Announcing the Death of Context

Recently a Christian satire site called “Babylon Bee” has, according to reports I saw online, been fact-checked by Snopes and even threatened by Facebook. Why, you ask? What grievous thing did they do? Well, they published a sarcastic and ‘humorous’ story that had CNN purchasing a washing machine to “spin the news.” 

I do not know why they had to do this or who complained but it is another example of the death of context. There are of course two things working against Babylon Bee that caused this ridiculous situation.  

Firstly, humor often fails in electronic communication. Even with emojis and smiley faces many people either cannot see the humor in what you are saying or more often do not even try. When we say something to people our body language and even the conversation we are having adds context. When I read a tweet or see a headline on Facebook, often there is no context or even the hope of context. 

What makes it worse is the ‘echo chamber’ many people live in. Whether you just watch Fox News or just watch CNN, if you just read NY Times or just read Drudge online, when you limit your inputs you limit your chance to understand context. I saw someone on Facebook the other day challenge any of their ‘friends’ who believed that assault rifles were needed, to justify their need. When no one responded, he cited that as proof that no-one believed assault rifles were needed. It could also have proved that his Facebook timeline is full of people who believe as he does, or that Facebook is a terrible place to have a discussion like that. 

This is the second thing working against the Babylon Bee type communications. The needs of the social media ‘echo chamber’ require some, it would seem, to deliberately misquote or bend what you are trying to say to make their own political point. Some, if you believe commentators like Greg Gutfeld, just get off on being outraged. Why can’t we all be more tolerant you ask? “A funny thing about tolerant people?” Gutfeld says in the book The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage, “They're really only tolerant when you agree with them.” 

In both cases, I often hear the justification is that ‘other’ people will not understand it is a joke or will be misled. To me that has always been a very patronizing approach. It says that “I am clever enough to understand but others are too stupid to see what I see.” 

So, in the world of no context, how do you defend yourself and not fall into these traps. Here are 3 early rules to follow.

1.   Check your sources

With so much information coming at us all the time we have to limit and filter the data or information coming at us. Frankly, there are just not enough hours in the day to consume all the content out there even if we wanted to. So, as you define your filters, be careful not to eliminate the sources of content that you disagree with or frustrate you. When people ask me where I get my news I tend to say I read four websites a day – two from the right and two from the left. 

The ‘echo chamber’ problem can also apply in a work situation. If you only talk to a small number of colleagues or customers, expect to get a limited view of the reality of any situation. In many companies when a senior leader visits a customer, if they are not careful, they project the whole market on that customer’s feedback. Or as someone once put it to me, “the worst piece of market research is a customer sample of one.”

Bear in mind that you shouldn’t hunt for data that confirm your beliefs, rather look to test them. I knew a manager once who liked to say, “if you torture the data hard enough it will tell you the truth.” We all knew what he was actually saying was, “if I torture you hard enough, you will present the data in such a way as it confirms what I already believe.” Torturing people or data hardly ever gets you the truth.

2.   Act with integrity

So, in what way should you act to make this situation better? The answer is to act with integrity. But what does that really mean? 

The simplest way to think about integrity comes from something your mother may have said to you – well mine said to me: “two wrongs don’t make a right.” You know when the justification for bad behavior is, well the other side did it first, that the person has no moral ‘leg’ to stand on. A broader definition of integrity is also useful. A dictionary will describe integrity as “the state of being whole and undivided.” Make sure what you do leaves you ‘whole.’ As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “to thine own self be true.”

It’s a better way to sleep at night. If the idea is living a ‘whole’ life is new to you, this is an interesting whitepaper.

The only real answer here is to lead by example and not to reward those that fail to. 

3.   Always add the context or don't communicate

The biggest issue of poor communication is often the loss, deliberate or otherwise, of context. When we Tweet, Re-share, quote or recommunicate something someone else said, we invariably miss the context of the communication. As someone who wants to live with integrity, we have to commit, even if it’s extra work, to make sure the context is clear. Even if that means we don’t send it but go out of our way to say it. Phones still work – despite what people may tell you. Even better, when it’s bad or difficult news, take the time to say it face to face. An additional step, to ensure context and integrity, is to correct a misperception if necessary. Committing to ‘cleaning-up’ when you communicate badly, or someone has received your message wrongly, is a critical step.

To ensure you add context, consider the circumstance and the setting for your communication. What should the reader know to ensure they receive your message clearly and without error. That might mean you have to identify your assumptions, biases or even expectations upon reading the communication. One way to identify these are to ask the question, “what should the reader know to ensure they do not misunderstand anything I am communicating?”

For an example, I wrote a blog about the book “Shattered.”  The book details what happened in the Clinton Presidential campaign of 2016. While it wasn’t a political blog, I was trying to look for business lessons from the book, I felt it needed some context about me.  Without saying politically how I voted, I believed I would not be transparent about where I was coming from. At the top of the article is a ‘health warning’ – you can see it if you read the article. 

Bottom Line

There is an old joke that mis-uses a Bible quote to say, “When two or more are gathered together, there will be a communication problem.” That’s a fact of life. 

Given that, it is always important to remember that if the receiver of your messages takes away something different to what you expected then it’s your fault not theirs. One way to limit any misunderstanding is to ensure they get the context in which you mean your comments to be understood.

Please LIKE or SHARE if you found this interesting or helpful. 

For more content like this please check out my book called "Become a 21st Century Executive" or visit me at the3minutementor.com.