a sea of stars

When you’re happy, when you’re feeling generous, when you’re pleased with your gift or your service or your outcome, it’s easy to be nice. It’s easy to tip the waiter well when you’ve had a good day. It’s easy to thank the teller or the clerk when you got what you wanted out of the transaction. It’s easy to smile and chit-chat with strangers on the road when you’re in a good mood.

It’s hard to tip the waiter when you didn’t enjoy your food. It’s hard to thank the clerk for their time when you’ve just been told there’s a problem with their account and they weren’t able to fix it for you. It’s hard to think of something nice to say when your aunt gave you a crappy sweater you neither need nor want. It’s hard to be nice to people when you’ve had a shitty day. It’s HARD.

That’s what manners are for. Scripts and phrases that you learn by rote to say when you can’t think of a single nice or good thing to say from your own volition. Yes, they’re scripted. Yes, the sentiment is empty. But the scripts work in every situation, and the emptiness provides a buffer between your own unhappiness and the rest of society.

That’s why formalities will naturally loosen around people we get along with, and why informality can come off as friendly or unfriendly.

Informality is a way of expressing your comfort around someone because you don’t feel the need to insulate your respectfulness with more manners than necessary. You can be respectfully rude, just like you can be politely disrespectful.

(This is also why resuming formality conveys that you’re putting distance from someone, and why it comes off as cold.)

And not to sound old, but I think that at the root of a lot of online drama is that so many people have no manners. It’s easy to think of the internet as private, but social media isn’t the same as email.

Yes, your blog or website can follow a my-house-my-rules policy, yes, most chats are casual, yes, you should be able to speak freely in your personal spaces. But as long as they’re accessible without invitation, posts and notes are public.

You are a guest in someone’s house when you join their group chat, and you are hosting a house party in a neighborhood with trick-or-treaters if you don’t keep your account private or all your posts properly tagged.

Castorice and her dragon