Personal essays
On communicating mostly beneath the surface.
Typos
I was texting with my friend James and he said something so well that I replied, “you’ve captured this perfectly.”
Except.
In the time between the word “perfectly” appeared to complete the “per” I’d typed and the time it took me to accept the completion, the auto-completion changed to “Percy”.
So my message read, “you’ve captured this Percy.”
This makes no f’ing sense.
Not only doesn’t it make any sense but I don’t think I’ve ever typed the name “Percy” and have no idea why my humble assistant would think to reach for it.
I followed up with a note to James, “perfectly”.
I don’t know if this counts as a typo or an auto-correcto, but it was clear to both of us that this isn’t what I meant. If I hadn’t spotted the mistake, James would have and he wouldn’t have assumed that I meant to type “you’ve captured this Percy.”
This is why, when I see a typo or an auto-correcto online that I feel needs addressing I DM the author to let them know privately.
It bothers me when someone publicly corrects someone for an obvious mistake. Send them a quiet message and let them fix it and move on.
A podcast I should have unsubscribed to long ago does this. Each day the host lists the three worst people in the world. Often their actions truly are awful. But at least once a week it’s someone who mistyped something.
The most recent one was “Girl Scot” instead of “Girl Scout”. The writer was derided as stupid for confusing residents of a country with members of a youth group.
It was a typo. Calling public attention to it was uncalled for, making ad hominem attacks felt over the top.
Public posts
You can’t always DM someone.
The other day there was a woman on a dating app who wrote “I am here for hookups, one night stands, and sexting.”
The rest of her bio made it clear that she had left out the word “not”. She was quite bothered by people who approached her assuming that’s why she was there.
I was tempted to swipe right on her to let her know about her typo but that’s not a reason to swipe right on someone. You’d be surprised by how many of those bios have typos, misspellings, and grammatical mistakes. I almost swiped right on someone who said she was attracted to men who knew to use the Oxford comma. In reading the rest of her bio I decided that that was not a good enough reason to swipe right either.
But I digress.
I make mistakes all the time.
Some of you have been kind enough to write to me when I make a mistake here in the newsletter. You usually do it quietly with an email and a smile. Every once in a while someone does it publicly on line.
I assume they mean well and thank them. Some of them don’t know that they can post something just to me. They are replying to something they read and figure that’s the only way to communicate with me.
They mean well. I’m good with that.
Below The Surface
It’s not just mistakes we make.
Often someone I know will communicate sad or bad news online. often it’s health, work, family, or finances.
I’ll usually send the person a private message.
If it’s online I’ll DM. If it’s a group email I’ll reply directly to the person.
Not always.
Sometimes it’s important to let others know that you support this person who might not otherwise be getting the support they need.
I’ve been thinking of this lately because most of my correspondence is not public. I send a lot of private messages to people to let them know that something they said might be wrong, contain a mistake, or somehow be badly communicated.
Sometimes I’m wrong and the person realizes it’s because they weren’t clear about something and they tweak what they said or how they said it.
Often I’m wrong. I’ve misread something or misunderstood something and the person usually quietly corrects me back.
I live a lot of my life online but I try to be a duck.
I want to appear mostly calm and purposeful while paddling like a crazy person under the surface.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 341. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe