That's a neat idea but what about people who only see each other in real time chats (voice or text)? You can stop reading but AFK you can also walk away and it's pretty much the same.
I think texts/video calls/etc. isn't social media, it's much more like conversation.
That's why people (in general) are not nearly as mean or rude on a voice call or a 1-to-1 text chat. When you hear someone's voice or actually engage with a real time conversation (like a text chat, which you can't as easily just walk away from), they develop an interiority to you that forces you to empathize with them. The physical world is the ultimate version of this: seeing a person's body and face forces you to acknowledge their internal life, because the shared physical experience forces it. That's why it's a much higher barrier to bully or be bullied in the physical world.
There are exceptions to this, obviously. Tight knit forums, irc rooms, small moderated communities have an empathetic cost of interaction. But those are not really "social media", imho.
> I think texts/video calls/etc. isn't social media, it's much more like conversation.
> That's why people (in general) are not nearly as mean or rude on a voice call or a 1-to-1 text chat.
This doesn’t have to do with social media per se and is inherent to group dynamics. People are more rude as a rule in many-to-many conversations: where there is a group, there always lurks contention for status. Bullying is the most extreme case and is not the only one. (Speaking of, an insidious aspect of IRL bullying is how a bully can be compelled to be nice to the bullied if they meet away from
the watching crowd, causing all sorts of twisted effects on victim’s psyche.)
“All” social media does is adds an element of scale to this.
Yes, I think you're right. It's useful to have the unique label of "social media" because the scale you mention can't really be replicated offline. A difference in quantity is a difference in kind in this case.
> seeing a person's body and face forces you to acknowledge their internal life, because the shared physical experience forces it. That's why it's a much higher barrier to bully or be bullied in the physical world.
No, it’s not about seeing a person’s body and face forcing you to acknowledge their internal life. Pathological cases aside, we are fundamentally human and we perfectly understand that we are communicating with a human online as well as offline.
It’s about the group. Is there a watching group? Cue contention for status, in worst cases culminating in bullying. No group? Former bully can be nice to the victim, because suddenly there is no winning of status, and having a cooperating entity is practical.
The barrier to being bullied in the physical world is not shared physical experience. The barrier is the potential of a higher-status person taking the side of the bullied. Absent that potential (e.g., classroom without a teacher), bullying flourishes. Shared physical experience means nothing to the bully.
Here’re some aspects particular to bullying online:
— Unlike real world, bullying online can happen in 1:1 chats, because the bully can be accompanied by people IRL and can be gaining status in their eyes, unbeknownst to the victim.
— In public social media, the bully has to account for the potential of a higher-status person coming out of the blue and causing a separate crowd to take the side of the bully, which can be harder to predict compared to my classroom example. This makes public bullying a bit higher-stakes, especially if real identity is associated with the account; which somewhat balances out the scale.
