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

Year to Year: A Journal Through Time #11 – A Small Rant (4/1/19)

Recent headlines

World: Brexit: MPs debate next steps ahead of indicative votes (My two pence: If they don’t give us another vote, they’re ignoring democracy for their own ends)

Gaming: Co-op shooter rogue-like Risk of Rain 2 surprise-launches in Steam early access (And it’s HELLA FUN)

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I’m going to be honest with you, reader: I’m pretty mad right now, and it’s for the most asinine reason. I’m mad because I presented a simple question to the internet and was met with hostility. Crazy, right? Who’s ever heard of that happening before? But when I asked r/PS4 if there was any way to boost the visibility of demand for the Ratchet and Clank original trilogy to be ported to the console, I was mocked for not knowing how game development works or how businesses are run.

“Well, it is reddit.” Right, yes, reddit has a proven record of being infested with toxicity and swathes of psuedo-intellectuals who all think they’re the smartest person around. But it’s not just a reddit problem. It’s an internet problem. Everywhere you look, self-assured cynics are spouting obviouslys and naturallys and generally patting themselves on the back for knowing more about the world than the perceived masses of the stupid and the naive. That’d be bad enough, but anonymity gives them license to be as hostile as they want, and cartoon avatars further distance any empathy these people would otherwise have, burying the fact that the person the spitting venom about videogames at are real people. Teenage Kristian would be mortified to hear me say this, but I would not miss anonymity on the internet if it went away. I’m that tired of people.

Anyway, er… besides that, my week’s been pretty good. It’s April 1st (hurr hurr April Fools, I fooled you into reading my regular weekly blog post) which means we’ve begun the month that has all the exciting things in it. Mostly I’m referring to the final season of Game of Thrones and Avengers: Endgame releasing, but there’s also Shazam!, Hellboy, the Borderlands remaster and more coming out this month. It’s a pretty rad month! And while I can’t think of much happening in May, I know that there’s more awesomeness approaching in the summer. It is a good time to be interested in the things I’m interested in.

Since I know that future Kristian is reading this, I’d like to update him on some contextual information: I’ve just decided to reformat the Roguelike Ramble into a style of livestream after playing Risk of Rain 2, I’m working on my first month of weekly videos where I spend an hour in a game and upload 15 minutes per week (it’s Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, not that anyone knows it yet), and I’m currently binging all of the Legend of Zelda Game Grumps series that I can find. This might be interesting to you, dear reader, but if I’m being brutally honest this is just padding. Once again I’ve been blessed with a quiet week, and little to discuss. Don’t worry; the mind is never calm for long.

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Further reading:

The Weekly Deathmatch #49 – Unreal Tournament – Real People Too Stronk

 

The Internet Mob

I believe my previous blog post Outrage Culture ties into this.

A few weeks ago, a Youtube channel called The Fine Bros attempted to file a trademark for their series of reaction videos. And I’m not trying to defend them here, what they were trying to do was either born of ill intent or idiotic oversight, depending on your interpretation of their intentions. And I’m not hugely familiar with them as content creators or people, or with what they were trying to do. But that’s not the point.

I’m familiar with the mob that went after them.

It’s the same mob that goes after politicians, game developers, and any controversial figure who happens to do something wrong. The initial outrage is to do with the matter at hand, but it so quickly and inevitably spirals into personal insults, digging up that person’s past and cheering when they inevitably fall from grace.

Sam Pepper is (was?) a Youtuber, notorious for creating ‘prank’ videos which were really just an excuse to be nasty to someone, and shame them on the internet. To give you an idea, he once collaborated with Friend A and pretended to shoot him dead in front of Friend B, causing Friend B to essentially break down into tears. All posted online. He’s done other awful things too, like sexual harassment in public for the sake of ‘pranks’ and ‘social experiments’. (I’d like to mention that I also frequently see him labelled as a rapist, but I’m unsure as to whether that’s truth or fabrication, or an interpretation of his sexual harassment. For the sake of this blog post, we’ll go with ‘innocent until proven guilty’.)

I’m not defending this guy. I didn’t think his videos were right, and the fact that he made money off of them was even worse. 2 days ago, he posted this tweet:

He removed all of his videos, tweets, and essentially his entire internet presence. And honestly, yeah, I’m happy his videos are down, his method of making money is scrapped, and his lesson is (hopefully) learned. But I’m far from happy about the means with which this was accomplished. Constant death threats and calls for suicide were made, as well as personal attacks against his appearance, his life, basically everything about him other than his videos. And that’s what drove him from his position. And you might retort with, “Well, it worked, no matter what the means,” but did he really learn that his actions were wrong? Or did he learn that the majority of the world hated him and wanted him to kill himself?

What if he does kill himself?

In case you think I’m being dramatic, here’s some of the replies to his one remaining tweet:

What purpose does this serve? At this point, people are just jumping on the hate train in an attempt to feel included in some justice-driven movement, to make themselves feel like they’re in the right. They’re the people cheering at the gallows, but this time they have a wall of anonymity and a more direct line of communication to the hanged man.And I’m willing to bet that these are the same people who pride themselves on their morals and values, and walk with their head held high.

This isn’t a blog post about Sam Pepper. This is a blog post about every ‘social justice movement’ that becomes twisted with hatred and warped into a mob, baying for blood, giving a thief a death penalty. It occurs on all platforms, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Reddit and on Tumblr, on any social media website or whenever a voice is made available. And, as always, the self-righteous are louder than the level-headed.

Outrage Culture

There is a very, very thin line between being legitimately annoyed at outrage culture and justifying ignorance with it, so allow me to make one thing immediately clear: the outrage which irks me at this point is not typically to do with people in a poor place being legitimately angry with the government. There is a time and a reason for voices to be heard, and subjects such as mental health, the refugee crisis, and all of that kind of stuff needs to be made as loud as possible if it is to be changed.

The kind of outrage culture I’m on about is in the everyday. They redesigned a website you commonly used? This is an outrage! Something isn’t working exactly properly? This is an outrage! Somebody messed up? They cannot be forgiven for this is an outrage!

I believe I’ve already stated that anger and hatred is seeping into our culture like a plague. Add anonymity and mob mentality into that mix and you’ve got a dangerous bag of self-justified people, mostly good at heart but for the moment, blinded by their own rage. Put aside your anger towards David Cameron for a moment – difficult, I know, but try it – and imagine being in his boots right now. Imagine that everywhere you turn, people are insulting you and baying for your blood. You look online and find threats of violence against you and your family. You post a tweet containing one sentence which gets picked apart and spat on by an army of people who can hide behind a wall of anonymity you don’t have the privilege of. If we are to understand that which seeks to do us harm, we have to put ourselves in their perspective, and sometimes it’s not a pretty place. It doesn’t justify what they’re doing, but sometimes it makes things make a little more sense.

I’m not just talking about famous people, either. People are visceral to one another, passive-aggressively if you’re lucky, messaging you with threats if you’re not. Because you’ve said something which has caused an outrage. How couldn’t you have known this? How could you be so fucking stupid? You’ll never be able to take back what you said; it’s an outrage!

Calm down. If you disagree with somebody, tell them why in a calm and measured way. Do not let your heart outspeak your mind, and remember that all people can be hurt by you as much as you are hurt by them.

The Impact of the Internet on Modern Society

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.