For the better part of our evolutionary history, people have talked with others in their local village, community, and immediate social setting, which included their family, church, and probably a fairly tight circle of friends who shared quite a few similarities. For over 50 years since the advent of television, humans have been rendered into passive viewers who, in some ways, have lost their ability to communicate. The internet is not only reawakening communication that had been languishing dormant for decades, but it has also greatly altered things in the blink of an eye.

It used to be that one’s opinions reaching the larger world were largely impossible due to limits on infrastructure regarding book and newspaper distribution, telephony, and the ability to travel and the effort needed to attract an audience who might listen to one’s point of view if one wasn’t already a celebrated personality. In effect, there were gatekeepers.

Today, the internet flattens this and forces humanity into exchanges between people of radically different backgrounds, geographies, and opinions, but also with potentially like-minded individuals who really do want to listen. These people who are “out there” may not be on the wavelength of communication traditions that one’s friends and families are familiar with. So, the nuance needed in finding a voice that is acceptable to this new electronically connected group that may have already been forming rules of decorum among themselves has to be negotiated with a deft voice until the newcomer finds acceptance. Some who are not aware of this global cross-cultural, economic, and intellectual diversity, join groups of various linguistic abilities may find themselves frustrated by not being able to make themselves understood and are lashing out, mostly due to their own inability to communicate effectively, though they likely cannot see that yet.

The situation may not be that people are inherently rude; this is just a very difficult time in our evolution to understand we might have a position in the global hierarchy where like-minded people could accept us if we could adapt to evolving rules that are still fluid and uncertain. What is certain is that those who are getting a toehold on these new methods of threading information in and out of the online think tank begin to demand respect and patience.

Many newcomers want instant gratification, such as what is found in their local community when they drop into the bar and root for the same team. When a cheer goes up, and our mates raise a toast in support, we instinctively understand that we are with our kind; we are in symbiosis. On the internet, we often do not receive any immediate feedback. In the case of asking questions of a group where we do not know the rules of decorum, we can feel that we are being rejected and allow our frustration to lash out at those who are seemingly ignoring us and thus isolating us. The imperative is on our shoulders to first understand the group dynamic and then enter the conversation and take cues from those who are trying to nudge us into respect to what the group’s expectations are.

The idea of moving beyond one’s immediate environment and not having filters or community standards where stigmatization can occur demands we humans develop new skills of communicating across vast geographies and cultural distances that have never been a part of the toolset that evolved with people. The period of change we are living through is not an easy one as, contrary to the last million years of humans walking the planet, we have no experience in opening communication across the breadth of Earth.