How many times have you worried, in the past two years, about not wearing a facemask when you were online?

I bet you are frowning right now.

What is she talking about?

Seriously, even if you were sneezing into your phone, have you ever worried about not wearing a mask and affecting the people you were interacting with online?

Of course not.

That is my point.

When you’re online, other people cannot even see your face and they don’t hear your voice either.

It means that your offline sneezes won’t affect anyone online, but it also means that there is a lot of room for misinterpretation of anything you post online, no matter how trivial.

Because a lot of stuff gets blown up out of proportion.

This often creates tension, right?

Well, in the past thirteen years, I’ve often felt that I couldn’t even sneeze online without it being misinterpreted, that someone always felt that I was sneezing into his face on purpose. Or blowing kisses.

Sure, part of this has to do with the culture that I am in.

But there’s also someone out there who has a tendency to believe that everything I do and every word I type is about him.

That isn’t actually the case.