up and comment on a stranger’s post without context.
So what happened was…
The post was pretty incendiary… and I’m sure that was by design. Many people are of the mindset now that fighting is the only way to make progress… That shock effects are the only way to make progress… and the salesperson and marketing manager inside of me says “Heck yeah.. feed the algorithm!” The human who is focused on mental health for a living also hates this part of horrifying “progress.”
The post in question, when I saw it was a cry for help… but not for the issue at hand, from the woman who posted it. The way it was worded, or the way my brain perceived it, was that she was as exhausted as I was with the incessant in-your-face drama and political crap that is happening across social media (especially as we ramp up to election season here in the US.) I read it from my perspective. My own emotions of how disheartening and damaging all of the things we see, every day, are.
.
Additionally, I read it from my perspective a LOT more because I read into a very vague post about “dead babies” and I assumed that she was someone who was trying to make a shocking statement about abortion. So, not only did I perceive her as being as tired and frustrated as I was, but I also perceived her as having a fight I relate to. Politicians and PAC funds center on divisive issues. While that’s a whole other 6 blog posts on the newest projects I’m working on, let’s just say that it’s my belief that human rights should never be up for a political discussion.
Assumptions were made on many fronts.
So, for this woman’s post, I made this assumption and took my perceptions and I dropped a slightly sassy but also well-meaning comment about how she could correct her algorithm and stop seeing this. Forgetting that I’d made this horrible comment.. (horrible because in retrospect even if this was a woman who I thought was pro-life and was exposing herself to a shit ton of imagery around dead babies, the truth of the matter is, she still felt trauma… she still felt loss in those moments and my comment was insensitive and disrespectful and also – NOT requested.) I logged back into our platform of choice for this engagement, LinkedIn, a while later to check on a poll that I had shared… only to find a slew of hateful and angry comments made to me.
My first thought was, “Oh lawd, we’ve riled the conservatives!” until I realized that the topic that people were upset with me about wasn’t abortion, and it wasn’t American but instead, the thousands of children who have died in Gaza since the most recent conflict with Isreal started (Not to mention or put aside the countless years before that.) This was a topic that I don’t speak out much about (except in a blog post here or there, or a repost/share once or twice a day.) but it IS a topic that I know needs visibility. I know that people see this day in and day out because it’s the outrage that will create change. Actually, shoot I don’t even know if that will do it anymore, I’m genuinely terrified for the people of Gaza and the day-to-day that I can only imagine in my nightmares.
My apologies
But understanding this, after the fact, shed an enormous spotlight on my screw-up. Now, I tried to apologize in my replies to the comments and I left my comment up in the hopes that as people read through they’d understand the complexities of interacting online – and how one misunderstanding (and frankly unlabeled post) can lead to an entire misunderstanding about the character of a person. (Including people hoping that my family/children would experience the horrors of the people of Gaza.)
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in DEI work is that intention doesn’t negate harm… I fucked up – period… I can apologize, and I could go back and delete my comments but the truth is, I fully believe that people aren’t perfect. And I feel it’s important to own your shit. You’re going to make mistakes. I make mistakes, your mother makes mistakes, and your boss makes mistakes. In my opinion, the true leaders of the world own their mistakes and take responsibility for the harm they create. I don’t know how to make it right, I don’t know how to undo the damage that I did, and if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, I’d love to know the answer, but in the meantime, I’ll own it.
Some additional reflections
It’s my personal belief that if you’re in a bad headspace, or you’re too tired to engage, that transparency goes a really long way in helping people to understand where you’re at. I also believe that using social media from this place is ill-advised. More than anything, I want to encourage two learnings from my screw-up.
1) Seek to understand – ALWAYS. Before you make assumptions – seek to understand why someone feels the way they do, where they got their information, and what their intention was behind sharing their posts. Seeking to understand saves you from jumping to conclusions when your conclusions may not be rooted in facts.
2) Respond with compassion and kindness because you never know what other people are going through… including the strangers who are simply watching.
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