Ever since people have interacted, people have disagreed. Until recently, though, it was something that took place face to face and with verbal confrontations. If things elevated too far, it could be taken care of physically. In the age of technology, this has completely changed. The concept of anonymity and connectivity on the internet has seemed to lead to many outpours of unbridled rage. Through the use of social networking sites, internet message boards, and general anonymity on the Internet, people online seem to have a lot more confidence than if they were talking face to face.
Rage is one of the basic human functions. Different people show their anger and rage in different ways. In the days of the internet and technology, people are trending more towards the internet to unleash their rage. The anonymity is a perfect way to be angry: nobody knows who you are and even if they found out, you could always say that you’re someone else and nobody would question it. Although, it is very easy to find personal information on the internet.
An internet site called 4chan is notorious for this. 4chan is an image-based message board system where users post only as anonymous, and are practically untraceable. There is a section of the board specifically devoted to harassment. People can go on the board and post something such as “hey, this person did this to me, harass them” along with an email address or link to a facebook and literally thousands of people will descend on the person without even knowing them. Many of these invasions have lead to somewhat of an Internet fame, sprouting many popular Youtube videos and sometimes even making the national news.
We see the articles in the news all the time, using buzzwords such as "cyber bullying" to define online abuse. Because it's so easy to create a different identity on the internet, it's also very easy to take advantage of someone else. For instance, in one case, teenager Megan Meier apparently met the boy of her dreams on Myspace. She began to chat with the boy, and started to develop an interest in him. After some time, she began to fall in love with the boy and agreed to meet him in person. As it turns out, the "boy" online was really a girl in Megan’s school's mother posing as someone else online. Apparently, Megan had done something to the daughter of the woman that was impersonating, and the mother wanted to get back at Megan. So, the mother made a fake Myspace account and filled it with pictures she found on Google – a prime example of real life rage channeled through the Internet. One day, the mother sent Megan a message from the fake account that read: "Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you." After receiving this message, Megan responded with “You’re the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over”. A day after the mother “broke up” with Megan, she was found hanged in her closet. All this happened over what was supposed to be an internet prank. Now, the obvious question is: does the mother get punished? For the longest time, this was quite a dilemma in the court system. Was what the mother did legally wrong? In 2008, the courts said yes and the mother was convicted for the death of Megan. A year later though, the mother was aquitted. As of now, a few states have laws against cyber aggression to prevent these cases from happening again. This continues to happen though, as recent as this week a gay Rutgers student killed himself because his roommate was taping the student and his boyfriend and putting it on the internet. Word of the videos spread and the gay student was humiliated to the point of suicide.
The Internet itself may also help to fuel the rage that is channeled through it. Because you can post pretty much anything on the internet and get away with it, there is a lot more out there that people can get mad about. Whether it be a controversial blog post or an online game, people will get mad about it. Myself, I play games on Xbox live every once in a while. It seems like no matter how well I’m playing or how terribly I’m playing, someone is always on the other end of the microphone telling me that I suck and calling me a faggot. What’s even more troubling than that this is happening at all is that 90% of the time the person who’s saying this sounds no older than 12 years old. Will the upcoming generation of technologically inclined kids be angrier than the current generation? I think so. As kids start to use the internet, they’re still in the phase where they think it’s cool to be mean to people. So when kids are learning to be on the internet effectively at 8-10 years old, they’re learning how to be abusive at an even younger age. Will this translate into a much angrier group of people when they grow up? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Anger and rage on the internet is a problem that nobody seems to be doing anything about. Although, it’s only going to get worse. There’s really not much that we can do. The anonymity and connectivity of the internet only fuels the urge to be angry and abusive over the Internet.
First off, I like the fact that you mentioned that people have a lot more confidence online than they do face to face. This is probably because they feel they are less likely to suffer consequences from things they do or say online and they don’t have to worry as much about retaliation. I think this is an important trend in society that applies to a lot more than bullying. I was also fascinated by the part of your blog that discussed 4chan; I had no idea that something like that existed. The fact that people on this website can get thousands of other people to rally in a sense and harass someone they have never even met is really scary and really captures the mob mentally that can be found online. What does this say about our society if so many will blindly follow and behave cruelly without just cause?
ReplyDeleteI was very interested in the section you wrote about the internet itself fueling the rage that is channeled through it. The lack of censorship, for the most part, on the internet means that people can say whatever they want even if it is derogatory and purposely offensive to certain groups of people. Although, I don’t know what can be done about this because of freedom of speech and it would be impossible to monitor everything on the internet. However I think that there is a fine line that people ought not cross; just because you can say it, doesn’t mean you should. And why do people feel the need to express their anger by making a blog post that can be seen by thousands of people? I think most of the time the things they’re angry about should be calmly and rationally discussed with a person they’re close to, not thousands they don’t even know. This oversharing may stem from the fact that our generation has grown up in a world with blurred lines between public and private. I also think that kids today are a lot less respectful in general and that this exposure to the anger on the internet is only enforcing the idea that it is okay to be mean and disrespectful because so many people are. I think that it’s up to parents to make sure they know what their kids are doing on the internet, if they allow their kids to use it at a young age, and to instill good values in them and hope that they know how to conduct themselves both online and off.