Compassion Costs You Nothing: Lessons From the Internet

The internet can be a brutal place.  More and more I see it as a reflection of what's wrong with our society as a whole, as many people feel like posting on the internet gives them a license to exhibit behavior they wouldn't exhibit in person.  A lack of compassion is pretty high up there on the list of behaviors that is at an epidemic both in our society and on the internet.

Many years ago, when I still lived in New York, I was in a Yahoo Group for a fan of a particular actor on a soap.  That was the real beginning of social media, between Yahoo Groups and groups on AOL.  This actor was having a meet & greet at a mall in Pennsylvania and a good number of the people in the group made plans to see him.  For most of us, we would meet each other for the first time.  About a week or so before the appearance, one of the women in the group posted that her husband had been in a bad car accident and was in a coma, asking for our thoughts and prayers.  A few days later he was out of the coma, and apparently encouraged her to go the to the appearance (and an exclusive meet & greet we'd all already paid for).  She went. I met her there expressed my condolences and asked how her husband was. Everything went well.

Or so I thought.

A few days later in the group someone got it into their head that if that had REALLY happened to her husband, she would not have gone to the meet & greet.  She was harassed as what started as one or two people who decided this between themselves grew into a group pile-on.

What point was there to it?  The woman whose husband had allegedly been in the accident wasn't asking for money.  All she'd ever asked for was good thoughts and prayers.  What did it cost anyone to give that and be positive about the situation?  What did they have to gain by tearing her down?  And what if she was telling the truth and they were piling on her like this when she was already going through a difficult time?  When I defended her in this manner, the piling on then included me, even though I only had a passing acquaintance with her through the group and meeting her at the mall.  I decided I didn't need to be in that group any longer and left it.

A little compassion goes a long way and costs you nothing.  You never know what is going on in that person's life and how you can have an impact, both positively and negatively.  How does it hurt anyone to have compassion?  It's something sorely missing in our society currently.

Skip ahead almost twenty years and a similar situation happens over the last few days.  A geocaching group on Facebook that I'm a part of that mostly centers on jokes about geocaching has a post from someone that's a joke about geocaching that says "I caught someone doing this" and when you click on the link it routes you to your own profile.  Most of us have seen these posts in one form or another through the years.  Well, one person in the group hadn't and went off the deep end, thinking she was being accused publicly of something she didn't do.  Many people tried to explain the joke to her, but she didn't get it, thinking everyone was making a joke out of HER being accused of something she didn't do and she didn't find it funny.  She couldn't grasp the concept that each person who clicked on it saw their own profile - no one but she saw her profile.  There were lots of apologies and explanations by the original poster of the joke and many others but she didn't understand and couldn't or wouldn't listen to what people were telling her.

That's all well and good, you can't tiptoe around other people's level of understanding.  It was pretty obvious looking at her page she has some issues. A group like this just probably wasn't a good fit for her.

Instead of letting it drop, people continued to make posts about it for the next two days (at least). The posts stared coming about "she's just looking for attention" and if she has a mental illness "she should suck it up and deal with it."

I had stayed quiet through it all, since I agreed that the original post was a joke and she overreacted to the whole thing.  Once the piling on of someone with a mental illness started happening, I couldn't let that go.  Having been through all that I've been through (and am still going through) I have to be a voice for people who suffer with mental illness.   Even the "group leaders" were piling on derogatory mental illness comments.  I nicely said that although she overreacted, the comments about "suck it up" weren't helpful or nice and a little compassion went a long way.  The response was the usual defending their comments that people with mental illness were somehow weak of character and should suck it up and deal with it.  I decided I didn't need to be in that group with those people any more.

Once again, a little compassion goes a long way.  Why is it so important to some people that they can say "suck it up"to someone who has a mental illness rather than saying "I have no idea how you feel"?  It costs them nothing.  I've never quite grasped he "troll"mentality either except some people find it entertaining to be mean to people and set them off. I'd say they are more the people with mental illness than those they spar with.

If you see someone who you think is in need of help, please be kind.  It costs us nothing to have compassion and be kind to people, and you never know how you might help a fellow human being, rather than score points in your own head for how mean you can be.