Please Merge

Something happened to me this week that has (up to this point of my life) happened many, many times before. I misspoke and sent a completely different message than I was intending to do. The difference this time was that it was in a blog comment, and not something that I immediately noticed and or could reverse right away.


Misinterpretation

The incident, as I will call it (purely for dramatic emphasis) occurred on Wednesday, June 25th at approximately 10:30 am. I was reading a column on The Buzz Bin (one of my personal favorite new media marketing blogs) penned by Qui Diaz that was about the flooding in the Midwest wherein she addressed her curiosity as to the seeming lack of the use of social media tools (such as Craig’s List and Social Actions) in regards to the recent flooding. It was a thoughtful post, and nothing that I bristled to as an Iowan. I commented on the post with some of my own feelings about the situation, saying that what I have seen is people “turning off their computers and getting dirty cleaning up.”

That is not all I said, and yes I did insert some remarks about the general impression that Iowa is full of un-savvy farmers who would be more likely to ask who Craig is than visit his list (although not in those words). To be fair, Qui made no such statements in her post, and the comments were not directed at her, but to the wider society who often confuses Iowa with Idaho. Qui responded quickly with her thanks for my comment and a personal note as well. That is where the trouble started.

I responded both to Qui’s comment on The Buzz Bin as well as to her email, not failing to let her know how much I enjoy the Buzz Bin. Unfortunately what I didn’t realize was that I had made a statement in my comment and forgot one very, very important word. Here’s the comment, see if you can figure out where the NOT should go:

I apologize if my “un-savvy” farmers point came off as a bit harsh, it was intended to be, being from Iowa (and having never once worked on a farm, not once in my life) makes me a bit reactionary to assumption about my state.

Did you figure it out yet? Here’s what the comment looked like in my head:

I apologize if my “un-savvy” farmers point came off as a bit harsh, it was NOT intended to be, being from Iowa (and having never once worked on a farm, not once in my life) makes me a bit reactionary to assumption about my state.

See what a difference one little three letter word can make? Much to my dismay, I went unaware of my gaff for many hours, until receiving a notice of a follow up comment from Geoff Livingston (who started The Buzz Bin and is someone who I have great respect for). When I first read the comment in my gmail inbox I was confused, it seemed as if I had done something to anger Mr. Livingston, which made little sense to me, as my follow up comment (at least the one I remembered writing, was not mean in any way). I followed the link back to the column and re-read my comment…and I immediately felt like a complete a**h***. Of course I rectified the issue immediately (with another comment explaining) and mailed Qui an apology (which was promptly accepted and my gaffe was forgiven).

So, now that I’ve spent the whole column bringing you along on what seems like a fairly benign journey, I imagine you’re wondering what my point is, and as I am not one to disappoint, here it is. We have no voice in the online world (well, that’s not always true, but most of the time it is). What I mean by this is that as social beings we can often speak more in tone than we can in words, and with the loss of tone that exists when you write text, you need to be careful.

As I write this I can hear my tone inside my own head, as I am sure most of you do when you write, but no one else can. My forgetfulness put me in a situation where someone who I hold in high esteem (even if I have exchanged little more than a couple tweets with him ever) felt as if he had to defend one of his employees from a direct attack, from me. This is not a good situation to be in mind you, especially in a world where the words you commit to the screen are almost always being read by people that do not know you. In a world where our words are interpreted as our actions, omission is more powerful than you could possibly imagine. So a word to the wise, make sure you really know what you’re saying before you say it, because on the web, words and actions are played at the exact same volume.

Greg Hollingsworth is a marketer and blogger who also writes about politics on Devil’s In The Details.

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