@lowededwookie 28 April 2022

An incident that happened the other day here on noise.cash got me thinking about how much effort we need to put into what we say online. I’m not using this post to rag on anyone so I’m not going to mention names. But I will make the comment that I’m not the only person who they’ve tried to pick apart and who they’ve put words into their mouth. This person banned me due to a comment I made which reads as such: “Oh I fully understand that. I do that myself. 😂 We just have to be careful because the way the world is all it takes is someone to read our blogs and then we find we’re fighting a court battle. I’d hate for that to happen to you or anyone for that matter. But those people are out there. I am looking forward to seeing what you find out though. I do have some coins with them just for the earnings sake but most of mine I put into Uphold then convert into Apple shares. I only use Celsius and Uphold because they’re easy to use. Others I’ve looked into seem to require a degree in rocket science to use and I don’t have the time or desire to use them.” Now, if you’re reading this and wondering where the threat is it’s this part: “We just have to be careful because the way the world is all it takes is someone to read our blogs and then we find we’re fighting a court battle. I’d hate for that to happen to you or anyone for that matter. But those people are out there.” Their reaction to this comment was to write a read.cash post and trash me. I had a feeling they would and so I replied that they were putting intent into my words and I’d like them to stop it. To their credit they did remove the post, to which I do thank them. But this highlights the problem that this post is all about. We really need to read properly what is written in order to understand the intent. Nothing in my replies shows bad intent towards this writer. But you have to understand how this came to be. It started when the author posted a link and called Celsius a joke of a company. It got me curious to see what evidence they had to make this claim and so I followed the link. This took me to a Reddit thread and I saw nothing that backed up their claims in the first post which is what I usually look at. There was a link to a news article and so I clicked it to find the article basically said Celsius was stopping paying out of interest on holdings to American users due to the SEC making claims that by doing so, Celsius was operating like a bank but without the rules that govern banks to protect customers. I made this comment on the noise.cash post: “Issue isn't Celsius but the joke of a country called the United States of America. Due to laws imposed by the government, companies like Celsius either have to limit what Americans can do or leave the American market entirely. Countries like here in New Zealand aren't affected... YET.” His reply was something along the lines of (not verbatim because I’m blocked from reading their stuff): “Your comment had nothing to do with what I said” The fact is I was replying to the noise.cash post which didn’t say anything other than Celsius is a joke of a company. I never read the Reddit thread and therefore did not read anything they actually wrote because I trust Reddit as much as a curry fart. So I replied to that comment with: “I simply followed the link in the Reddit post which linked me to an article that discussed why Celsius made the change. American law was that reason. Your post implies that Celsius made a random change for the worst when in fact it wasn’t a random change but one forced upon it. You can’t blame Celsius for making a change in order to continue trading in America.” They claimed that I was making a personal attack to which I replied: “Also it’s not a personal attack. In fact I tipped your post. I enjoy reading your posts but don’t necessarily interact as I’m not truly interested that much in crypto per se. It just felt like you were ragging on Celsius but not giving a real reason why. I will be interested in your article when it comes out.” They then claimed I was putting words in their mouth to which I replied: “I’m not trying to put words in your mouth. The implication is in the tone of the post. You called the company a “joke of a company with so many different red flags involved”. Then you link to the Reddit post about Celsius stopping borrowing from US investors. I apologise if I’ve read it wrong but it does sound like that from the context provided. I merely pointed out however that the changes made by Celsius are a reaction to the US government having a crack at crypto companies like Celsius. These are referenced to in the article that is linked in the Reddit post. Once again I apologise for any offence I might have caused. It was not my intent. My intent was to clarify why the change was made.” They then made an apology of sorts which then led me to write the reply that got me banned from their account. As you can see, there’s nothing really in my replies that would warrant a ban other than the fact that they think I’ve taken a side with Celsius which thus goes against their personal view. What I did do was take a side that counters a false belief. They make the claim that Celsius can’t be trusted because of the move they took with regards to American users even though Celsius made the move to protect itself and its customers. That isn’t a joke of a company, it’s the sign of a company that will do whatever it can to operate legally and therefore look after its customers, even if doing so means it might have to remove a feature customers are using. Remember, crypto currencies have ZERO protections for customers whereas banks have legal obligations to operate under the law. If something goes wrong in the crypto land you’re on your own. Stiff titties. But if you read what I wrote in the proper context you will notice that it was the author of the post that took an irrational/emotional view of what I was writing. They were the one that decided that what I was writing was a personal attack and thus they needed to defend themselves. What’s interesting here is that while I may be attacking their approach, they’ve equated their words as themselves and therefore any attack on those words is an attack on their self. They haven’t separated themselves from their words. This led to the confusion as to what was being attacked. This would NEVER have happened had we been talking face to face. Isn’t that interesting? Not really, because it’s something we all know… text is a poor form of communication. Remember this part of my reply that got me banned: “We just have to be careful because the way the world is all it takes is someone to read our blogs and then we find we’re fighting a court battle. I’d hate for that to happen to you or anyone for that matter. But those people are out there.” Had I spoken this to them, they would have heard the concern in my voice and realised that I wasn’t threatening them, just trying to make them think about their words first. Imagine that Celsius reads their posts on their social media profiles and decides to take the approach that they are committing liable. What do you think will happen? It’ll probably start with a “cease and desist” letter which will be taken as a threat by said author which will most likely ramp up the attacks on Celsius because Celsius has now hurt their feelings, and then the next thing they know Celsius is suing them for liable. Instead of thinking this through, the poster has decided that I was acting like the Mafia and being all: “It would be a shame if something was to happen to your nice little shop [swipes “Tips” jar to floor then collects the tips]”. That’s the intent they put on my words, not what I actually said. Text is a horrible media to communicate ideas. It leaves too much up to the imagination - which is what happened in this case. As such all manner of ideas will creep into their heads as to what the commenter is saying and the next thing you know a flame war is erupting. Text has no emotion conveyed, no inflictions which a user can grasp, and no clear expression of thought. It’s inevitable that someone is going to take something the wrong way. But there are things we can do to mitigate this. A clue lies in what I did with the reply that got me banned from this user’s account: “Oh I fully understand that. I do that myself. 😂” Did you catch it? By using an emoji I SHOULD be able to set the tone of what the rest of what I’m saying is said in. In this case I used the “🤣” emoji to set the scene that I’m not angry or sad but realise that it was all a misunderstanding and that I’m having a laugh about it. To a rational person that’s how they would understand my reply. Emojis are a great tool that need to be used more. I have to admit I used to think they were a dumb idea that stupid kids used to communicate but I’ve grown to use them to convey my feelings a lot. Here’s a list of how I use emojis in my posts and comments: 🤣 - I’m joking or the situation is funny. This includes when I’m laughing when a misunderstanding is clarified 😈 - I’m being cheeky or sarcastic 😉 - I’m not being serious 😠 - Yeah, I didn’t like that or you need to stop being a tit 🤔 - I want you to think about what I’m saying or want you to rethink what you just said I use the first two A LOT. I do use others but nowhere near as much as these. From now on I’d love to see authors using some way that works for them to set the proper tone of an article. We shouldn’t look down on things like Emojis as some stupid gimmick. We should be using them as tools to help our readers understand us more. For a good explanation of this watch this brilliant video: https://youtu.be/UmvOgW6iV2s We write because we want to stir our readers, but we need to write in a way that doesn’t cause confusion. It seems to me, that we need to forgo more formal ways of writing and adopt a more conversational structure, one that lends to proper conversation. Even in conversation we could say something that gets taken the wrong way, but it’s rarer than when we write. The internet’s backbone is a bunch of comments that end in flame wars because someone misunderstood what was originally written. We’re never going to fix that but we need to find a way to lessen this. Conveying the proper emotions is absolutely vital to doing this. Could we use emojis more? Could we put a disclaimer at the start or the end (I do recommend start in order to cover TLDR)? Could we use a simple hashtag like #humour or #whysoserious or #sarcasm or something like that to indicate when we are being sarcastic or joking? What thoughts do you have about this? What ideas for combating misunderstandings or pettiness do you find effective, or have at least tried? Comment below and let me know. #language #understanding #freespeech