[Ansteorra] Rambling about Etiquette

[Marc Carlson]

An interesting (to me at least) aside that might help illustrate some of the 
issues we seem to be talking about.  I was talking about email with a 
co-worker yesterday, a young lady of 22 who’s been fairly active online as 
far back as a she can remember.  She’s utterly clueless when it comes to 
what HTML is and how it works (important only in that she wants to be able 
to do more with her blog and doesn’t have the faintest idea of how to do 
it).  While we were talking, she expressed frustration that when she writes 
something well thought out and that she’s worked hard on, no one responds to 
it.  So I explained the concept of Qui Tacit Consentiri (for the Thomas 
Moore impaired, this means basically if you don’t say anything, you may be 
assumed to agree with whatever the subject is), and noted that in 
Netiquette, the same is supposed to hold true (although it’s phrased better 
with it being inappropriate to send lots of “I agree” and ‘what he said” 
messages.* She looked at me like I was growing a third eye in the middle of 
my face.

(*In the old days, when “bandwidth” actually meant something, any people had 
to spend money for download time, so it was being rude to them to have to 
make them download a lot of “Me too” messages.   Now the rules are just to 
keep people from having to wade through huge amount of noise to get any 
signal.)

It turns out that she’d never even *heard* of Netiquette  - of course I was 
learning these rules (and how and when to break them) when she was *seven*.  
That’s not her fault – there’s apparently just been an assumption that if 
these things are important people will be taught about them eventually.

The point to this is that if we want to teach people how to behave, what 
etiquette is, and so on, WE need to be the ones to do it.  And I don’t mean 
that we should hunt down people and point out their mistakes to them.  That 
in itself is rude and can cause problems.  But there can be other ways (I 
was stuck in a quandary recently at work – I was leaving the building for 
lunch and found just outside one of our students, clearly enjoying the sun, 
totally rapt in her cell phone conversation, and just as totally oblivious 
to the fact that her position had caused her dress to slip and she was 
displaying to anyone standing where I was a fetching red satin thong.  I 
confess my first thought was that –I should mention that to her-.   However 
to do so would have been rude on my part (I was taught that it was rude to 
notice and comment on social faux pas), it could have embarrassed her and at 
worst -- well assume you’re an attractive 20 year old young woman and a 
rather intense middle aged man you don’t know comes up to you and tell you 
that you are flashing the world -- what are you to think?   I resolved it in 
a more subtle fashion, by walking up next to her and paused long enough 
inside her personal space zone (while looking around as if looking for 
someone).  This was just enough to make her uncomfortable and shift her 
position around.   Then I spent several hours trying to figure out if I 
could have done that better.   Better would have been to have another 
student mention it to her, preferably a female one, since the differences in 
social ranking and slipping across gender lines meant that I –couldn’t- say 
anything.

To parallel this back into an SCA context – if I see Joe Newbie doing the 
equivalent of picking his nose at the table, as a peer, I have fewer 
appropriate options than say, a member of his household, or even some other 
new person.  What I should be doing is setting the example, and if I have to 
intervene, to be –very- careful and subtle about it.

I was trained etiquette by a cluster of nutty old women (who, in retrospect, 
I think may have been competing with each other) who felt it was their 
life’s goal to make a gentleman out of me.  That they have (by their 
standards) failed is more my choice than anything else.  Again, I know the 
rules, and I know when and how to break them.  But they had the authority to 
do that, and it was their place to do it.  On those occasions when, as a 
child, I had people come up to me out of the blue to “correct” me, it really 
pissed me off (and was very embarrassing).

No one’s perfect, and even today I leave little fox paw prints across the 
floor at times (I know, that’s a shock to those who know me, but it’s true). 
  I’ve commented in the past that the SCA has no standards – and usually I 
am referring to authenticity when I say this.  The same holds true for 
proper behavior.  There is no official standard for what constitutes how you 
or I should act, no authority to correct others.  If I were to teach a class 
on etiquette, I would be stuck with having to decide WHICH etiquette to 
teach; medieval proper behavior being different from the Victorian derived 
version I was taught growing up.  SCA specific etiquette has never, as far 
as I know, been analyzed and presented in any way that would be easy to 
teach (bow before the thrones and what?)

Anyway, I have to agree with those who have suggested that we may just have 
to deal with this problem ourselves and not just complain about it.

Marc/Diarmaid