Year to Year: A Journal Through Time #17 – The Perils of Online Discourse (14/5/19)

Recent headlines

World: Jeremy Kyle: MP Calls for ITV Show to be Axed (A little tabloidy, but it’s interesting to me as I’ve had concerns in the past as to the effectiveness of counselling relationship problems by shouting at them on live TV in front of a jeering crowd.)

Gaming: Minecraft’s Anniversary Map is a Huge Interactive Colliseum (I played this game when it was in Indev! Pre-Alpha! I feel old.)

I’m Playing: World of Warcraft (Levelling a Nightborne Frost Mage while podcasting), Minecraft (I’ve discovered Bedrock Edition), LEGO Marvel Superheroes (Completed it mate)

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Yesterday saw the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones air. It was, by my estimation, a partially flawed but mostly astounding episode, with a twist which had been telegraphed throughout the entire show. It featured beautiful shots, remarkable acting, and peerless set design. According to the internet, it was apparently the biggest piece of trash to ever be excreted from an outbound sewage pipe.

I won’t dive into my critical thoughts as to why this episode was good and why people are idiots. I want to use this journal entry to explore the nature of people on the internet, and their extreme views. It seems to me that Game of Thrones has been praised to the highest heavens for most of its lifespan. The only negative opinions about it were presented in a mostly lucid manner, from what I’ve seen. But with the third and fourth episodes of season eight, the pacing and the direction of the plot turned in a manner which left a lot of people confused. A lot of criticisms were fair, but what’s also been emerging from this is people coming out in droves to declare the show as dead, or as a waste of time, or that the showrunners are intellectually challenged.

I’m going to be honest. I spent most of my evening yesterday attempting to pull myself away from social media, because this made the seethe.

Criticisms are fine. Episode five – the aforementioned penultimate episode – was a relief for me, having had many issues with episode four. All the same, though, I could see that episode five had a few holes. But never would I take to the internet to attack the creators of the show about it. People are now creating memes about these alleged morons who run a show that they’ve been following religiously from almost a decade now. Time and again, people fail to the connect to the idea that making a joke at someone else’s expense online is cruel, and reflects more about them as a person than making any sort of statement about the show they’re attempting to criticise. I blanch every time I see it. Not only that, but failing to having any opinion between “this is the best thing ever” and “this show is complete trash” is indicative of far larger issues than stem from outside of fiction. Seeing systemic, societal issues such as toxicity make its way into the community of a television show I like is incredibly disheartening, as fiction is often a way for people to escape the exact world where these issues present themselves harsher ways.

I don’t know if I’m making much sense. In a broader sense, it just feels like the world we’re living in is being overrun by the outraged, the ignorant, and the hateful, with Brexit (outright xenophobia), Trump (outright racism) and climate change (outright ignorance and misinformation) being major events in our time. It might seem strange to link these back to people not liking a TV show, but it’s the way it’s discussed and argued about which reminds me of the discourse surrounding these issues. People’s use of extremes, mockery, denial and plain stupidity is found as much in discussion of Game of Thrones now as it is in politics.

I believe that the internet is actually a force for a lot of good in our lives. Most wars come about from people having different beliefs, those beliefs are born from different cultures, and different cultures are created from a group of people living together in a particular environment. The internet transcends physical space and gives everyone a voice in which to share their perspective, letting us understand each other better and to celebrate our differences, not scorn them. I believe it’s been a major proponent in opening people’s eyes to the cruelty of prejudice, the importance of Pride, the reality of mental health. However, the biggest advantage of the internet is also its biggest detriment. If everyone has a voice, then that includes the ignorant, the prejudiced, those with a loud and angry voice and no desire to listen to opposing viewpoints. Lately, it feels like those people are winning.

I hope some of this made sense, especially to Future Kristian who is reading this one year later, far removed from the time he spent getting upset about anonymous comments on the internet.

I plan on removing myself from online discussion surrounding the finale when it airs.

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Further reading

An interesting Twitter thread on the difference between watching something weekly vs binge watching it (Game of Thrones spoilers within)

A beautiful exploration of a major Game of Thrones character’s journey up to S8E5 (Major Spoilers)

The Weekly Deathmatch #55 – Overwatch – Hardware Anxiety

Spoilers!

“For what?!” you may cry. “How am I to know what is to be spoiled?! Am I to avoid this dashingly handsome blog post? Please, tell me, o writer of these rambling paragraphs!” Well, fear not, I plan to spoil nothing at all here. Instead, I will be talking about spoilers themselves.

Spoilers are a problem, because what is heard cannot be unheard, and the human mind has a terrific way of stapling anything it doesn’t want to hear to the back of your eyelids. Sometimes, things are spoiled unknowingly, via referential humour, and the wrongdoing is only noticed among the groans of those inflicted, and no amount of apology, accepted or not, can right the wrong. The twist in the story is now burned into that person’s brain, and they will never be able to approach it from a fresh perspective ever again.

Some people spoil things with callous disregard, in the Youtube video titles and thumbnails of their WATCH ME REACT videos, in various social media comments, and lately, in the Facebook trends. I won’t spoil it here, but at the end of a season of a television show, the headline was literally <CHARACTER DIES IN TV SHOW>. There have since been multiples of the headline <FANS OF TV SHOW DISCUSSES CHARACTER’S FATE>. Why? WHY?

The worst kind of spoiler, however, is the one that is still socially acceptable and is by no means meant with any kind of ill intention. It’s the “I’m not going to spoil this for you, but the twist in the end is amazing!” Not as destructive as the detailed discussion of events, but you will now spend that entire movie / TV series / book / holotape waiting for the inevitable betrayal to come, and trying to guess from which character. The problem is, that kind of foreknowledge makes the betrayer easier to predict, as the story is written with the intention of the audience not knowing that there will be any betrayal at all, and therefore not looking for it.

It doesn’t have to be something so monumental as a specific event, either. “That series is great; I wouldn’t get too attached to any of the characters, though.” I wouldn’t scowl at anyone who said this, but even this is sowing the seeds of expectation within the minds of those you’re recommending the fiction to, dulling any unexpected deaths, if only by a little.

Where do we draw the line though? If my previous paragraph is to be believed, we dare not open our mouths to mention even the smallest of details. Many people think that there should be a 2 week or so spoiler free period, after which it’s open season. Others think that spoilers should never be openly discussed with those who haven’t seen it and it’s up to the would-be-spoiler…er… to moderate their side of the discussion. Others think it’s down to the person who doesn’t want to be spoiled to avoid these conversations, and whilst I agree with that to a point (i.e don’t go visiting internet messaging boards about a series you’ve not finished watching), it’s a little selfish to expect the nearest newbie to a fiction to dive headfirst out of the nearest window at the mere mention of their potential spoiler.

My personal guideline is this: Do not discuss spoilers with those who mention not wanting them, and ask first. (“Ah, there was a great moment in… wait, have you ever seen Jessica Jones?” “No.” “Ah alright, you should watch it.”) However, do not tear out the throat of anyone who unintentionally spoils something for you, for it is just fiction in the end, and if they meant no harm, then I’m sure they can be forgiven. Do not post spoilers publicly online, i.e Facebook or Twitter, where there are no spoiler tags available. And for the love of all that is fluffy and adorable, do not publicly spoil something just because somebody spoiled it for you.

Now, speaking of spoilers, I have an issue. I would love to use this blog to discuss things like Jessica Jones, Doctor Who, the books I’m reading, so on and so forth. These would only ever be additional to the weekly posts, as the majority of any readership for a non-specified topic blog won’t be interested. My problem is spoilers; as far as I can tell, WordPress offers no means of hiding spoilers from those just scrolling by, not wanting any trouble. The only way I can see to get around this would be to link to an external place (say, Google Documents) within a small blog post, but websites like that could die or lose their data at any moment, causing future readers looking back (hello!) to lose access to these posts. So, please let me know if you have a solution! Maybe there is a way to hide spoilers on WordPress and I’m just blind.

Update: Sorry this was posted a day late! I told WordPress to schedule this post for yesterday, but for some reason it never went out. It’s my fault for not checking, I suppose, but better late than never!

Let’s Talk About Feminism

The most important thing I must stress before I begin this blog post is that I am for the equality of men and women, and believe that the current state of the world weighs too heavily in the favour of man to be labelled as equal for both genders.

The one debate I always attempt to stay away from is feminism, because there it seems there is so much venomous hatred being flung at everyone involved in the discussion that I decided it simply wasn’t worth it. So bearing that in mind, the obvious first course of action to take would be to write a blog post about feminism!

As far as I’m aware, unless I’m horribly mistaken, the main cause of feminism is exactly what I put in the header of this post: the movement for equality between woman and man. And, as I’m sure anyone who has read anything within this mess of a debate is fully aware, this movement has been echoed in the worst possible way by those who think that being a feminist means to turn the prejudice towards men and hate them. For the purposes of making things easy to understand, I will be calling this group of people “feminots” for the rest of the blog post. Because that’s exactly what they are. Whilst I can’t entirely blame women for wanting to turn the tables and let men be the unfairly-treated ones for as long as we’ve been shitty ourselves, this is not equality and goes against everything the true feminist movement stands for.

The above paragraph is my personal understanding of the current state of affairs. Feel free to let me know if I’ve gotten anything wrong; as someone who tries to be as fair and level-headed as possible, you’d honestly be doing me a favour. And yes, I am tiptoeing around this subject, as it’s laced with all too many hatred-mines. (What a god-awful metaphor.) Before moving on, I’d quickly like to add that calling the feminots “feminots” is actually a terrible idea, as labelling always leads to stereotypes which leads to ignorance of individuality. It is purely for making things easier in this post.

So, what’s bothered me enough to speak out? Well, as of late I’ve heard of a video going around in which a woman walks around New York City for ten hours – check it, ten hours – and edits two minutes worth of people being sexist towards her into a video. And immediately I must state that yes, these people were ignorant and rude. (More on the sleaze-aspect of it later, it’s awful). But ten hours for two minutes seems a little excessive. If anything, walking around my home city, I’d expect to get five minutes out of two hours; far more if I was picking up on stuff not directly aimed at me. Speaking in general, there are so many different people in one city that your chances of coming across an ignorant, self-obsessed person is highly likely. This doesn’t make it right for people to be this way, but it’s the current state of society that is, if I’m not mistaken, known by most people already. To put it in simpler terms, there are always scumbags.

There are two things that anger me about the feminist debate, and yes, I’ll step on that landmine. (How could he be angry about feminism, ignorant non-progressive asshole!) The first one is that most of it, at least from what I’ve seen, is centred more around feminots (the minority) than feminists (the majority). The cloud of hatred and negativity blinds even well-doers. The swing of hatred from the feminots brings with it a backlash just as unjust from people like “Men’s Rights” (excuse me if I just insulted a domestic abuse support group, I can’t remember the actual name – I mean those who are basically for the downfall of women). True feminists then see the uprising of these men and become angry with them (rightfully so, in my opinion). And the triangle of confusion, anger and hatred continues. Mostly on Tumblr.

I won’t get started on Tumblr.

The second is how it spreads. This video, for example, about the woman in New York. I don’t know if this was filmed with honest, good-hearted intention, or whether it was feminot propaganda. What matters is the negativity in which it portrayed men via cherry picking. (Side-note: A friend rightfully pointed out I might be cherry-picking myself by bringing up this video instead of the incredibly positive Emma Watson speech.) What bothers me is this:

One time when I was fourteen or fifteen, our teacher showed us a video. It was CCTV footage of a street-corner in New York City. In this video, there was a mugging at knifepoint. A passerby decided to help and stepped in front of the knife, and was stabbed fatally; the mugger and potential victim both fled. The man then bled to death on a busy street corner, passed by too many people who just ignored the bleeding man. The amount of time it took for someone to eventually phone for an ambulance was astounding, and by the time it arrived he had died. I believe this is the news story.

While I’m sure this got some coverage at the time, it didn’t exactly go viral. This story, which raises such massive issues with the moral compass of the average human being, was rather quickly lost and humanity learned nothing from it. Yet meanwhile, this other video that has a negative message – most importantly, a skewed message, because positive intention or not this was purposefully edited out of ten hours – about men blows up. Having watched the video, I’ll admit, the harassments were sleazy and made me feel uneasy just watching. The video does raise serious issues that need to be addressed with how we treat women in this society, and that’s what the positive feminist movement is all about. The removal of ignorance; equality. But there are people – these “feminots” – who take that video and extrapolate it into fuel for their kill-all-men blog posts. And as a man who is on your side, I can’t help but feel affronted by this.

I guess my real problem isn’t about the issue itself but about the debate, and how people will go out of their way to misinterpret something to add to the steamroll of hatred that plows through the internet every single day. A movement built upon the foundations of hatred is no better than the original point in which it set out to change.

That’s just how I view things, anyway.