Jack Tame: Crybaby silliness hides hypocrisy

<p>We’ve all done it. </p> <p>Every last one of us in a group chat or on a team email or instant messaging platform. </p> <p>Let he who hath not accidentally texted someone when saying something ill-advised or nasty throw the first stone. </p> <p>I’ve got friends who in a rage have sent the most awful messages slagging off their flatmate and calling them a slob, only to have the flatmate in question walk into the room and hold up their phone.  </p> <p>“I don’t think you meant to send this to me.” </p> <p>Eurgh.. you don’t say.  </p> <p>I’ve got friends who’ve accidentally texted their crush, confessing their love. Friends who’ve done similar things when they’ve been considering break-ups. There was a rumour at my work about a message that was accidentally sent to a colleague via instant messaging on our office computer network. The sender begged and pleaded and bribed IT staff with chocolate and wine to come in on a weekend and delete the message before the receiver logged into their computer on Monday morning.</p> <p>I dunno if it’s true but the scenario sounds believable enough.  </p> <p>The problem is that sometimes the impulse to be professional is exceeded by the impulse to be a human being. We can be nasty, gossipy beasts. And in the digital age, you’re only ever a big red button from disaster… </p> <p>Green MP Elizabeth Kerekere has learnt all of this the hard way, after being caught out for allegedly calling her colleague Chloe Swarbrick a “crybaby” in a message that was sent to the wrong group chat. </p> <p>Most of the coverage of this little whoopsie has focused on the word “crybaby” and the high-school drama of the whole thing. But I saw something else in it. For me, the real takeaway from was not that Elizabeth Kerekere was slagging off one of her colleagues. It wasn’t that she apparently doesn’t like Chloe Swarbrick, or that she used a petty term. The really interesting thing was the context in which she did it.  </p> <p>Kerekere sent the message literally as Chloe Swarbrick was speaking,