The Medium and the Message

I like to think that I am a vociferous person when it comes to debate and discussion. I enjoy the battle of words, ideas, and evidence, which challenges my memory, critical thinking, diction, elocution, and more. Debate and discussion make me feel simultaneously intelligent, in that I am smart enough to engage an opponent, and humble, in that I know there is always more for me to learn and that sometimes I am wrong.

Because I enjoy debate and discussion so much, I often find myself participating in them with many different people through many different mediums--email, Facebook, Youtube, news articles, and in person (of course).

Not so often anymore but occasionally I will encounter someone, usually through some form of social media, who states an opinion that I will counter, and then at some point after my rebuttal they will decide to disengage from our communication with the excuse that "it's just Facebook" or "it's just a Youtube comment," meaning that I took what they said too seriously because of the medium through which it was said.

I hope that anybody who follows that line of reasoning will drop it very quickly because the suggestion that the medium through which a message is delivered alters the seriousness or meaning of the message is an obnoxious cop-out.

Consider cyber-bullying. Whereas previously, bullies had to resort to either physical proximity or perhaps even the phone to intimidate and put down their victims, they now have a wide array of electronic mediums through which they can reach their targets with the exact same messages. As evidenced by the effectiveness of cyber-bullying, the change in medium does not change the significance of the message.

The only caveat is that with bullying and trolling, anonymous bullies or trolls from the internet can largely be ignored because of their absence of standing in the eyes of their attempted victims--just the same as an anonymous person on the street can be ignored if they hurl insults because the receiver of the insults has no reason to take the words of the insulting party seriously. However, if bullies or trolls appear with a noticeable and constant presence, those factors can place self-doubt in the mind of the victim and add significance to their message.

However, cyber-bullying is separate from debate and discussion and so a person's thoughts, feelings, and opinions do not become any more or less legitimate based on the medium through which they express them. Besides a desire for self-expression, this is one of the reasons that this blog is underway. Although it is essentially addressing an empty room, the words spoken in that room have the exact same meaning as they do if the room were filled, or the delivery of those words were changed.

In short, feel free to express yourself openly and in whichever medium you choose. What matters is the motivation behind the message.