If you've been on the internet for more than 15 seconds today,
chances are you’ve already been in a fight.
People tend to talk a little crazier when they're online.
and I think I know why.
Now that the formalities are out of the way,
let's go back to the late '90s, early 2000s,
where this noise
[dial-up tones]
was the bane of our existence.
A time where our parents said, "Don't talk to strangers" and
"Be careful who you talk to on the internet."
Today, all we do is talk to strangers on the internet.
No matter what you do,
your online personality is a representation
of who you are in real life.
Technology like telegraphs, phones and social media
were meant to bring us closer together,
yet we're being pulled further apart.
Why is that?
Here's a theory:
Human communication is commonly theorized by psychologists
to be broken down as 55% body language,
38% tone
and 7% the words that we actually say.
If we accept this to be true,
because we don't see a Facebook poster's body language
or hear their tone,
we're only getting 7% of their intended message.
The way we compensate for this?
Using charged words,
capitalizing for emphasis,
hella emojis
and using bits and pieces of what we know about that person.
You're right. And how do we find out about them?
Stalking their profiles.
We try and connect disparate dots
and still end up with an incomplete message.
To add to that, I used to be a teacher.
One of the tenets of the school
was to assume the best of our students.
To assume the worst out of them
wouldn't give them a chance to grow and learn from their mistakes.
At that age, we don't have full cognitive control
of our decision-making processes.
The part of our brain that is responsible for those,
the prefrontal cortex,
isn't fully developed yet.
Then I started thinking,
"Why don’t we give adults a chance to learn and grow as well?"
We're all human and make mistakes.
Like Warren Beatty grabbing the wrong envelope
or George Lucas and entire concept of Jar Jar Binks.
I'll be honest,
when I get on the internet,
and that can be infuriating.
But I just gotta take my L and just move on.
If I just acted on that wild negative emotion
and just went crazy on someone on the internet that I've never met
and probably will never meet,
it's just a waste of everyone's time.
If I try and understand another person's point of view,
maybe we can learn from each other.
That being said,
there are some
bigots on the internet.
You don't have to compromise your ideals
or meet them halfway.
But you should be able to respectfully
communicate your choices and motivations
instead of being a [censored] insult generator, Mamoudou!
This is as much for me as it is for you.
Michelle said it best.
"When they go low, we go high."
Don't just tweet about it, be about it.
Or at least be about it while you're tweeting about it.
And yo, pick your battles.
People are on the internet talking extra reckless
in a way that some might describe as
juvenile.
People on the internet have real lives
real goals, real emotions.
They may disagree with you, but
at least you can have a conversation with them.
Then there's trolls.
A troll is an agent of chaos.
They're basically adult cyberbullies
with weak-ass Twitter fingers.
They make 10 look like 10,000 by creating all these fake accounts.
Wasting precious time fighting the symptoms,
and not the actual problem,
squanders precious time while the world crashes and burns around us.
Recently, first lady Melania Trump
has taken a hard stance on cyberbullying, and, well ...
we'll see.
The internet is an endless hole of content,
but remember: On the other side of those screens
are real people
and those people have real lives
with experiences that may be different from our own.
Like Obama said in his farewell speech
If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the internet,
try talking with one of them in real life.
When they go low, go high.
But if they go too low,
go for the jugular.
Don't actually do that.