A Call for Civil and Professional Online Behavior

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The horrors brought by the firestorm destroying large swathes in and around Los Angeles should serve as a sobering reminder of life’s priorities.

MORE: LA-Area Fires Continue to Rage Out of Control, 2900+ Acres, 10K Homes Threatened, Images Are Terrifying

They reside far outside social media’s artificial light of cutesy screen names and self-manufactured outrage designed to draw attention and clicks while offering no genuine solutions for our common problems or even assistance for those in need. I spotted a t-shirt a while back with a picture of an American soldier in combat and underneath the inscription, ”They risk their lives so we can run our mouths.“

Close to a couple of decades ago (ouch), when I was an active sports blogger, I wrote a list of online rules for myself, which I dubbed the four tenets of the blogging evangel. This was back when blogs and bloggers reigned supreme. Social media has long usurped their place, emphasizing quick quips and clips designed to gather maximum clicks. However, the basic principles remain relevant.

The ability to broadcast an opinion neither elevates nor validates said opinion.
Blog from and for the heart, not the bank account.
Answer your email every time all of the time.
Never become what you profess to oppose. Never.

Indulge me while I break these down a bit.

The ability to broadcast an opinion neither elevates nor validates said opinion.

Many people have fallen victim to the fallacy that the public distribution of their thoughts and opinions demands instant acceptance. This is not true. Someone can be a known public entity communicating through a significant information disseminator. Someone else can be a self-contained content creator/distributor/promoter speaking to an audience of one or less. In either case, having a platform on which to stand does not equal a person having, or infer a person has, a leg on which to stand.

Present or past association with a famous and/or infamous accomplished public broadcaster does not automatically confer value on that person’s work. Each of us rises and falls on our merits. Who we may have written or currently write for and our audience size is irrelevant. Quality is quality; non-quality is the same.

There are no lifetime achievement awards conferring perpetual worthiness on any writer. While extending leniency to pundits with a solid body of work occasionally marred by missteps is proper, no one can forever hide behind last year’s batting average.

One of the Internet’s most heralded strengths used to be the notion of citizen journalists asking nothing more than to be judged on their work’s merit. Today, there is a lamentable trend toward choosing winners and losers based on who’s kissed up the most to achieve the highest visibility by riding the highest flying coattails. No longer is the message paramount. Promulgation and self-promotion minus gravitas are paramount. If you do not see that as a problem, you are part of the problem.

Write from and for the heart, not the bank account.

This is not a demand that everyone writes for free. As Scripture notes, the laborer is worthy of their hire. Here at RedState, we promote becoming a VIP member so you can enjoy both in-depth coverage of news and events you will never get from legacy media and also to allow us the freedom to discuss hot-button topics that, if discussed openly, would incur the wrath of those who can, and do, seek to throttle genuine free speech. In an era when internet mega-entities are more than happy to drop shadow bans, if not full-fledged bans, on content that offends their delicate sentimentalities, actively supporting conservative writers has never been more critical.

That said, there is a difference between communication and click-baiting or, to put it more genteelly, providing information instead of affirmation. It is all too easy to pen tweet after tweet portraying the other side as TEH STOOPID. It requires effort to explain, with all points supported by facts and logic, why someone else is wrong in a manner that illustrates this point with an extended hand to those who think differently. You do not know who you might reach. Give them something worth reaching for.

Answer your email every time all of the time.

There are two words in the expression “citizen journalist.” The second word demands responsible behavior when committing words to print: accuracy, fairness, honesty, and responsibility. You know — all the things we accuse legacy media of not doing?

That duly noted, the word “citizen” brings its own behavioral requirements, best summarized in what Christ commanded: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Simple, yet far too often neglected.

None of us are above anyone else. None of us are better than anyone else. None of us are busier than anyone else. Why, then, do we accept online behavior from ourselves and others that all would condemn as boorish if done in person? Why do we indulge those and/or ourselves who practice base-level rudeness?

Yes, people are legitimately busy and do not always have time to respond promptly. This does not provide a free license to embody the poem:

“Here’s to the town of Boston
The land of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells speak only to Cabots,
And the Cabots speak only to God.”

We need a cleansing, a healing, a reawakening of the notion that proper behavior should not end where the online world begins. People are more important than politics. As long as this remains unobserved, we are not fulfilling our calling.

And finally, the most essential tenet of the blogging evangel:

Never become what you profess to oppose. Never.

This comes straight from Scripture:

(I)f you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: ”God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.“

Don’t say you’re against the elitist media while you turn yourself into an elitist. Don’t tell us you stand for truth when you continue to lie after being caught in lies. Just don’t. Please, don’t.

We are all sinners. We have all fallen, and continue to fall, short of God’s glory. We are all in utter need of God’s grace freely given to us not on our own merits, but rather those of Jesus Christ, sacrificing His life on the cross so we could be set free from the bonds of sin and death. Why, then, do we grieve our loving Savior by saying we are the new generation, sent to vanquish and banish the old guard and its failure, only to behave in the exact same manner?

There is always room for independent voices. Such is where social media’s most significant strength lies. It is also social media’s greatest weakness. The appeal to pride is perfidious and persuasive. Scattered throughout social media’s brief history are forgotten memorials for those who mistook accumulating a following for being dubbed a cyberspace Atlas carrying the world on their shoulders, only to find out that when it rebelled and rolled away from them, it kept going even as they faded into total obscurity.

It warrants repeating. We need a cleansing, a healing, and a reawakening of the notion that proper behavior should not end where the online world begins. People are more important than politics. As long as this remains unobserved, we are not fulfilling our calling.

We can do better. We must do better.