Cultivating your Lit experience: words of wisdom (AKA How To Lit)

[ToPleaseHim]

Okay, here is the general advice I give to people in any internet environment.

1. In any online environment you are the curator of your own experience.
2. Accept that you have little or no control over what anyone else says or does.
3. Use the technical tools you have available to curate that experience.
a. Subscribe to those conversations/threads that interest you.
b. Use the ignore feature liberally. (My personal motto is "ignore early, ignore
often".)
c. Report behavior that is in violation of the rules. (Have been on the community
manager side of web forums before, also remember that just because you
think it's against the rules doesn't mean it actually is.)
4. Use the mental tools you have available to you to curate the experience.
a. Besides the technical ignore, you also have "mental ignore". (I used mental
ignore a lot too - "X screen name is an ass, skip...next.".)
b. Make sure you model the behavior you would like to see.
c. Be thoughtful/mindful of your engagement and ask yourself at each post:
"Does this contribute to the environment I would like to help create?"

As for conflict, when it arises online:

1. Conflict is part and parcel of human nature.
2. Because you have minimal to no ability to "make" others post as you would, realize and accept it's going to happen.
3. When conflict arises, don't feed the beast.
4. Don't hold grudges. (A lot of the conflict you see online between users is the result of long simmering grudges, held and preciously nurtured over the years.)
5. You always have a choice between a message that loves and supports your friends and a message that attacks your (and their) perceived enemies. Choose love and support.
6. If it's hot, wait to respond. (That's a general life lesson you'll get a lot of peace out of. Wait an hour. Wait a day. Wait a week.)
7. Choose your online friends carefully. Many people get sucked into conflicts because they're trying to support their friends (a virtue) but at the same time, if they look at their friends conduct, it can be pretty bad. Influence your friends both privately, via PM, email, conversation and publicly (by modeling and encouraging good behaviors).
8. Like in real life, realize that a lot of bad behavior, especially from people who go from cool to hot and back again, is NOT driven by what happens online, instead it's driven by things happening in their life in general. Even for the people whose behavior is always bad, what you're seeing online is a symptom of that behavior. The behavior itself is driven by a wide variety of motives - past abuse, unresolved issues, substance abuse, life disappointment, relationship disappointment, etc. It sucks that they act it out online, but realize many people are fighting hard fucking battles, of which this environment is only a tiny sliver of it. And many of those people are fighting those battles alone.

*In Buddhism we have this mediation/prayer that I've personally found to be an extremely valuable tool. When we encounter behavior that causes negative feelings to arise within us, we say "May all beings know happiness and be free from suffering." It's a good little trick to set you into the right mindset - to take those actions that a.) do not increase suffering and b.) help alleviate the suffering in the world. You can even personalize it when some specific is pissing you off. Stop, step back, take a deep breath and say "May X find happiness and be free from suffering".

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[ToPleaseHim]

Bumping this post. Please read it. Please use the ignore feature liberally. It works better than ever with this forum upgrade.

 

[ToPleaseHim]

Rules of Lit:
1) Assume everyone is married and a man until proven otherwise.
2) The internet always remembers. Don’t publicly post your face and naughty bits in the same pic.
3) Click every emoji!
4) Always tag @Indie and don’t forget to tell her she has a nice butt.
5) Assume everyone is an alt.

Great advice ^^

Can we make this a sticky @ToPleaseHim ?

Yep, lol!