The first cardinal rule of the digital age is that not everything you see is what it seems.
I’m not talking about deepfakes and other iterations of artificial intelligence. I’m talking about everything that’s out there—including the stuff people you know post or share—because sometimes, they also don’t know what they’re doing.
Most of what we consume on social media—messages, pictures, videos—we often consume without context. And context is everything. And that, more often than not, is what is lost on social media.
Without context, commentary is unnecessary, judgement misplaced. But the art of waiting has been lost. And rare is a digital native who knows how to take a recess to ruminate.
Because the Internet moves with lightning speed, many feel the need to move with the same speed. Or they risk becoming irrelevant, even unworthy of taking up bandwidth. And so, we react rather than respond. That’s how we fall for the fake news, the conspiracy theories, the pity parties.
That’s how we get into trouble.
The pressure to consume content without context is high. Even without the benefit of knowing the backstory, we leap to conclusions, pass judgement, join the mob, give uninformed comments that serve only to hurt and harm.
It happens in cyberspace. But it also happens outside of it.
Many decades back, an elderly woman went berserk in one of our buildings. She was screaming at the top of her lungs, thrashing about wildly, breaking the glass panes in one of our leased spaces.
Everyone came out to view the spectacle she had made of herself.
The woman was livid. No one dared approach her. Even our security guards cowered in fear. She seemed unstoppable in her rage. All we saw was a mad woman—unhinged, destructive, enraged.
A villain.
Two men later arrived. They turned out to be the woman’s husband and son. Our lessee arrived, as well. She turned out to be “the other woman.” Apparently, the wife had just discovered the office address of her husband’s mistress. Hence, the ambush. And the blitzkrieg.
As the elderly woman lunged towards the young mistress, the husband and son simultaneously lunged to protect her. Poor wife, I thought. What can be worse than having your own husband and son leap to the defense of “the other woman?”
A victim.
That’s who she was, after all. A woman desperate, distraught and in pain. When she broke the glass panes, we saw a villain. But what we saw was simply a response to years of suffering, abuse and disrespect.
Context is everything.
If you saw me kicking an old man to the curb, would you think me a monster? If you found out that this person had raped me repeatedly in my childhood and destroyed me completely, would you think differently?
We now live two lives—one in cyberspace and one outside of it. But the rules are the same.
The end does not justify the means but we need to recognize that not everything we see is what it seems. It can be the cause but it can also be the effect. It can be the root of the problem but it can also be the response.
If you don’t know the entire story, hold the cruel commentary. Zip it. And stay out of it. Context is everything. Not everything you see is what it seems.