IS ONLINE BEAUTY JUST SCREEN DEEP? – Margie Clayman

A couple of weeks ago, Roger Ebert appeared on CBS Sunday Morning. This was not just an appearance to promote his new television show, though. This was a story of a man who lost the entire lower portion of his face to cancer. He can’t talk. He can’t eat regular food. He doesn’t look the same.

I had had no idea that Roger Ebert looked so different. I had not heard about his bout with cancer, the constant trips to the hospital, and how his wife had stood by him. I had just seen his account retweeted here and there on Twitter. I had seen some of his blog posts. In my mind,  Roger Ebert still looked like the Roger Ebert of yore. In fact, if anything, in my head he looked like the Roger Ebert from 1985. Nothing that I was seeing online prepared me for what I would be seeing on that CBS Sunday Morning show.

Is this Martin Luther King’s dream?

We recently marked Martin Luther King Day, and his “I have a dream” speech was ringing from coast to coast. In King’s time, the best way to establish true connections with people was to meet them face-to-face. Unfortunately, as history tells all so clearly, humans are quick to judge based on appearance. Are you shorter or taller than average? Are you thinner or more overweight than expected? Do you have brown skin or white skin? We process all of these things before we shake hands.

With that kind of judgmental blink reaction in place, it’s hardly surprising that people don’t always see what other people are truly all about right off the bat. And yet now, with the advent of online technology, we can move past all of those things we look at with our eyes. We can get to know what people think. We can learn how people are experiencing life. We can comfort each other, we can teach each other, and in a lot of cases, we have no idea what everyone looks like or sounds like. The online world erases, if you want it to, skin color, creed, gender, a lisp, a stutter, a handicap, or a dramatic change in appearance. It’s just you and your thoughts out there for the world to see and ponder.

Isn’t this what Martin Luther King was dreaming about?

AND YET –

It isn’t quite, is it? The online world is like waking up from Martin Luther King’s dream to find that really the world is still the same. Erasing those factors that make people judge is not the same as getting past judgment. It’s pushing the dirt piles under the bed. It’s burying the snake under the rug. It’s holding the wolf by the ears.

I would like to say that when I see a quote from Roger Ebert, I still picture the Robert Ebert of yore. But I do not. When you see someone in real life (or on television), the curtain is removed, the bag over our heads gets thrown away, and we are left to wonder how we would have reacted to that person if we had not met them online first. Would we have gotten to know their wicked sense of humor? Would we have moved past their skin condition to appreciate their silliness? We realize, in that moment, that the online world is not the cure for our judgmental natures. It’s just a glimpse into what the world could be like if it became color blind.

Are we delaying the dream?

So here is my question. Is this online world, where everyone can be whomever and whatever they want to be, is that experience delaying the dream that Martin Luther King offered the world? Or is it pushing us ever closer?

What do you think?

Margie Clayman works for Clayman Advertising, Inc., a third-generation Akron, Ohio marketing firm. And she is the third generation! A proponent of carefully planned Social Media marketing, she is passionate about fully integrated marketing, and she says she is a nut when it comes to research.

You can read her excellent posts at Margieclayman.com

Thanks, Margie, for a memorable guest post.

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