I love the internet. Chances are, so do you, considering you’re here, reading this. I’ve always been against SOPA and all the other attempts governments have made to control this place. So believe me when I say that this blog post is not biased against the web.
I’ve heard it said that the internet as we know it today hasn’t been around long enough for us to assess what kind of an impact it’s made on society. There hasn’t been enough research to show any telling statistics; there hasn’t even been reason to prompt research in the first place. Not that I’m aware of, at least. This tells me that we’re still assuming the world works the way it did before we had troves of information in our pockets.
Before we go any further I want to stress that I’ve never done any kind of course in psychology or sociology, and I’m open to being wrong. This theory is based completely on logic.
One of the key aspects of the internet is anonymity. You’ll see this in the form of usernames; quite sensibly, people don’t want to tell absolute strangers who they are or where to find them. This does, however, give birth to a new kind of freedom. My favourite point of reference here is the Youtube comments section. Look on almost any video, whether it’s to do with music or gaming or even science, and you’ll get the same twelve year old children calling each other derogatory names with enough spelling and grammar mistakes to make an English student quietly shake his head in disapproval. Without any kind of reprimanding, people say what they want. Chaos reigns.
I have two favourite examples of this being different; Facebook, and Reddit. First and most simply, Facebook. You’re far less likely to find such unprecedented insults on Facebook because people are heavily encouraged to use their real names, and have to accept friend requests before they do. My other example, Reddit, is an interesting one. People can take on any username they want – causing interesting scenarios in which I’ve spoken to people such as I_SMELL_FARTS – but there is still less chaos to be found. This is because of the karma system. The clever way in which Reddit is designed heavily discourages those with less karma. You can either upvote or downvote what people submit and say, and generally this causes the atmosphere to become more controlled and sensible.
I may have gone on a slightly longer tangent than expected, but I’m getting there.
Anonymity combined with social networks is a strange phenomenon. More likely than not, you’ll find that the minority voice suddenly becomes the majority, for reasons which I can only speculate; I’d wager that the lack of regulation sees more like-minded people from varying locations able to communicate for the first time, and subsequently become more excited and driven about their previously solitary-seeming motives. I’ve noticed that websites which utilise a follow system, such as Twitter but more particularly Tumblr, are heavily important to this idea. I find that depending on who you follow, any minority voice can easily have the illusion of seeming like a majority. Ideas such as extremism and more emotionally-charged conversations will take place, and an aura of negativity and weight will surround the subject. As the user is sucked deeper into the minority voice, they end up following more users who are contributing, and none of those on the opposing side. This causes a kind of tunnel-vision, making certain issues seem more prominent than they really are.
The world around you changes based on your perspective, and your perspective is derived from the opinions of others.
Basically, my theory is this: In the long run, people’s perspectives are going to become more based on what the internet tells them than what the world around them suggests. Anonymity will cause these opinions to be more charged, whereas the nature of the websites themselves will cause the opinions to seem more widely supported. Whilst some may consider this a good thing, I can’t help but believe that the minority voice is a minority for a reason, and when given the illusion that it is major, may make the world seem like a much darker place. This could cause the general public to become more pessimistic as a whole, and perhaps crime rates and extremist actions will go up. What doesn’t seem like a pressing issue today might do tomorrow, and the world might change before it realises that what it thinks is happening for the greater good is actually happening because of a minority group who are emotionally charged.
I love the internet. It allows like-minded people to come together and create wonderful things, for an easier distribution of entertainment and a louder voice for world leaders to hear. But I can’t help but feel that everything I’ve gone over in this blog post is already starting to become true.
I’d like to reiterate one last time that this is nowhere near my area of expertise, so my wording may be questionable and my metaphors clumsy. I hope I’ve managed to write about what I thought I was writing about, and not something else by mistake.
Perpetually Perturbed 