When I first heard what Justine Sacco tweeted on Twitter, my immediate thought was wow how could she say such a ridiculous thing! Her tweet was deemed extremely unacceptable, but it did not warrant for her to become so publicly shamed and attacked for her thoughtless tweet that wrecked havocs to her life. One careless and dumb tweet seemingly ruined her life forever. Watching Jon Ronson’s TedTalk made you think about how online commenters and its community can turn into a blood-thirsty witch hunt to ruin a woman’s life and career. We should rethink about how we interact online. There is a difference between calling out people that is socially appropriate over ferociously attacking someone and ruining their lives.
As my classmate Megan mentioned in class and in her wonderful and insightful post on giving people the benefit of the doubt, which can certainly be applied to situations that can happen almost every day. Everyone can have a bad day, and sometimes things may cause you to react in a negative way, but we should think and understand others in the decisions that they make. We should give them the benefit of the doubt.
With this said, I created my community guidelines to be a safe space with no tolerance for online shaming and hateful comments. I want everyone to feel welcomed and included.
Julie in Korea is my inspirational teaching and travel blog about my one-year adventure in South Korea. My site will be moderated for a safe and inclusive environment where everyone can feel at ease to comment and share their thoughts peacefully. My blog values kindness, compassion, and respect, and I hope others will follow this!
Be kind and respectful
– No rude or hate comments
– No racist and derogatory remarks
– No harassing and inflammatory comments
– No sexist, homophobic, misogynist, offensive, and insulting phrases
– Basically to summarize, just don’t be a jerk!
Don’t be an online bully
– No online shaming please
– If you don’t agree with others opinions, that is absolutely fine, but do not criticize others negatively
– Personal attacks on others will not be tolerated
Don’t be a keyboard warrior
– Abusive and aggressive comments towards others will not be allowed
– Please keep negativity to yourself!
Spam is not allowed
– If there are repeated bots comments, it will be removed
Comments of these nature will be removed. If you don’t have anything nice to say, please don’t say it! I want everyone to be treated with the utmost kindness here 🙂
Be understanding and thoughtful
Sometimes, it may be hard to speak up about personal experiences you encounter, but I hope that #julieinkoreacommunity will allow you to open up and share your stories in a warm and welcoming online environment
I have implemented this guideline on my newly created community forum page here. I created a new menu header called Community to list out the new guidelines I created for my blog and for my viewers to share their stories. This new discussion forum page is a safe and welcoming space for people to share stories with others about their own experiences living abroad! The Community forum on my blog isn’t limited to sharing only stories about Korea. Feel free to share about your adventures from all over the world!
xoxo, Julie
