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Are manners dead? Cellphones, Twitter and Facebook may be killing off the old civilities and good graces, but a new generation of etiquette gurus, good-manner bloggers and self-appointed YouTube arbiters is rising to make old-fashioned protocols relevant to a new generation.
Their apparent goal: to help members of Generation Y navigate thorny, tech-age minefields like Paperless Post invites, same-sex weddings and online dating — not to mention actual face-to-face contact with people they encounter in the offline world.
For instance, you may not think you need a tutorial on shaking hands when being introduced to someone for the first time, but Gloria Starr, an image consultant based in Newport Beach, Calif., begs to differ.
“When you shake hands, it’s two or three times up and down — from the elbow and not the wrist,” Starr says in one of her 437 YouTube videos, helpfully bobbing her right hand up and down in demonstration. Then “smile and introduce yourself”.
Or how about the way to conduct yourself at the gym? Videos on gym etiquette are a particularly hot Web topic of late, said Kevin Allocca, the trends manager for YouTube. One video, “Don’t Be That Guy at the Gym”, shows five men demonstrating various sweat-soaked faux pas, like the “meathead” who grunts loudly each time he performs a rep, or the self-anointed “coach” who offers unsolicited (and largely unwelcome) advice to other gym-goers. Posted last April, it has been viewed 3 million times.
No arena of modern life, it seems, is too obscure or ridiculous for consideration. An instructional website called Howcast.com has a popular channel on YouTube that tackles weighty issues like how to handle flatulence in yoga class or how to behave at a nude beach. “If it would be unseemly to gape at that body part while it’s fully clothed,” the latter video instructs, “it’s downright rude to gawk at it undressed.”
But perhaps the fastest-growing area of social advice — one that has spawned not just videos but also websites, blogs and books — is the internet itself, and the proper displays of what’s been termed “netiquette”. There are YouTube videos on using emoticons in business emails, being discreet when posting on someone’s Facebook wall, limiting baby photos on Instagram, retweeting too many Twitter messages and juggling multiple online chats.
Such advice is dished out on websites run by protocol professionals like the dapper Thomas Farley, a television talk-show staple, and Elaine Swann, a San Diego County-based consultant, and in the online newsletter Dot Complicated, published by Randi Zuckerberg, the former Facebook executive.
A recent post on Dot Complicated dealt with how to respond to a request for money, something that Zuckerberg, CEO of Zuckerberg Media, said she had had to deal with quite frequently. (Her advice: “Say no and say it quickly.”)
The publishing industry is scurrying to catch up, with a flurry of new etiquette books. “Etiquette is a popular publishing subject right now because, yes, it’s true, good manners never go of style,” said Christine Carswell, the publisher of Chronicle Books, which will publish The Forgetful Gentleman by Nathan Tan in May.
Last year alone, three books that tackle such subjects were published by contributors to The Times including Henry Alford’s Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That: A Modern Guide to Manners.
Other notable titles include Miss Jane Austen’s Guide to Modern Life’s Dilemmas, by Rebecca Smith, a British novelist who says she is a direct descendant of the Pride and Prejudice author, and What Would Michelle Do? A Modern-Day Guide to Living with Substance and Style, by Allison Samuels, a Daily Beast senior writer, who looks to the White House for guidance.
When Daniel Post Senning, the great-great-grandson of Emily Post, was working on the 18th edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette, he found it impossible to cover technology in a single chapter. Instead, he devoted an entire book to it, Emily Post’s Manners in a Digital World: Living Well Online, to be released as an e-book and paperback in April.
The book tackles questions like whether one should announce a serious illness on Facebook. (Yes, Post Senning said, but medical updates should be confined to close friends and family.)
Even the new gurus who position themselves as the embodiment of Old World civilities — currently fashionable, thanks to Downton Abbey — feel obligated to tackle 21st-century conundrums.
Charles MacPherson, who runs a school for butlers in Canada, has written his first book, The Butler Speaks: A Guide to Proper Etiquette, Stylish Entertaining and the Art of Good Housekeeping, to be released in April. An authority on such antediluvian rituals as spooning caviar, MacPherson nevertheless finds himself pondering whether one may keep a cellphone on the table during a dinner party, if the four-year-old is at home sick with a baby sitter.
©2013 THE NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
