“To err is human; to complain is divine.”
So said Alexander Pope.
Actually, he did not. But if he had a social media account, he might have been “forgiven" for saying it.
When I started out years ago, it was popular to attend conventions where speakers started by ranking the industry by complaints. “Lower than car salesmen” we’d often hear, and other such comparisons. It seemed to me a poor way to exhort people to grow, by starting with a
Punch in the nose!
One day while reading the latest industry research, I asked my mentor. “If the industry is supposedly so bad, so broken, so backward, why does the research show consumers would recommend their professional to friends and family over 90% of the time?”
“Because consumers do more than what they say. Their thoughts are heard through their wallets. Be careful not to confuse people who make a living pointing fingers with everyday people who act and do.”
“So, are the polls wrong?”
“No,” he said, “Just incomplete. Like comments on the internet or pundits on TV, they never show the whole picture. They find what they are looking for because it fits the complaint. Only you can decide: Will you be an armchair critic - or will you make a difference. The real critique isn’t to call out errors but to -
Get out there and do better yourself.”
That advice seems sounded than ever. If only we can hear it, in an age where it’s fast and free and almost fun to poke holes in everything and everyone. Those peers. That competitor. These neighbors. The Other Party. Somewhere along the way, we’ve become accustomed to criticism rather than critical action. If your little screen asks all day “what’s on your mind,” you could start to believe what’s in there is the whole picture. Combine that with a monetization strategy that prefers words to action and you can win the internet every day but forget to -
Actually DO better.
If “mute” and “unfollow” become more common than “why” and “say more” we will have lost an opportunity to change minds by changing the world. When a meme becomes a box in which right-thinkers agree and wrong-thinkers booed, we risk missing the point - which is to act in some way - not just the trending way.
Our way or the cyber-highway?
But you don’t have to take it from me - not even if I say so nicely. Decide for yourself the best way to critique the present. You could share it without a second thought on every error posted online. Or spend the day ACTING for change by stepping up and building - and most first - YOURSELF.
To quote the poet Pope from so long ago:
"'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense."
Perhaps the man from Twickenham might have counseled us to spend more time changing things and less time twittering our thumbs!