The Internet is a special world with its own laws. And these laws are simple and clear: write what you want and to whom you want. Users don’t particularly scatter compliments, but write a caustic, sometimes offensive comment, condemn, scold — that’s welcome. We asked psychologist Elena Perova to help us understand why there is so much anger on the Internet.
The Internet is a special world with its own laws. Information spreads faster and easier there. Any reader can now communicate their opinion about the book to its author. You can become a sponsor of the new album of your favorite band, thanks to which the musicians gain independence from the record companies. The common man has received a previously unimaginable opportunity to be heard, and he actively uses it, not being afraid to speak out on a variety of issues, including those in which he understands nothing. Quite quickly it turned out that this stimulates the manifestation of not the best human traits.
Scottish journalist Jon Ronson, in his TED Talks, recalls the excitement of Twitter’s early days: “In its early years, Twitter was a space for liberation from shame. People gave away their deepest secrets, and readers confessed: “My God! I am exactly the same or the same.” People without a chance to speak out realized that they had a voice and that it was strong and expressive. If there was a racist or homophobic column in the newspaper, we knew that we could do away with it. … If the powers that be abused their power, we called them to account. It was like the democratization of justice. Hierarchies have been swept away. We were going to change the world for the better.»
Each popular platform quickly became mass, and stories of a completely different kind began to happen there. Users united against one person and began to purposefully poison him
Russian Internet users were inspired by LiveJournal in its early years. But each popular platform quickly became mass, and stories of a completely different kind began to happen there. Users united against one person who, from their point of view, committed an impartial act or just a mistake, and began to deliberately poison him.
Ronson tells the story of Justine Sacco, an American who joked on Twitter about Africans and AIDS. She wrote her post while boarding a plane to Cape Town. At that time, she had 170 subscribers. While she was flying, she was retweeted by a popular journalist, and when Justine landed, her tweet was the first in the world rankings. There was a real tsunami of hatred for her.
Her joke was really stupid, but did she deserve what she got? Strangers (I wonder if there were any among them who had never sat in a puddle in their lives, joking inappropriately?) enthusiastically insulted her, called for her to be fired (and she was actually fired), raped and infected with AIDS. This went on for many weeks. According to Ronson, who dated Justine, her life was destroyed.
I recently saw a similar, though not as big, story on Russian Facebook (an extremist organization banned in Russia). The user posted a photo of the car with a clearly readable number and said with resentment that the child had thrown garbage out of the window from this car, and the driver (the mother of the child) rudely responded to the remark. Within a couple of hours, the name of the owner of the car became known. It also turned out that she was not from Moscow, but a philologist by profession. Tubs of mud poured down on this woman, and on visitors from the provinces who «crap in our Moscow.» Users mocked her name, urged to find her and throw garbage into her car, called her and her daughter «pigs» as «pigs». More and more commentators appeared, like sharks to the smell of blood.
Expressing a negative assessment of someone’s actions, we thereby affirm: we are not like that, we are better. We don’t make racist jokes or throw trash out the windows.
Why is this happening? First, humiliating another is the easiest way to feel at your best. Expressing a negative assessment of someone’s actions, we thereby affirm that we are not like that, we are better. We don’t make racist jokes, we don’t throw trash out the windows (even if we just forgot about it). Secondly, the mass effect plays a role. In the crowd, a single person practically does not feel responsibility: “Everyone threw stones, and I threw them. So what?» And finally, thirdly, everything happens on the Internet, where a person is impersonal — responsibility is further reduced. It has been repeatedly noted that in personal communication people behave much more politely and tactfully than in the same LiveJournal.
- Social networks: what your profile photos say
It is clear that few people want to run into rudeness. However, a lot of important and interesting things are happening on the Internet, and there is no desire to leave there either. Think about the audience you want to share what you write with. Explore your social media privacy settings. Don’t add people you don’t know personally as friends. When posting an ad in a public space, be careful what you write. If you want to write a post on a sensitive topic to the open community (like video blogger Em Ford, who posted a video on Youtube about how people on the Internet insulted her first for problem skin, and then for using cosmetics), be aware that you are doing an Act in the name of the Target, and be prepared for some backlash. You can console yourself with the thought that people are trying to increase their self-esteem at your expense and simply could not do it in any other way. You can take an example from the icons of Russian feminism — that’s who has developed an iron self-control in the face of any attacks.