Minding your manners in the digital era

Ellie O’Byrne checks out our attitude to modern manners and talks to the experts about how etiquette is not dying out with new technology — but is simply just evolving with it.

Late one night, I got a Facebook friend request from someone with plenty of mutual friends, whose name seemed familiar.

I thought that maybe I’d met him at an event and accepted the request. Minutes later, I got a personal message from him propositioning me.

I messaged him back, declining his singularly untempting invitation and asking him to stop. Another more strongly worded suggestion was the reply.

I warned him that I would report him if the messages continued, which they did. I promptly unfriended him and reported the message.

The following morning, an apologetic message awaited me, blaming his — how shall I put it? — fit of enthusiasm on a combination of alcohol and loneliness.

I blocked him, which is what I should have done in the first place. The idea of an adult man sitting drunk, late at night, at a computer, desperately and ineptly trying to make contact with another human being, was more sad than threatening.

It made me think about the whole concept of netiquette. Obviously, some people are really not aware of how to conduct themselves online.

Facebook messaging is not an adult chat service; there are places for that kind of thing — if you wouldn’t walk up to a total stranger on the street and ask them for sexual services, you really shouldn’t be doing it in a messaging service not designed for that purpose.

For starters, you could be messaging someone who’ll write about it in the papers. More importantly, it’s just bad manners.

“Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use,” Boston socialite and etiquette columnist Emily Post said.

Five generations and nearly 100 years later, the Post dynasty are still in the business of teaching etiquette. Daniel Post Senning, author, expert in online etiquette and Emily Post’s great-greatgrandson, works with his family members in the Emily Post Institute. The original book written by Post, Emily Post Etiquette, is now in its 18th edition. So, when do people turn to the Posts for advice?

“When someone’s born, when someone gets married, when someone gets a new job, and when someone dies,” Daniel says. “A little bit of guidance can go a long way to providing the security that you’re in safe social territory when you’re at those transitional moments in life.”

Daniel’s own book, Emily Post’s Manners in a Digital World, takes etiquette into digital citizenship. New technologies always bring new codes of conduct; the word hello, for example, only became used as a greeting when the telephone was invented. Before then, it was an expression of surprise.

The story goes that Thomas Edison used it spontaneously during testing of the new technology. We can be thankful that we’re not all walking around like pantomime pirates — Alexander Graham Bell preferred to use the word “Ahoy” to answer.

Daniel identifies two strands in digital etiquette; the first is our communication within the new media, and the second is our interaction with the devices we use to access them. We should import the basic principles of old-fashioned analogue manners into our online life, he says:

“You can take any etiquette question from the last 100 years and ask it today in a social media space. That means any of those life events that I mentioned; a wedding announcement; what do you do with someone’s social media accounts after they die; or whether it’s appropriate to put baby pictures on social media.”

Otherwise, a couple of basic rules cover a lot. “There’s a digital signature associated with what we do online and it’s potentially the most public and permanent thing that you’re going to do. Don’t be seduced by the illusion of privacy,” Daniel says. “Also, hold yourself to the same standards you would if you were in a room with another person. That rule alone would be enough to keep the worst offences in check.”

I daresay that in the case of my Facebook friend, that would have been true. Daniel warns against the temptation of responding to trolls and unsolicited invitations, advising to just use the tools provided by the social media platform to block and report anything nasty without giving the troll the satisfaction of reacting to or further publicising their attack.

How people interact with their devices is a trickier area, as people become increasingly hooked on them.

“Ask yourself: are you in control of your phone or is your phone in control of you?” Daniel says.

“Can you leave your phone in your pocket for an entire lunch without checking it or taking a photo of your food?”

Daniel believes that American etiquette has a more egalitarian basis than European etiquette; Emily Post democratised the society etiquette of New York’s upper crust and made it widely available to people with less money.

According to Sandi Toksvig in her 2014 book on etiquette, Peas and Queues, the word is of French origin and refers to small tickets used by courtiers in the time of Louis XIV to draw attention to rules at court.

Books on the subject have been popular since the 16th century and British etiquette has always been preoccupied with social status and attempts to gain it. Perhaps this is why etiquette has negative connotations for some people.

“You definitely hear words like classist, elitist, stuffy, old-fashioned…and we wrestle with that preconception,” Daniel says. The Posts’ philosophy is to “approach etiquette not as a system for exclusion, but to improve human relationships”.

For Irish people, the formal etiquette of the colonising British never held much sway historically, with 16th-century travel- writing pioneer Fynes Moryson complaining that the “mere Irish” had: “singular and obstinate pertinacity in retaining their old manners and customs, so as they could never be drawn by the laws, gentle government and free conversation of the English, to any civility in manners”.

Although not fans of an imposed form of social etiquette, Irish people’s informal approach and friendly manners now charm visitors to our shores. We have a unique approach to politeness here that baffles others; an Italian friend said: “Why does every single person thank the bus driver? It’s his job! That wouldn’t happen in Italy.”

My mother moved to rural Ireland in the seventies and took years to understand the habit of refusing refreshments a couple of times out of politeness before giving in under duress, a quirk later immortalised by Mrs Doyle’s “Ah go on, go on, go on,” in Father Ted.

Claire Daly comes from the closest thing that Ireland probably has to an etiquette dynasty of our own; she’s a fourth-generation atchmaker, the daughter of the renowned Willie Daly, from Ennistymon.

Claire cut her teeth in the family business and she too went digital, setting up the Matchmaker’s Daughter website. Now retired from the business and living in Spain, she still goes home to help Willie for the matchmaker’s festival in Lisdoonvarna each September. Her dad still gets huge numbers of letters and emails from American ladies keen to nab themselves a charming Irishman. What’s the appeal?

“They like the manners of Irish men, and the European women do too,” Claire says. “When you travel and you meet men from other countries you realise that Irish men are actually lovely men. They’re genuine, and they’re very decent.”

Online dating may have changed the landscape, but Claire has seen a growing number of people who are disillusioned with the superficiality and dishonesty of the online dating scene. “A lot of people in their late 20s and early 30s are sick of internet dating. They’re bored of it because people aren’t honest on it,” she says.

“There’s a lot less talking, a lot of texting and messaging. What happens then of course is that when they meet someone they’re shy. On the internet they’re bolder, but they’re hiding behind the screen instead of getting out there and doing stuff.”

However, manners and etiquette aren’t dying out, merely evolving, Daniel Post Senning believes.

“I often notice that the older generation — the digital immigrants — are very excited about their devices and treat them like they’re new toys, while the next generation — the digital natives — have a better sense of self-regulation,” he says.

“People who have grown up with these technologies have some real facility when it comes to them. We could all learn from that.”