I like trauma circles as a good model for dealing with crises. When someone is in distress you dump (complain, vent, etc) away from them and comfort (listen, graciously help, etc) towards them. In short, you use your and everyone else’s closeness to the crisis to inform your response.
This is also the model I use if someone is angry at me on the internet. I do not want to dump towards them (the centre of the circle) but instead vent towards my friends. If I say anything to them I am first gracious and kind.
This next point is tricky, but I think worth making. For me public community spaces are “sideways” of me as regards this model—useful to dump into if necessary but not ideal. When someone is rudely frustrated with EAs on twitter, I generally avoid quote tweeting into the forum or Twitter Community (a new feature for communities on twitter) because then everyone feels attacked, not just me. This isn’t an iron law - sometimes the rude criticism is still really instructive, but this is my general heuristic.
My heuristics then: - if the upset person is a friend comfort them - if the upset person is not a friend comfort them or say nothing unless I feel very very competent (I very rarely feel competent enough to challenge directly) - if the upset person has written something mean, probably don’t amplify it - if I need to vent, vent away from the upset person - venting in private is usually better than venting in public - if I need to vent in public, it’s better to talk about my feelings rather than give a play by play of the crisis
Thanks Julia, I think this is really well put.
Relatedly, trauma circles.
I like trauma circles as a good model for dealing with crises. When someone is in distress you dump (complain, vent, etc) away from them and comfort (listen, graciously help, etc) towards them. In short, you use your and everyone else’s closeness to the crisis to inform your response.
This is also the model I use if someone is angry at me on the internet. I do not want to dump towards them (the centre of the circle) but instead vent towards my friends. If I say anything to them I am first gracious and kind.
This next point is tricky, but I think worth making. For me public community spaces are “sideways” of me as regards this model—useful to dump into if necessary but not ideal. When someone is rudely frustrated with EAs on twitter, I generally avoid quote tweeting into the forum or Twitter Community (a new feature for communities on twitter) because then everyone feels attacked, not just me. This isn’t an iron law - sometimes the rude criticism is still really instructive, but this is my general heuristic.
My heuristics then:
- if the upset person is a friend comfort them
- if the upset person is not a friend comfort them or say nothing unless I feel very very competent (I very rarely feel competent enough to challenge directly)
- if the upset person has written something mean, probably don’t amplify it
- if I need to vent, vent away from the upset person
- venting in private is usually better than venting in public
- if I need to vent in public, it’s better to talk about my feelings rather than give a play by play of the crisis
I may edit this post based on comments.