There Used to be a ‘Pause.’ The Internet Has Taken That Away

Editor’s Note: The following was written in the wake of comments posted by CU Daily readers in the wake of the dismissal of a credit union CEO for creating an AI-generated photo that many people found offensive, while others called the response an overreaction. 

By Grant Sheehan

There was a time when you could be angry with someone, disagree with someone or even have a pretty ugly thought about someone, and there was a natural pause before you did anything about it. You might think, “Maybe I shouldn’t say that.” You might consider how your words would affect the other person. You might talk to a friend, sleep on it or simply decide that what you were thinking didn’t need to be said.

That pause seems to be disappearing.

The internet and social media have given all of us a microphone, and unfortunately, the microphone doesn’t come with a pause button.

We can have a thought and immediately put it out for thousands, sometimes millions, of people to see. We can be angry and post. We can be offended and post. We can hear something we don’t like and immediately attack the person who said it. We don’t have to look that person in the eye. We don’t have to see the expression on their face. We don’t have to hear the hurt in their voice. We simply hit “send.”

And once it’s out there, it’s out there.

Maybe that’s one reason our political arguments have become so vicious. Maybe it’s one reason religion has become such a dividing line. Maybe it’s one reason we seem increasingly incapable of simply disagreeing with another human being without deciding that person is stupid, evil, ignorant or somehow beneath us.

The internet didn’t invent anger. It simply made anger instantaneous.

And something else happened along the way. We began confusing having a voice with having something worth saying.

Everyone Has a Microphone

Everyone now has the ability to become a commentator. Everyone can publish an opinion. Everyone can repeat something they heard five minutes ago and make it sound like fact. And because someone else has already said it, we feel comfortable saying it, too.

There used to be a little voice in the back of our heads that said, “Wait a minute. Think about this.” That voice seems to have lost the argument with the keyboard.

We have also become remarkably comfortable judging people we don’t know. We see a political statement, a photograph, a headline or a 30-second video and think we know everything about the person behind it. We don’t know their history. We don’t know their struggles. We don’t know their family. We don’t know what they have done for other people. We don’t know what happened five minutes before the camera came on.

Slapping On a Label

But we judge them anyway, and then we put a label on them, Republican. Democrat. Socialist. Capitalist. Conservative. Liberal. Religious. Nonreligious. Once the label is attached, everything else seems to disappear.

That is a dangerous habit, because people are more complicated than their politics. They are more complicated than their religion. They are more complicated than one stupid thing they may have said or posted online.

We used to understand that. We used to have real conversations. You could sit across from someone who disagreed with you and actually listen. You might even discover that you had more in common than you thought.

Now we often don’t listen to understand, we listen for ammunition.

We aren’t waiting for the other person to finish speaking; we’re waiting for our turn to respond. And social media rewards that behavior. The outrageous comment gets attention. The angry response gets shared. The insult gets repeated. The reasonable person who says, “I’m not sure that’s quite right; let’s talk about it” rarely gets the same attention.

Maybe that’s because outrage is easier than constructive thinking.

We Can Still Do Something

But we can still do something about it. We can bring back the “pause”.

Before hitting “send,” pause and ask: Is this true? Do we know enough to speak with confidence? Would we say it if the person were sitting across from us? Will our words achieve anything besides causing harm?

And perhaps most importantly, ask ourselves whether we would want to be judged by the same standard we are using to judge someone else.

We don’t need to surrender our opinions. We don’t need to stop arguing about important issues. We don’t need to agree with everybody. We simply need to remember that there is a human being on the other side of the screen.

The greatest technology the internet gave us was the ability to communicate instantly. Maybe our greatest challenge is learning that just because we can say something instantly doesn’t mean we should!

There was wisdom in the old “pause.” Maybe it’s time we brought it back!

Grant Sheehan is CEO of the National Council of Firefighter Credit Unions.