We were on the road yesterday when the Boston Marathon bombings happened. Ed learned about it on Twitter at a rest stop and then we caught the odd update on the radio as I drove home to Toronto from Ottawa. It felt strange to be so disconnected in the midst of such of a scary tragedy. I’ve gotten used to immediately tuning in to Twitter to see the reactions or, more often than not, learning about the news on Twitter itself. But in a way it was nice. It was nice to be able to dwell on the enormity of the events quietly with my family. (Whispering to Ed while the kids babbled obliviously in the backseat.) It was nice not to have to wade through all the knee-jerk editorializing of every person I’ve ever connected with. It was sad and lonely and it felt right.
Alas, we arrived home.
Checking in with Facebook I found this thread on a private group for Canadian bloggers that I belong to.
Update: Members of the Facebook group have asked that I remove a screenshot of the conversation (although identities were protected). I hadn’t considered that I may have been breaching anyone’s privacy and I apologize.
So, in a nutshell, someone posted the following suggestion: “If any of you run automated tweets/updates, you may want to consider turning them off out of respect for the Boston tragedy.” There were four or five replies right away that suggested they didn’t see any reason to stop auto tweets.
A simple and courteous reminder to think about any automated tweets you may have going out was met with defensiveness and disdain. OMG, they basically said, how are we supposed to wade through the ceaseless string of tragedies and know when to stop tweeting about our toothpaste giveaways? The show must go on!
It was a consensus with the exception of the person who posted the original question and continued to stick to her guns and the eminently reasonable and ethically astute Emma Willer, who said:
Why would you delete the thread? This is an interesting conversation to have. Do you proceed with scheduled tweets about funny cat photos and the latest cereal brand when something kind of bad is consuming people’s thoughts? I can see both sides of theĀ debate. I might want to click on the cat photos as a distraction. But a twitter party about cereal would really bug me right now. Debate is healthy. Different approaches in these circumstances are interesting.
It’s too much to ask, it doesn’t matter and who’s to say that one tragedy is worse than another anyway? That was the basic sentiment.
So of course I had to chime in:
That really got them going. Unfortunately, now backs were up against walls and chips firmly planted on shoulders. Everyone dug into their position and it didn’t take long for people to start crying about being judged and wondering why we don’t just support one another. (Even though the original post was just as helpful and supportive a piece of advice as I could ever hope to get.)
Finally, Laura O’Rourke of Mommy Miracles chimed in with the perfect balance of reason and diplomacy. She said what I should have said:
Because here’s the takeaway.
It is crass to knowingly continue to promote irrelevant content in the wake of a tragedy, especially sponsored content and branded Twitter parties. It is off-putting and makes you look bad even if it was an oversight. In fact, there is a very good case to be made against automating any social media content for this very reason.
Tragedies that happen in our own backyards are going to hit closer to home than those that happen across the world. Our social media backyards are bigger than ever, but there are still cultural ties that bind our networks. These deaths are not more important per se than those of children in war-torn countries, but we care about them more. They could have been us. And the socio-political implications of terrorist attacks in the United States scare me more than those happening in the Middle East (even though I’m Canadian). They just do.
If you are not sure if a given tragedy is important enough to cancel a Twitter party (and I do understand that a lot of work and planning go into organinzing a successful one) or to suspend your auto tweets, then just look at your own feed. Take the temperature of your network because, ultimately, it doesn’t matter if it feels wrong to you. What matters is that it feels wrong to others.
THAT’s what is going to make you look like an asshole.