In which the internet is kind

Warning: more language, I’m afraid. Editorially necessary. Still not nice.

 

There is an awful lot of received wisdom about the internet. One of the stickiest is that it is a wild, cruel place, where people have no edit button, and say hideous things from behind a cloak of anonymity.

As a sub-set of this, there are many stories about women being abused and degraded. Revolting suggestions about parts of the anatomy are offered; death threats are not uncommon. The latest example of this was the monstering of Mary Beard. To everyone’s great delight, the stalwart professor fought back like a tigress.

All this is, of course true. Only this morning, I found a comment on a seemingly benign Facebook page. One man accused another of being a ‘dumb fuck wank stain wife beating cunt’. (Sic. He clearly had no use for hyphens.) This was in regard to a piece about the South American tribes whose way of life is being threatened by the building of a vast hydro-electric dam. You might think that the people who care about this would not even know the expression ‘wank stain’, let alone use it in public. Yet there it was, in all its gratuitous ugliness.

The thing that is not much reported is that the internet is also a place of great warmth and kindness and humanity. It can be polite and charming. It can be helpful and informative. Because of it, I know things I would not otherwise know; I may witness lives across the other side of the world, about which I would otherwise be ignorant.

All of which is a long way of saying: thank you all for the lovely birthday wishes.

The virtual birthday is a new thing. Through Twitter and the blogs, and most of all via Facebook, which helpfully reminds your online acquaintances that this is the great day of your birth, happy little messages of goodwill may wing their way through the ether. They come from complete strangers. They come from friends whom you only know online. They come from real-life loved ones, and far-flung family, waving across time zones. They bring just as much pleasure as actual presents and cards. Someone, somewhere, has paused in their busy day, and taken the time to type. It is oddly touching.

I sometimes wonder if the goodness and generosity and big-heartedness of my internet circle is an anomaly. I am always wary of universalising the particular. And anecdotal evidence is, well, anecdotal. Of course my Dear Readers are of the finest and best: five star, ocean-going, fur-lined remarkables. When you were made, the mould was broken.

Yet, I cannot believe that this place, and the people who come here, are so very unrepresentative. I get glimpses, sometimes, of other people’s interactions, and they too are being funny and kind and polite. If anything, the wank stain crew seem to me to be the minority, the oddities, the furious few who, like small children throwing tantrums, almost cannot help themselves.

Being kind does not make headlines. It also does not shock in the way the ravening hordes with their swearing and their threats do. But it is real, and it is important, and it should not be drowned out by the shouty people.

I also think it matters. I’m going to go back to my hippyish tendency now, but I really do believe that sending the smallest message of affection, paying the tiniest compliment, offering the briefest good-hearted encouragement really does add to the sum total of human happiness. The increments may be minuscule, but boy, do they add up.

Thank you all. You are bloody lovely. And now I am going to contemplate love and trees.

 

Today’s pictures:

A gloomy old day. Dirty sky and intermittent rain. At least last night’s crazy gales have blown themselves out. But today was all about looking for the beauty in the small things:

The last of the snow, in a rare moment of light:

Autumn the Filly:

Myfanwy the Pony, at her woolliest:

A rather dreamy Red the Mare. She may be tired after keeping her herd safe in the high winds. She’s never been a lead mare before, and she’s learning on the job. It’s very sweet to watch. Except when she decides Autumn is getting out of line and must have a charming bite on the bottom. (Don’t worry; it’s a very gentle bite. And Autumn proves herself pretty much unfussed by anything.):

Stanley the Dog has found a most excellent stick:

Here he is, doing sit and stay. He is saying: how long do I have to sit here before I may have my good boy reward?:

Today’s hill:

In which I institute a new rule

Warning for VERY STRONG language.

 

I unfollowed someone on Twitter this morning, because they used the word cunt. It’s become a new rule with me. It’s my Cunt Rule.

It’s easy to forget that social networking (I so wish someone would think of a better name for it) is a very new beast indeed. I skip around Twitter so freely and happily that it is as if it has always been there. But it’s only about two minutes old, and the rules of etiquette are still unfolding. I try to be oddly polite on both Facebook and Twitter. I think it’s important. Just because it’s virtual, doesn’t mean there is no call for manners. Perhaps there is more call.

I still get muddled over small things. When conversations start up, it’s quite hard sometimes to end them without sounding abrupt, or just stopping, leaving a howling vacancy. I find this particularly tricky with Facebook messaging. We need an equivalent of there’s something on the stove/someone at the door/the house is on fire, which is the accepted telephonic finish.

The cunt thing is new. (I really hope that sentence does not get taken out of context.) I’m no Mary Whitehouse. I love a good swear. A judicious bugger or fuck or bastard can enliven writing, and speech, and be used for excellent emphasis or comical effect. But cunt is just a bridge too far.

It’s because it’s a lady part. Why is it that a piece of my anatomy is still the ugliest, most shocking, nastiest swearword? I can’t help it, I see it as rampant etymological sexism.

When I was younger and groovier, I tried to get into the swing, and rehabilitate the word. A lot of women were doing it, in the same way that black people reclaimed nigger, and gay people took back queer. But I’ve never really bought that theory. It might work for rappers and activists, but I really don’t think that Colin Powell or Barack Obama or Denzel Washington skip about happily referring to themselves as niggers. I don’t imagine that Graham Norton or Elton John run about gleefully talking about queers. They are still hideous words, freighted with a history of anger and bigotry.

Cunt is such a word, for me. It has undertones of fear and loathing. It holds the echoes of old ideas about women somehow being unclean. There is even a whiff of the ancient terror of vagina dentata. In my own private book, it will not stand.

It’s creeping into the social networks, flung about with increasing carelessness. I can’t look at it without feeling sad and uncomfortable. So, in the end, a rule was called for.

I’ve made one exception to my new rule. He’s a nice fellow who knows a lot about racing, and I really do want to know about what he thinks will win the Triumph Hurdle. He does not use the word in an angry, threatening way, but in a loose, easy manner, as if it is a simple part of vocabulary. It may be a generational thing; he is years younger than I, and the young ones seem to see nothing wrong in it. I bridle, auntishly, and turn my eyes away from the offence, hoping this one nice man will grow out of it.

But, apart from that, the new rule holds. I am making a stand. No one will care or notice; all the windmills are being tilted at. But I love a good windmill and I love a good tilt. I am riding my very own Rocinante in the privacy of my very own head, with my very own Sancho by my side.

 

Today’s pictures:

The happy herd:

Red the Mare:

Myfanwy the Pony:

Autumn the Filly:

Stanley the Dog:

Hill: