Rather than encourage better behaviours of those targeted by the mob, it would be better to encourage better behaviours of the mob itself.
Forgiveness is absent in every social media or comment section and yet it's one of the crucial ways we get along with people. Having others visibly but perhaps silently forgive another would allow social proof that its okay to forgive this perceived offender. Forgiveness also allows a person to signal a change in views.
Where before they would only be able to signal disapproval, now they can still pile on and be toxic but then later signal forgiveness. Not being able to correct and reflect upon your own potentially negative actions would be one of the aims. By forgiving others you can forgive yourself of past negativity.
Forgiveness might say "I recognise you did something wrong. I do not expect public repentance, but I forgive you and go about my life feeling better".
Agree. Forgiveness is great. It's where I started, which led to me questioning why I do it even. And the conclusion I came to was that the anger I felt was... useless, ineffectual and thus a total, unadulterated and complete waste of my time and energy.
And so forgiveness led me to acceptance.
Accepting all the things has made me very, very content. And occasionally even happy. Because who cares man. Frivolity aside, if I did care I feel I should DO something. Not complain or write angry diatribes or even forgive, but to physically do something to change the status quo. Whether that moves the needle on chosen issue or not.
If I'm not willing to DO something about the thing I take issue with, I have no call to say anything about it either. Which brings this full circle back to... acceptance.
This is a great concept. It's one I've improved at a lot of my life, and I think many people would be happier if they did as well. Reminiscent of the serenity prayer.
On the topic of things you can do, there's one thing that could actually be very effective. Don't public reply, but directly DM the person and explain how their person hurt or impacted you, not in a judgemental way, but in a way intended to share your personal experience. This often gets the poster to see others as people for long enough to recognize what they have done. And importantly, it gives them the space to retract or apologize without caving to the mob. And also, even if they never respond or acknowledge you, you've just given them a memory that may stay in their brain forever, and there are few things more powerful than that.
That's a very interesting thought. I wonder which other patterns of behaviour like this are absent from online communication. If the scheme set up by the website doesn't allow a certain action which would naturally occur in IRL interactions, this will distort how people and groups see each other and treat each other.
Edit: I think the constant feedback provided by facial expressions is a huge thing missing from these things.
There's a special way to interact with systems. If you try to modify then crudely, without employing systems thinking, you will end up worse off than you were at the outset.
And, certain changes are straight up impossible, including directly changing the behavior of the masses.
Looked at through a systems thinking lens, the OP solution is quite good.
Forgiveness also requires our being right. That's not a given. If not, it's not an apology, it's shouting at someone until they're too exhausted to defend themselves any more.
So, we should start by not assuming that. Especially when large numbers of people agree with us.
Forgiveness certainly does not require being correct. The "mistake" language is excellent, because it covers cases where you may not have been badgered at all. You could feel it was a mistake to post something based on its timing (eg a tasteless joke)
Forgiveness doesn't require rightness. Consider Dumbledore's analysis of Percy Weasley abandoning his family: "it is easier to forgive others for being wrong than for being right."
Unpacking, it means Percy knows he is wrong and it's much harder for him to swallow his pride because he is not right.
This is often claimed, but I'm not sure I agree. Why can't I forgive someone who wronged me even if they didn't apologize? Or perhaps even if they don't see that they wronged me.
This whole thread is a disaster of people not reading the article or even discussing it really. You are all instead just holding forth on your pet theories of shame/forgiveness/face-saving social interactions. It doesn't even have the benefit of being interesting or based on research.
I do not forgive you all for not reading or discussing the article, at least not until you all apologize and post something interesting relevant to the article.
I do, however, give myself permission to file this away under "topics HN can't reasonably discuss", which is unfortunate because the design of our social media systems, reifying cultural norms, is super important to today's society and discourse.
Do you want to discuss the article? e.g. forgiveness in the context of social media systems? What you're demonstrating is "performative forgiveness" in public, which is pretty counter to the usual experience of forgiveness in offline culture.
Forgiveness requiring an apology isn't true forgiveness, it's more akin to revenge.
And if you wait for an apology, you'll never be able to forgive, remove that burden from yourself, from those who have wronged you who are dead. Many instances of anger and a lack of forgiveness are multi-generational - or even parent/child.
People can rightly forgive without the other party even knowing about it. In fact, I'd argue the best kind of forgiveness is done completely silently, personally, and the only way anyone could figure you that you have forgiven someone is through your subsequent behavior.
I don't think there's anything unusual about being prepared to forgive someone who is contrite and has apologised, but not being able to if they are unrepentant. It's nothing like revenge.
There is no way that something that is not enforceable will succeed though.
Plus forgiveness works only on then forgiver side, nothing stop others to keep doing what they are doing after you forgave them.
I would argue that the main reason we get along is laws, not forgiveness.
Any society has written (laws) and unwritten (social rules) norms that regulate the interactions between members.
People don't yell in public, usually, because they've been taught it's wrong and people, generally, tend to respect what they've been taught on certain degrees, especially when it is easy to verify those teachings: nobody yells in public, those who do are reprimanded, it must really be a wrong thing to do.
If you forgive someone yelling at kids because their basketball ended up in their garden you could feel better, but are enabling bad behaviour that should be challenged instead.
> If you forgive someone yelling at kids because their basketball ended up in their garden you could feel better, but are enabling bad behaviour that should be challenged instead.
In the proposed solution of the article one would only forgive if the offending person did apologize. Probably after getting challenged or called out for what they posted.
So the comparison would be more that someone yelled at the kids, was called out for it and then apologized for their bad behaviour. Then they get forgiveness from the person calling them out.
Unfortunately for you I am exactly from southern Europe, from Rome in Italy to be precise.
I think you should visit here, I would show you how much noise people from other countries make, especially Americans.
I'm sure you made it as a joke and I don't mind it, but this stereotypes must stop, for a simple reason: there is more to Europe than jokes about southerners.
We simply spend more time outside in the open because the weather is usually better, but any country has its weirdos, sometimes public is a park or an open market, sometimes it's a pub.
French are rude and the fact that they try to hide it behind "other people don't understand us" makes it even more obvious. Ironically they think the anglofones are the loud ones and I mostly agree on this with them.
Pure io e ha un po' rotto le palle che davanti agli americani che si sparano per cazzate noi continuiamo a fare la parte della scimmietta simpatica che strilla per le strade
Rather than encourage better behaviours of those targeted by the mob, it would be better to encourage better behaviours of the mob itself.
Forgiveness is absent in every social media or comment section and yet it's one of the crucial ways we get along with people. Having others visibly but perhaps silently forgive another would allow social proof that its okay to forgive this perceived offender. Forgiveness also allows a person to signal a change in views.
Where before they would only be able to signal disapproval, now they can still pile on and be toxic but then later signal forgiveness. Not being able to correct and reflect upon your own potentially negative actions would be one of the aims. By forgiving others you can forgive yourself of past negativity.
Forgiveness might say "I recognise you did something wrong. I do not expect public repentance, but I forgive you and go about my life feeling better".