Use Hanlon’s Principle To Better Communicate On Social Networks

Social networks have completely changed the way we communicate. Some time ago, it was impossible to think of talking to our friends in near real time when we weren’t with them. Now all we need is an internet connection, a smartphone and a username for the social network.

What has not evolved in our favor is the way we get along with others and our use of language as a central vehicle in building relationships. And of course, when communication doesn’t happen face to face, misunderstandings happen, most of which tell more about the person who interprets the message than about the person who sends it.

Elephant in the room

The smartphone vibrates. It’s a message from some social network. You look at the box and read, “Hi! How are you?”

Coincidentally, you have a bad day and the person who wrote the man is your boss’s jees-man and you think they need some extra service. Or maybe you’re in a really good mood and that’s your best friend you wanted so badly to talk to. But the person who sent the message may not know all this. They couldn’t know because this is not face-to-face communication. Therefore, they do not have access to the other language keys that are as important as the words:

• Proxemia: the place and spatial behavior where the conversation takes place. It is not the same thing to greet someone on the street who is clearly busy and apologizes for rushing as someone on a social network. When we connect to our social networks, we may be busy working on a computer. We look at messages for the purpose of deciding whether they are urgent, but we have no intention of replying. And at this point, the recipient can jump straight to the myriad conclusions that can accommodate dramatic versions like, “They don’t like me because they don’t respond,” “I’ve pissed them off,” or “What could I have done?”

• Vocal or extralinguistic behavior: this refers to our own pronunciation of the language, its tone and form, but not its content. As much as we use these, irony, sarcasm, or even jokes are not well recognized in our communication when we use social networks. Tone is a very important part of language when it comes to understanding the message of a message, and in the world of technology, this can only be captured in voice messages.

• Verbal and Linguistic Behavior: Yes, this refers to the actual language we use when writing a message. But here, too, the distance of the recipient plays a big role. If the boy you like says “hello” to you face to face, it may make you nervous and may make you respond as if you have some kind of communication disorder: stuttering, aphasia, anomie… It’s not the same thing as when you’re at home surrounded by friends and you have time think and ask for advice on how you could respond so “you don’t seem nervous or silly” or “that your message is something original.”

All of this is something most of us are aware of. We know that everything has a meaning in communication, from tone to distance, but in social networks we don’t take this into account. It turns into an elephant in the room; we all see it, but everyone explains it differently, understanding the messages as we see fit.

Hanlon’s principle

Robert J. Hanlon already gave us a solution to this problem of social networks in 1980, before they even existed, in his famous book Murphy’s Law. In this book, he presented what is known as Hanlon’s principle or Hanlon’s razor: “Never explain with malice what can be explained with equal stupidity.”

Following this principle means reducing the amount of intentionality that we associate with most communication on social networks. Many of the mistakes we find and interpret as contemptuous are rather the results and mistakes of circumstances. In fact, the world is more likely to forget us than to have a conspiracy against us.

As we discussed in the previous section, the written information lacks several elements that we use in our direct communication. For this reason, we need to be more careful in interpreting the written message. In this way, we avoid anger and misunderstandings that ultimately make no sense.