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It’s a blessing and a curse: The internet has given us dozens of ways to get in touch with one another. |
This is sometimes great! It allows us to choose the medium we’re most comfortable with, and it can help us compartmentalize parts of our lives to prevent things like “job creep.” |
On the other hand, we now have dozens of ways to unintentionally come off as rude, careless or otherwise unpolished. One person’s casual texting habits — say, always leaving you on read — can drive another person nuts (“Stop leaving me on read!”). |
To help you navigate this maze of manners, this week in Smarter Living is Digital Etiquette Week. For the next five days we’ll be publishing guides on everything from the right way to end an email; how to fight on the internet without losing your mind; what to know about sending DMs; and much more. Throughout the week, tell me on Twitter your biggest digital etiquette pet peeves at @timherrera. |
To kick things off, here is our first story in the series: You Live Your Life Online. Don’t Forget Your Manners. It was written by Victoria Turk, author of “Kill Reply All: A Modern Guide to Online Etiquette, from Social Media to Work to Love,” with whom I chatted about some of the most common digital slip-ups. Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation — which took place over Gchat, of course. |
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Tim Herrera: What would you say are some of the most common digital faux pas all of us unknowingly make? |
Victoria Turk: Oh, there are so many! I think most of us are aware of the common ones we all make — forgetting to respond to emails, leaving friends “on read” when we’re messaging them, tweeting in anger. But there are some that I think lots of people still don’t quite grasp they’re doing wrong. One for me is around email — I only recently came to the realization that, actually, responding to an email immediately is *not* necessarily the best etiquette, especially if it’s a group email. It’s much more considerate to let others respond first, make sure you have all the info you need and only then weigh in. |
Also: the CC rule. I wish everyone would learn it! |
TH: What is the CC rule? Uh-oh now I’m nervous I’ve been accidentally running afoul of it … |
VT: It’s pretty simple: the main recipients of an email, who are expected to reply, go in the “to” field. People who are not expected to reply go in the “CC” field. What I love about it is it makes clear what your responsibilities as a recipient are — whether you’re expected to reply or not. I feel strongly that a lot of our stress around email is because we don’t know what the expectations on us are, so anything that helps clarify that is very helpful. |
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Of course, the problem is that most people don’t know this rule, so it doesn’t always play out that way in practice. But baby steps! |
TH: Yes there’s so much stress around email! I am awful at email. Don’t like writing them, don’t like getting them, I just wish we could do away with them. But I know in the real world that’s not going to happen, so what are some ground rules we should all be aware of when it comes to email, especially in the workplace? |
VT: You’re definitely not the only one! Although I think to a large extent it’s not necessarily email that’s so stressful, it’s work that’s stressful, but given so much of our work is now over email, we end up blaming the messenger, but I digress. Simply put, the best email etiquette means making your email as easy to deal with as possible. That means keeping it short, to the point and making clear what you need (if anything) in response. You can be direct and still be polite. There are also lots of little passive-aggressive tricks you see in email that should definitely be avoided — things like CCing someone’s boss, putting “URGENT” in the subject line unnecessarily, the dreaded “Thanks in advance” signoff … |
TH: Last year The Times ran a story that included a section on declaring “email bankruptcy” — essentially just giving up on old emails you know you’ll never get to. But is that polite? Can we really do that? |
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VT: Oh yes, I’m an Inbox Zero fan and a big believer that etiquette and pragmatism go hand-in-hand. If you’ve got a zillion unread emails in your inbox, you’re not realistically going to get to them, and they may make you miss more important ones anyway. At some point I think you’re fine to just draw a line under it. If the emails are weeks old, it’s likely the senders are no longer expecting a response anyway. I think you have to be realistic, and good etiquette doesn’t mean you have to be a total pushover. |
TH: Let’s switch to texting. What’s a common misstep we’re all making? |
VT: I think with texting, language becomes particularly important. A lot of the time, texting is replacing a face-to-face or phone conversation, but you don’t have access to all the nonverbal cues — facial expressions, tone of voice, etc. — to get the same message across. So getting the tone right is really important, and often really difficult. Because we have so little to go on, we often end up reading too much into messages. As with most things, I think the best thing is to maybe take a little more time, read your message back to yourself and check that your intentions won’t be misunderstood before you hit send. |
TH: Read receipts: Are you for or against? |
VT: I have mine turned on! If I could choose for them to not exist at all, then maybe no? But they’re here, and I personally can’t resist. I think the trick is to have the same philosophy to messaging as you have for email: If you have time to read a message, you should also have time to respond, at least in brief. Don’t leave your friends hanging, and don’t let that sense of shame hang over you. That said, we should all be more tolerant of each other and empathetic of the fact that we all have so many digital demands on our time these days. I’m certainly not perfect! |
TH: And what about social media? Got any tips for being a little better there? |
VT: Oof, that’s a big topic! Tweet others as you would like to be tweeted, ha-ha. I think it’s actually easy to forget the joys of social media in all the backlash; it’s a great medium for self-expression and for sharing in our friends’ lives. I’d love to see more of that side — celebrating friends’ achievements (brag, don’t humblebrag!), hearing about what’s going on in their lives rather than what’s in the news, enjoying some of the creativity and humor that people can bring to social media. Again, I think it comes back to doing things a bit more slowly. |
TH: O.K. last question: What’s the most embarrassing digital faux pas you’ve ever made? |
VT: Oh gosh! Let me think … I definitely posted some cringeworthy things on social media when I was a teen, like trying to show off how smart I was or whatever. And I’ve definitely sent messages to the wrong people accidentally, although I’ve been lucky enough, I think, that none of them were too terrible. My big fear, though, is that I’ve made some big egregious error and not even noticed it. |
TH: Well you’ve been perfectly pleasant in this chat! Any last tips or thoughts on digital etiquette you’d like to leave readers with? |
VT: Just that if you’re thinking of other people, you can’t go too far wrong. We can argue about the finer details of when it’s appropriate to use emoji, or what the best email signoff is (in my opinion, it’s “Best wishes”!), but really the fundamental thing just comes down to trying to be kind and considerate and recognizing how your digital communication is coming across in that context. |
Tip of the Week |
This week I’ve invited the writer — and Gen Zer and former finsta-haver — Izzie Ramirez to tell us when it’s time to let our finstas go. |
Our existence on social media is a constant performance: Everything we post is subject to gossip, critiques about aesthetics, employer scrutiny, even surveillance. There’s no hiding — except, perhaps, through creating a finsta, which is a semi-anonymous Instagram account set on private. |
With finstas, the consequences of posting a negative meme about work or a salacious photo fade. Only a select group of people will see, and those people may be using their own finstas, too. Together, you’re in a safe bubble where being yourself — even the ugliest side of you — is encouraged and protected. Part therapy, part self-expression, a finsta allows a user to yell into the void, and the void (lovingly) yells back. |
And yet: There comes a time in every finsta’s life when the stress and pressures of maintaining it — the very things it was meant to alleviate — outweigh the benefits. The moment a finsta becomes draining is a signal that it’s time to go. |
Leaving is easier said than done; abandoning a community you invested so much time in nurturing can hurt. While some finsta users like to make a final post announcing the end of their messy online existence, I suggest a softer approach: Just let it fade out of existence. |
The tactful route is to give your finsta a quiet death and not draw attention to it. No goodbye post, no notice. And as anyone who has taken a break from social media has learned, it’s unlikely anyone will even notice. If they do, they’ll reach out, and that’s the best method for friendship upkeep anyway. |
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