The other day I was at work and one of my co-workers sent me a link
about the recent mass killing in Canada regarding self-proclaimed “incel” Alek
Minassian, who praised the killing of students at UCSB by another “incel” named
Elliott Rodger. I use the terminology in quotes because it’s a nonsense
category of humanity, one that was created by malignant sociopaths and absorbed
egomaniacs.
On Reddit, there was a forum dedicated to these kind
of people. These who are faceless and plain, and take out their anger on the
women who won’t sleep with them by writing depressing, bemoaning tracts of
prose better suited to the stylings of a melancholy junior high on Deviant Art
than a twenty-something still living at home with their parents. (My dig at
Deviant Art comes from personal experiences, so there.) Fortunately this forum
was removed from Reddit some months ago.
This is a trend
ongoing. There are many online forums that are steeped in this type of
incestuous talk. What’s impressive is that I was introduced to this kind of
thing long ago when I was a kid. I grew up with the internet, with 56K dialup,
4.5KB per second download rates, and simple HTML websites that took two minutes
to load in Netscape Navigator. But there I was on forums, in AOL Instant
Messenger, and observing first-hand the capricious and devilish stylings of
some of the most despicable people I had ever encountered.
Even I was the
victim of online bullying.
But that’s a story for another day.
But that’s a story for another day.
What I still try
to understand is the phenomenon of “flame wars” and other types of vilification
on the internet. We say a lot of things that we don’t mean, or we have the courage
to do things that we otherwise wouldn’t attempt in the company of others. I think
vloggers and youtube broadcasters are a great example of the latter: a group of
people emboldened by the lack of social repercussions received from face to
face conversation. In the right context, these people have become influencers
and speakers in a larger conversation. (At the same time the lack of credentialing
has led to a conflagration of unsubstantiated observations that bring the
layman / laywoman to bad conclusions. This is also a conversation for another
day.)
Internet bullying
is like a network loop. It’s recursive. Ego exits the speaker and enters the
Other. The Other responds with ego and enters the Other. And on and on it goes.
The internet is puzzling like that. There is so much good that the internet
brings us. Open and constant information. Limitless education and tutorials in
dozens of practices. Extending communication to those halfway across the world
in seconds. And even exposing virtuosity for the least of our number to elevate
them to incredible heights. But these are not really highlighted upon in the
current climate. Right now the internet is a cesspool of thieves, blackmailers,
bigots, terrorists, and sexual predators. Information is suspect and, in many
cases, counterfeit, spread by people without qualifications. Unprecedented
movements in communities lead to the deaths of others or, at the very least, their
defamation.
I mentioned the
network loop before… People often say that charity is the best remedy for those
needing a better reference. This is because, instead of thinking about
ourselves and being trapped in a constant loop of self-preservation, we begin
to see others as ourselves and the gap between “Us” and “Them” closes. This
whole blog entry really has been about extremes, two sides with an immeasurable
distance between them. Breaking the loop, in the context of the sociopath and
the internet, is really bringing down the artificial wall of anonymity. When we
are confronted with people that are different at a distance, it’s much easier
to discredit them than if we are up close.
So maybe the cure
is to see eye to eye, face to face?
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