I don’t agree with everyone online. I am also strongly opinionated. We will pause for collective gasps of shock. Ok, over that? Good.
Does my disagreement with them give me the right to abuse, stalk, harass them? Obsess over every grotty little detail I can pathetically seek to find, like a creepy stalker?
The fact I think Fred Phelps is creepy dangerous does not give me the right to provide him unsolicited abuse, (unlike his vile practices, that he has, in my occasionally humble opinion, brainwashed his near cult into emulating).
Anonymity (the relative anonymity, at least), that being online bestows on us, seems to remove basic lessons in human social skills. The ability to use good manners. To reflect on potential pain. The fact that the person you spit your vitriol at is actually a fellow human, not a series of electrons after all. There are people who make mistakes, who have other opinions, who are actually still stumbling around through life like the rest of us.
I love the benefits the Internet brings. It can build amazing communities for the lonely, and empower the disenfranchised, educate those with limited access to knowledge. It is a deeply powerful tool. Like all tools, it is two edged and dangerous when wielded by those who have underlying agendas. I am sickened by this descent into abusive hostility when faced with disagreement – the argument of the playground, the kindergarten.
I often wonder if people who behave so badly are role playing out their responses to times of being bullied, or feeling powerless, of adolescent sufferings. For adolescent cruelty is deeply apparent in such responses. The cruelty of thoughtless high school students.
I hope we evolve better mechanisms, and start to enforce better behaviour by our lack of accepting such rudeness and hostility.
I f you can read this tale, (Mom, Don’t Read This – Skepchick), and not feel outraged – no matter how much or little you agree with where the tale started - then please, examine the basic set of human rules for interaction we should all have been educated with, instantly.
Related articles
- Lorraine Devon Wilke: I Know You Are but What Am I?! The Snark Epidemic in Modern Media Discourse (huffingtonpost.com)
- Cyber bullies are vile, but should we be locking them up? (guardian.co.uk)
