On my fear of being yelled at

On the internet. (Mostly.)

A passage from Hank Green’s November 8th We’re Here newsletter:

“I have been trained by making stuff on the internet to be constantly aware of all issues that currently exist because I want to avoid (and I can't stress this enough) the 0.01% of people who are going to reply to my tweet or leave a comment on my video giving me a hard time for doing something that is totally normal. I need to get my head wrapped around the extent to which I tiptoe around attempting to decrease the odds that someone will yell at me on the internet.”

Call me out directly next time, Henry. 😅 Especially the last sentence of that paragraph—it could have come from my own brain, forever altered by nearly six years posting publicly on a growing social media account.

“I need to get my head wrapped around the extent to which I tiptoe around attempting to decrease the odds that someone will yell at me on the internet.”

In low periods, this yelling feels constant. I express my support for ethical breeders? I am the worst kind of capitalist, pushing a brutal ideology onto innocent sentient beings. I post a photo of a Kit Kat on Halloween morning? I should boycott big-name candy companies. I say my favorite blue jumpsuit is from Target? I promote fast fashion.

Sometimes the insular nature of the online dog community—specifically the online dog training community I tried to cement myself in early on—magnifies strangers’ prickliness. We are so deep in these weeds of structure and reinforcement history and furniture “privileges” and off-leash reliability and canine nutrition and what-defines-a-training-tool. It’s entirely plausible a sentence I post in passing will leap off someone else’s phone screen to unintended consequences. (I once shared my belief that despite all our public behavior training Scout could never be a service dog—she’s too fearful, too sensitive, her genetic capacity seems to preclude that level of calm in our world’s chaos—and received a message from someone hurt I’d “said cattle dogs can’t be service dogs”.)

I’m naturally drawn to nuance, but Instagram’s constant feedback has amplified a healthy-ish urge to prod and dissect and play devil’s advocate and turned it into something else entirely: A compulsion. What disclaimers do I need to add? How can I provide the appropriate context for my words to dodge any and all misunderstanding? Have I acknowledged enough lately that our dogs, preferences, environments, and lifestyles are different (and that it’s okay we aren’t the same)? Should I add another “personally” into every paragraph to emphasize that me saying I do something is not me trying to tell you to do it?!