The Power of Shutting Up in the Internet Age

[Commentary] If you come across content which you find disagreeable, distasteful, or just plain idiotic, it might be best to just... shut up.

Don't waste your time firing up your righteous indignation, raking the author over the coals in the comment section, or forwarding message to your friends under the heading of "can you BELIEVE this?!" Just move on. Go to a different post, or a different site, or maybe get off the Internet entirely and do something in real life. Not only do your responses raise your own blood pressure, but in the world of the Internet, those comments are your votes. The voting metaphor itself, of course, isn't limited to the Internet. In retail, for example, it's often said that you vote with your wallet. You buy the products you find valuable and ignore the others. Widely bought products turn a profit, widely ignored products prove unmarketable, and manufacturers learn what to keep making and what to abandon. This way, it doesn't take long for the garbage to get identified and tossed out. Of course, when you're shopping, it's fine to commiserate with a friend about your disgust over a certain product. As long as you don't buy it, your vote isn't cast. Things are different on the Internet. Here, every comment, share, and forward is a vote. Every email you open has the potential to alert the sender that it caught your eye. Every click on a blog post casts a vote for it to be displayed to other people. Every ounce of attention, positive or negative, feeds more power to the content receiving it. That's the power of shutting up: it keeps you from voting for what you despise.