It has been described as “everyone’s worst nightmare” and a “wrong group-chat horror”, which you might think a bit melodramatic – only if you’ve never experienced it yourself.
As it is, political scandals are rarely so relatable. New Zealand’s Green party is in highly public turmoil after one politician sent a message seeming to criticise a colleague to a group of their other colleagues, apparently by mistake.
While the Greens’ Chlöe Swarbrick was speaking in the House on Wednesday, her fellow MP Elizabeth Kerekere texted a group of Green politicians and staff: “omg what a crybaby” – seeming to refer to Swarbrick’s failed amendment bill, aiming to reduce harm from alcohol.
After a colleague responded with “I think this is the wrong chat …?” – which ranks alongside “We need to talk” in its ability to instantly strike fear into the heart of its recipient – Kerekere deleted the text, then apologised for the “inappropriate message … which was not meant for this thread”.
The full exchange was leaked to Radio New Zealand, which reported the story on Thursday, along with Kerekere’s denial of “calling Swarbrick a crybaby” – but subsequent analysis of Parliament TV shows two Green MPs seated behind Swarbrick looking at their phones, seemingly responding to the texts with apparent horror.
Green MPs Golriz Ghahraman and Julie Anne Genter, who sit behind Swarbrick, could be seen on Parliament TV apparently reading, reacting to, and discussing the texts.
— RNZ (@radionz) April 6, 2023
At one point, Ghahraman clasped her hand to her mouth, and shook her head. https://t.co/EIdmsh8Lzr pic.twitter.com/o4UPtouXHg
The Greens’ co-leaders, Marama Davidson and James Shaw, have condemned Kerekere’s message as inappropriate and going against the party’s values, and said it would be fully investigated. In the meantime, there are lessons here for all of us.
The obvious one might be “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” – but that’s never been a realistic expectation of human nature, let alone now.
In the age of social media, the line between our having a passing, perhaps uncharitable thought and sharing it with an audience is perilously thin; while any attempt to limit its spread (say, by sharing with “close friends only” or on a pseudonymous Twitter account) is fraught and highly fallible.
With a screen grab or forward, a message shared with a few trusted confidants can easily become a public broadcast – as Kerekere found, too late.
There are a few takeaways from this undignified saga. From a pragmatic standpoint, clearly distinguishing your group chats with names and images provides a helpful visual cue. If you simply must trash-talk someone remotely, voice notes are less easily circulated (and emojis harder to interpret).
It’s also never a good idea to conduct sensitive conversations when you are tired or distracted: the risk of sending a message to someone whom you mean to message about is just too high.
One underused strategy I’d like to advocate for is simply saying less. It’s only in the recent past that people have had the means to share whatever idle thought occurs to them, almost instantaneously – but all of us are weathering the toll.
Just look at Twitter, compelling some people to voice statements of such staggering banality they can’t be of interest to anyone, even the individuals themselves. I am stricken by the memory of two in particular, one along the lines of “Just missed a bus, and the next one’s not for seven minutes. Gah!” and another: “Time for lunch”.
I’m not saying that my every missive is a banger – but who would take the time to type this out?
This message from Kerekere is different, being “mean and not with good heart” (to give Davidson’s preliminary read) rather than inane – but the fact of it reflects the same impulse: that your thought (“I feel irritated by my colleague”; “I am inconvenienced by the bus”) is not complete until it is articulated.
It’s as if, in this attention economy, some people have come to feel that they are shortchanging themselves if they don’t convey their emotions or experiences to a broader audience – whether a friend on WhatsApp or their followers on Twitter.
Comparisons with “the past” are nearly always reductive, not least because there’s no bundling social media back into Pandora’s box now – but they can be illustrative in showing just how far our understanding of public and private, personal and professional has been derailed.
For instance, had she not had a seemingly private means of voicing it, would Kerekere have felt frustrated enough with Swarbrick to shout out “what a crybaby!” in the House? Or would she have sat through it in silence and perhaps – if still gripped by irritation after she got home – vented about it then?
Sadly, in this contemporary, personality-driven, digital news cycle, such gripes have become everybody’s problem – perhaps at the expense of faith in politics as a means for effecting change.
Leaking to the media is, of course, one way of indirectly sanctioning such behaviour; and it’s arguably in the public’s interest to be made aware of ruptures within a party seeking power.
But though Swarbrick has risen above it, saying, effectively, that she has been called much worse – the saga benefits only the Greens’ political opponents, able to point to it as a sign of juvenile in-fighting and incompetence, and to coast while the news cycle is distracted.
It also speaks to the loss of perspective on what politicians exist to do: serve.
That’s not to say that our elected representatives should sit there thinking only worthy thoughts, about how best to give the taxpayer bang for their buck and save the Earth. It’s a demanding job, and people are people: contradictory, impulsive, irritable, hungry.
But it’s in those demanding jobs, working under intense pressure and scrutiny, that learning how to manage our emotional responses and retain perspective – or at least think before we tweet – becomes all the more useful.
In his coming book Order Out of Chaos, the kidnap negotiator Scott Walker talks about the importance of learning to master your own mindset (and your ego in particular) in order to communicate effectively, and achieve your own goals.
All politicians, everywhere, could do well to think of their job as a high-stakes negotiation with real-life consequences, rather than a TV show that they’re keeping one eye on as they text their friends.
But if that is too much to ask for, they could do worse than to follow the advice of Alice Roosevelt Longworth: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit next to me”. At least then it can’t be screenshotted.
