I Am Not Your Enemy
This simple phrase has helped me de-escalate contentious online interactions.
“I am not your enemy.”
This is the phrase I’ve found useful in tense or rhetorically charged online interactions, usually with someone I don’t know. I suppose it would be useful for such in-person interactions but those are exceedingly rare for me, as I assume they are for most people. But online, well that’s a different story for many of us, isn’t it?
Online is where some of the worst of us comes out. Online is where we jump into each others conversations. Online is where we feel the bravery to make bold claims with bold language that would seem odd in-person. Online is where we seek to change people’s minds who want to destroy all that is right in the universe or at the very least, rhetorically destroy those people in some version of the public square for all to see.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
“Twitter is a cesspool”, they say. Facebook is an enemy of the state. Sure, there’s plenty of evidence to support the ways in which social media is corrosive. As recently as last week, 60 Minutes did a feature titled, Social media and political polarization in America. I’d add our tribalistic narrative cable news to that list and several other online sources for partisan vitriol both left and right. Heck, now that Elon Musk has seized control of Twitter, I’m told we’re descending into the depths of fascism faster than Donald Trump can say “fake news'“.
But not everyone is playing that game, and in fact there are a subset of folks like Angel Eduardo actively using techniques to navigate contentious conversations on social media which often result in meaningful discourse. For my part, one of the tools I use is the phrase, “I am not your enemy.” I’ve found it to be a consistently effective way to de-escalate online conflict.
Occasionally friends will ask me, with genuine concern and/or puzzlement, “why do you engage in these online arguments, you’re not going to change their mind?” What they’re not realizing is that I’m almost never trying to change their mind. In fact, I see social media (particularly Twitter), as a learning space. A place where I can find opinions and assertions that help me better understand how people think about salient issues. And a place where I can perhaps help others think more deeply about those issues and maybe even better understand them.
I’m not always successful, maybe not even often, in achieving the latter goal. I do, almost always, though come away with a better understanding of how others think. Approaching these interactions with genuine curiosity instead of as a battle with an enemy is key. I want to understand and be understood, and to figure out where I might be wrong as quickly as possible so I can change my mind.
Admittedly this isn’t a common social media approach. I think that’s why using the phrase, “I am not your enemy” has been so powerful. It is so unexpected that my interlocutors often don’t know quite how to respond. They’re used to, and expecting, an exchange of vitriol in pursuit of ‘winning’, so when “I am not your enemy” comes along, it seems to confuse them. I can’t tell you how they feel, but that confusion seems to disarm them and I feel like I’ve released a deep breath I was holding in order to escape a burning building.
Again, sometimes it doesn’t work to unlock deeper conversation, but it never once has resulted in an escalation. Most often, on Twitter and Facebook, folks just don’t reply after I say I’m not their enemy. I’ve had more success with this phrase leading to deeper conversation on Facebook (I wish my searches for examples successfully surfaced them) where a few folks have actually apologized for jumping the gun and/or mischaracterizing me. Maybe they’re looking for a fight and I’m not it. Whatever the reason, at least I’m not wasting my time and energy in a doom spiral thread that leaves nobody the better.
I’m not suggesting that we ignore differences of opinion. Nor am I suggesting that there are never actual enemies worth fighting. I’m suggesting that we seek to find the common ground that is present between almost all of us and stop the general practice of seeking out enemies to attack. I’m suggesting we cease the adversarial and grievance seeking mindset that seems to pervade, and in many ways fuel, our media interactions. Using a phrase like “I am not your enemy” is something I’ve found useful but one has to mean it and perhaps that is one of our larger challenges in this day and age.