We’ve seen technology grow and become usable in so many facets of our own lives. It’s made living life simpler, or has it? Social Media is another part of technology that has made its way to our doorstep, it has provided the opportunity to stay in close contact with family and friends and make new ones across the globe in mere seconds and minutes. A person can now watch a video of someone else in another country from the comfort of their own home and visit places they would have never otherwise visited because of their finances or another obstacle. The list is almost endless to what social media and other platforms offer for most of the human population. But when it comes to someone’s opinion as a review, is there any harm in it?
There are platforms “on the line” designed to give people free rein to communicate anything about someone or a business? These platforms aren’t bad, but in the wrong hands, a person can maliciously use them to cause harm virtually creating a negative appearance of that entity or person/s.
Take for example, a customer who is having a bad day comes into an establishment, orders, and begins to have an attitude towards the staff, due to some other issue that is not related to the staff or business. Would it be ok for that person to write a bad review because they believed they had bad service? Whether or not we approve, it will happen. And what about using the right to Freedom of Speech to convey what a person experienced for a review, who’s right and who isn’t, and where’s the balance or the boundaries?
So now the views shift, an employee defends their stance, isn’t rude, maintains a neutral tone, and proceeds to discuss the policy and the rules that are in place on what they can and cannot do for a customer. Is it still ok to use profanity towards an employee or humiliate them in the presence of others? If that customer decides, that what they say is right based on the principle of, “The Customer is Always Right,” does that make it justified to destroy someone’s reputation or a business online because a person has the right to voice their opinion? What about Rhetoric, Bias, and Fallacy, how do we stop this from stretching in a review in the wrong direction?
There’s a simple saying of “Practice Makes Perfect,” and that simple little expression can be used with how we express the truth and talk about someone or someplace. Wherever we go we can almost hear of people speaking ill of someone or a business simply because they were dissatisfied. And quite often, becomes exaggerated and a focal point of anger and a target, and soon, others follow suit because of some type of connection to it. The results, a severe and negative impact from a business standpoint, and employees potentially losing jobs and even defamation of character.
Aside from the customer and employee, we often see the issue arise between employees and superiors. Everything from favoritism, nepotism, segregation, and the list is quite extensive to even sabotage with very mischievous ways.
As this may sound like speculation or opinion, there have been cases documented by court records as evidence to showcase the wrongdoings from employees, customers, employers, and more by court proceedings and extensive litigation.
With a wide array of disguises for bullying, some, are meant to throw others off from the truth so now the threatening party becomes the victim. The question is, does it make it right, some may say that it doesn’t matter. Every single one of us has a voice and that right to express it, and yes, that’s true, but when it comes to reviews, can a person’s mood and character cause harm to a business or individual and, how can you stop it? We can all relate somehow to this and have experienced this behavior from others, whether in the past towards others or, you’re experiencing it now, so the curiosity is, what do you do?
reviews, publicly shame someone, online bullying, customer service, rwtc media group, the whistling chronicle newspaper, opinion over facts
