A black day?

What's happening right now, is an awful lot of "hate"...

I refer to his recent comment article in the guardian, discussing the tirade of abuse hitting out at Rebecca Black. This is the Internet at its worst. If not for YouTube and twitter, idiots across the globe would not have been able to throw such a wave of hate to a thirteen year-old girl. Okay, so her song is pretty vapid and annoying, but what’s the point of metaphorically screaming ‘OMG U SUCK’ at someone you don’t even know?

The point?

Because they can. Because the Internet allows them to. Don’t worry, I’m not going to start on a tired tirade about how ridiculously awful the Internet is for us. I don’t know whether the Internet has led to a degradation of morals – surely the ease at which we hurl abuse at each other, personal abuse if twitter or Facebook is used, demonstrates no less? And then there’s the question of whether technology is ruining our generation by diminishing our concentration spans, refusing to allow us to concentrate on any one thing at a time (as I write this, I have the screen split in two, watching a TV drama at the same time as typing); but these questions are not easy to answer.

What is clear, is that the Internet makes us bored. I cannot be the only one who checks my emails six or seven times a day. I cannot be the only one who quite often fails to remain on one webpage for any significant amount of time. Why is Internet gaming so popular? Because people are bored. And boredom appears to breed idiocy and a lack of self restraint. If these people had anything better to do, do you think they’d be posting offensive acronyms at anyone and everyone on the web? Personally, I only ever bother to comment on things I like when I’m bored, I can only imagine how utterly desperate and how dull your own life must be, before you resort to blasting hate onto the YouTube comment boards or into the realm of twitter.

And yet, if it was not for YouTube, people like Rebecca Black would not be able to become mass hate-targets, and more significantly, fame-seekers would not be able to gain the fame they long for. So what if their silver-cloud often has a distinctly leaden lining? They have their fame, isn’t that enough? Don’t they deserve what they get?

Well, no. I’m pretty sure it isn’t.

The thing about the Internet is not that it encourages our short attention spans, ultimately increases our boredom and spawns ridiculous acts of petty cruelty, but that actually makes us so lazy. So lazy, to the point where we probably can’t be bothered to actually hate anyone properly anymore.

Therefore, there is something pitiable and even more ridiculous about mass-hate tirades launched over the Internet.

‘Hooray for civilisation’ writes Brooker with his usual sardonic sense of irony. But perhaps there is something more in his point than assumed. We have gone from lobbing bricks through peoples’ windows to sending them hate ‘tweets’, which, to be honest, is probably a step in some kind of forward direction, as just because you have a million and one people sending you hate comments does not mean any of them actually hate you. It just means they are bored, or insecure, or simply jumping on the bandwagon. A mob mentality over twitter is a lot safer and lot faker then any actual mob. If someone throws a brick through your window, then they are breaking a law to get to you, and they take the risk of getting caught and punished. There’s a lot of effort that goes into such hate, and the Internet generation just can’t be bothered. The World Wide Web has no such limits, so there is no risk – consequently, people are more inclined to send such a hate message, but equally, more inclined to do it on a whim and simply forget about it afterwards.

I’m not saying Internet hate-spewing doesn’t hurt people, of course it does and ideally people should think hard about their actions before they do such stupid things. But there’s a difference between online-bullying (which is often small-scale and completely personal) and this ridiculousness. By posting your work on the Internet, be it blogs, articles, videos, music or even photos, you open yourself up to criticism. And if you are unfortunate enough to do something to annoy enough people, like Rebecca Black, you are going to incur a ridiculous amount of this imbecilic ‘hate’.

But it is impossible for a million and one people to hate an individual they haven’t even met. So I wouldn’t worry too much. If Internet hate waves can’t even summon up a convincing amount of hate, then I doubt they can do much else.

If you incur the wrath of the Internet, just ignore it. The machines haven’t taken over just yet.

Add Comment

You must log in to submit a comment.