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Chelsea was bullied. And she wanted revenge. She wanted to feel some control. A fake Facebook profile of a handsome, confident guy that she could use to message her bullies seemed like the way to do that. And then she messaged more people. Over four years she chatted with lots of people who wanted to get to know “Jamison”, Chelsea’s alter ego.
One of those people was Sunny, a nursing student and star of the Catfish TV show’s first episode. When Sunny found out that Jamison was really Chelsea she vented her feelings, saying Chelsea must have a personality disorder to have done what she did. But pretending to be someone else online, or saying things we wouldn’t say in person, isn’t the same as having a mental illness.
It’s called the online disinhibition effect. When we feel anonymous, or even just hidden behind a screen, we feel less restrained, more able to express ourselves in ways we might not feel comfortable doing in person. It affects all of us. It can be good and it can be bad.
One study published in the journal ‘Computers in Human Behavior’ in 2014 found that young people can get emotional relief by sharing their feelings or telling secrets they had been holding onto through anonymous messaging. And another, in the Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace in 2015, showed that the online disinhibition effect had a positive effect on people who found communicating in face-to-face situations more difficult.
But we’re probably more familiar with the negative things that we hear about anonymous online messaging. Bullying, harassment, grooming, fraud. Feeling anonymous sometimes leads people to make poor choices about how they treat others. Not sure we can blame the online disinhibition effect for that.
For good or bad, messaging apps are the most used apps on our phones. Most of the time we’re messaging with people who know who we are, and who probably ignore the effects our own online disinhibition has on us when we get frustrated or annoyed a bit too quickly. But there are hundreds of anonymous messaging apps on Google Play and Apple’s app store. And with more than 42 million messages sent every minute, many of those messages go between people who don’t know each other.
One-to-one online communication is fraught with difficulties we’re not really equipped to deal with.
Robert Epstein also got catfished. Not by an American teenager, but by a Russian chatbot. After two months of romantic messages from Ivana, Robert got a bit suspicious. Perhaps it shouldn’t have taken him quite so long to realise as he’s one of the founders of an annual prize in which chatbots try to convince the judges that they’re talking to a human. If he can be misled and become confused by chatting online, anyone can.
When it comes to chatbots, it seems that knowing you aren’t talking to a person helps to extend the online disinhibition effect. In the 1960’s, Joseph Weizenbaum working at the MIT Computerized Reasoning Laboratory created Eliza, the first ever chatbot. Eliza was programmed to respond to people by repeating back to them what they had said as a question, much like a non-directional psychotherapist would. From the anecdotes, people seemed to really appreciate being about talk to something that wasn’t going to judge them.
And a more modern version, Woebot, which calls itself a mental health ally, not an online therapist, also helps people by prompting them to share things they might not feel comfortable talking about either in-person or to another person. The online disinhibition effect not only works if you know you aren’t talking to a person, it might even be stronger.
The more we rely on chat messaging for staying in touch with family, arranging things with friends, contacting customer service departments, coordinating with colleagues, etc., etc., the more the online disinhibition effect becomes embedded in how we behave online. Good and bad, there’s no avoiding it. But perhaps we can be more considered about it.
Is that the lesson Chelsea from Catfish learned? She founded ‘Win From Within’, an anti-bullying organisation to help people find self-acceptance and get support for bullying issues. I wonder if they offered support over online chat.
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The lesson for this month, when it comes to achieving stuff, structure really helps with the how but knowing why matters most.
I’ve set myself four goals:
Within each goal there are activities, some regular some one-off, some I’m comfortable with some that stretch me, that will contribute to achieving those goals. Having these goals as a way to frame where I focus my time should help me be a bit structured in my work.
This continues to be the goal that I can’t figure out. How do you contribute to a community and be remote, async, introvert. I keep circling around ideas about improving product management in charities but can’t quite find the way.
Didn’t do anything on my BSL course, on the Gitlab Remote Working course. I say this every month, but really need to go give them some time next month.
I didn’t do much on any of my side-projects. This is because I’m just not sure they are helping to achieve the community contribution goal.
Irregular Ideas has 48 subscribers and I’ve written 66 editions. I think I’ve settled continuing to use Substack so I need to shut down the old Irregular Ideas website and move the domain name over to Substack.
I wrote a few Twitter threads from my weekly reading list. And I’ve started writing a few digital charity related threads which I’ll experiment with for a few weeks.
I wrote weeknotes on schedule every week and daynotes most days. I’ve been trying to do a bit of journaling and free-form writing by hand, which feels easier to actually write but harder to do, especially as the evenings get darker.
Nomadic coastline life continues. Been thinking a bit about the goal of becoming good compost.
Walked every day, swam in sea on some days, but still not getting enough exercise.
Runaway good.
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Photo of the week:
This week I did:
There’s a pattern in digital teams (and I think in startups too) where to start with everyone coordinates just by talking about the work. Then over time, as the team grows and the work gets more complex, processes are added to take over the coordination. Then, later still, those processes become so embedded and built up in layers that they create barriers to coordination. I think we’re at stage two, starting to add more process to handle more complex coordination. The challenge is to figure out how to get just enough process so that it doesn’t become a barrier.
I wrote about the coastline paradox, the idea that the length of an irregular shape (like an island) increases the more closely you measure it, and applied it to setting big goals and taking small steps towards them. The paradox is that the smaller the steps you take, the further away the goal gets.
This week’s thread was about strategy, posthumanism, writing, subscription models, fractals, blockchain, digital transformation, teams, DAOs, design, circular economy and newsletters. I realised that there is no way to know if something is good compost or not. Or, to put it another way, one person’s good compost is another person’s pollution. That isn’t an excuse for not being discerning about the compost you create, but it does require some judgement.
Swam in the sea a few times this week. Luckily for me I’m not near any of the beaches that have suffered sewerage dumping. The sea is still pretty warm, and floating there watching the sun set is my mind gym.
And I read:
Third Sector Lab’s and CAST’s Open working toolkit is really cool.
Elizabeth Ayer’s article on open working cultures and some of the issues that can arise is also really cool.
Erin ‘Folletto’ Casali writes about the three ‘speeds’ of communication and collaboration; sync, async and storage, which is also really cool.
Thought about:
This week was one of those ‘remember where you were when’ weeks. The Queen died. After 70 years on the throne. It’s interesting how events like this are used to push people’s own agendas. I guess broadly there are two view; establishment and anti-establishment. The establishment pays tribute to the person who was Queen, the anti-establishment critiques the institution of the monarchy, and its involvement in colonialism, for example. Both can be true. And respectful. And necessary.
If leadership is about getting a step ahead and then getting others to that step, then perhaps there are two ways. The more traditional leadership approach takes that step forward and then calls back for others to follow, “Follow me, this is the way”. This is ‘tell’ leadership. The way is that the leader takes that step and asks others to follow, “Have I gone the right way?” This is ‘ask’ leadership. Either might me applicable in different circumstances stances, but only ‘ask’ leadership has in-built feedback loops that make it more relevant and effective in changing and uncertain situations.
The more I think about it the more I think that the scientific method is a first principle for product management. As a way of moving from the unknown to knowledge, uncertainty to slightly less uncertainty, in a structured way, and applicable at any level and scale, there isn’t anything to match it. To me, the six steps of observation, research, hypothesis, experiment, analysis, conclusion are core competencies for every product manager.
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