Posted : November
2014
Author : Mark Hill
As someone who
works from home selling novelty heroin syringes on Silk
Road, I spend a lot of time on the Internet. On the whole, it's pretty
great - I'm exposed to a wide variety of people and information every day, and
I help junkies get the Inspector Gadget-themed high they've craved for years.
But all good things must be enjoyed in moderation, and I've noticed a few weird
attitudes that develop when you spend too much time online. If you find
yourself experiencing any of the following, it's time to get some fresh air.
I have an unhealthy
fascination with comment sections. There are some intelligent ones out there,
and most Cracked commenters are pretty alright (except BonerLorde420 ... you
know what you've done). But as a general rule, they're cesspools of hatred and
anger, and browsing them is the closest we can legally come to opening human
zoos. But, as Nietzsche
wrote in his junior high years, when you gaze too long into an asshole, the
asshole also gazes into you. I don't mean that you start acting like a racist,
sexist douchebag, because while I do troll the other Cracked columnists under
the name Sore N Bone Me, that's an unrelated hobby. I mean that you stop
viewing Internet commenters as a writhing mass of personified rage and start
viewing them as presumably functional members of society with jobs and hobbies
and loved ones they probably don't want to see butt-raped by a dozen fat dudes
with swords (like they keep saying they hope happens to other people).
 |
| "And that's why you deserve to get cancerAIDS and drown in a urine flood." |
You start making up
little stories for them to convince yourself that they're just good people
having bad days, because the alternative - that they have a toxic, sociopathic
attitude towards humanity 24/7 and keep it hidden beneath a thin veneer of
respectability - is too depressing. Maybe the guy ranting about how all women
are soul-sucking harpies just went through an ugly breakup. Maybe the guy
screaming "nuke ISIS ragheads!" lost
his entire family and several puppies to terrorist attacks, and also isn't very
smart. Maybe the guy calling me a "c**ksucking super fag" is
optimistically hitting on me the only way he knows how. But, eventually,
you start wondering if the people you come across in real life Meatworld troll
the Internet in their spare time. Does the friend of a friend I had a cool
conversation about video games with go home and scream rape threats into a
beer-spittled microphone? Did the co-worker who said something a little
homophobic just have an ignorant slip of the tongue, or does she spend her
nights on news sites ranting about how gays are the modern black plague?
 |
| "Thou shall not judge! Except in this case, where it's perfectly fine!" |
This is not a
thought exercise I'd recommend, because there's no way to get an answer.
Between sheer statistical probability and the assumption that you know your
friends well, you'd like to think the obvious answer is they aren't a troll.
But there's always a little nagging doubt, and you can't exactly ask someone,
"Hey, are you an uninformed, ignorant, attention whore on the
Internet?" without damaging your relationship. The only solution is to
spend less time reading comment sections and more time watching cat videos
until your brain stops asking such weird questions in the first place.
 |
| Goddammit. |
#3. You Start
Making Sweeping Assumptions
One of the most
powerful features of the Internet is anonymity. If it wasn't for the Internet,
a young white guy like me would never have been able to adopt the personality
of a stereotypical, sassy black woman for my writing career. But listen up, girlfriend,
because there's a downside. Now I ain't talking about men that are always
sending us pictures of their Johnson like they think they're God's gift to
women, because girl, if that's the best God's got for us, I'm becoming a
Buddhist. Nuh-uh, I'm referring to the fact that you start making assumptions
about other anonymous people, like you think you're better than them just cause
you don't work down at the hairdressers no more. And you know what they say
about assumptions. Yes, you do.
 |
| Ah, my newest batch of cease and desist orders from the NAACP arrived! |
When I'm chatting
with Dikachu69 about the latest Smash Bros. game I automatically assume he's
another young, straight, white dude, because in my mind I'm the quintessential
Internet junkie. But for all I know, he might be a black woman in her late-30s
who didn't appreciate my little Vaudeville routine, although that's awfully
judgmental coming from someone with such a crude name, lady. My point is that
when you're having conversations with people you can't look at, you assume
they're like you until they prove otherwise. It's easy to forget that there are
in fact multiple races and genders and age groups out there, because if you
don't see any middle-aged black women in your day-to-day life, you assume they
all have real jobs and mature hobbies that don't involve spending a lot of time
on gamer forums. They probably all knit or something. This messes with
your head in little ways. You forget that the knitting, profanity-spewing video
game fan is probably going to have a different way of looking at say, events in
Ferguson or Tyler
Perry's career. You both might completely agree that Perry's movies are
terrible, but there's a good chance you arrived at your opinions in different
ways because of your differing backgrounds and perspectives on life.
 |
| Mine being that I'm so terribly, terribly lonely. |
It's also easy to
start seeing the Internet as a hive mind that spits out definitive decrees like
"Gone Girl was a solid movie despite its flaws" or "The parents
of this suicide victim deserve to have gay porn posted on their Facebook
page," because you start to confuse the loudest vocal opinion for the
opinion of everyone. You have to stop and remind yourself that you aren't the
only person who hates trolls, or that it's okay to have no opinion or interest
in a movie about marriage because you're planning to die alone and unloved.
Constant anonymity can make you forget just how much variety there is in
people, and that's a little sad. Speaking of which ...
#2. You Forget That
Moderates Exist
Let's say you have
friends, and you and your friends are deciding where to go for supper. You're
debating between pizza and Chinese because you're all culinary unadventurous,
and the majority of you have a preference but would be cool either way.
However, one friend loudly declares that he would rather eat shit than pizza
because he was molested by a man dressed as a Ninja Turtle as a child, while
another refuses to eat Chinese food because his grandmother starved to death
during the Cultural Revolution. In this totally
exciting and realistic scenario you'll obviously take note of the two most
vocal opinions, but you'll also be aware that your other friends have moderate
stances because they'll try to express them before they're shut down by someone
yelling about cultural insensitivity or how Uncle Jack always seemed so nice.
You're aware that moderates dominate the discussion statistically, if not in
terms of sheer volume. But the Internet can completely strip that awareness
away.
Take ISIS, since we're already discussing ethnic food. I went
to a Fox News article about ISIS, and it took
five seconds to find commenters calling for the destruction of Islam.
I know, it's Fox.
It's like shooting fish in a barrel, if all the fish were old and terrified of
the younger, darker fish that sometimes show up in their barrel playing modern
music from the big urban aquarium. You don't expect people who refer to the
President as "Obutthole" to offer stirring political discourse. But
there's also a small but vocal legion of commenters who hate Fox. Here's
someone on caps lock cruise control dropping what I guarantee they called
"a truth bomb on the Foxscists."
I'm not really sure
what their goal is, aside from hoping that Rupert Murdoch sees their brilliant
pieces of rhetoric, realizes that he's been wrong all these years, and turns
Fox into a site for environmental news and vegan recipes. Their motives are
unimportant - it's the simple fact that they think it's productive that sticks
in your head. You've all seen an
Internet screaming match. The topic could be anything - gun control, illegal
immigration, what size Han Solo's breasts would be if he was a woman - its
timeliness or seriousness doesn't matter, only that the people involved have
strong opinions and an emotional connection. People who don't
like what ISIS is doing but don't consider them to be representative of Islam,
or who know that 34C is about as big as you want to go on Han before they start
hindering his upper body reflexes, aren't as passionate about their opinions,
and so they're not going to go out of their way to write angry screeds. That's
why Free Republic, a site that routinely features
casual calls for genocide, is immensely popular, whereas my
WhyCantWeBeFriends.com went under within three months because all of its
members were so laid-back they forget to pay their Internet bill.
 |
| Plus, the majority of them are just crazy high. |
In real life you
get exposed to moderate opinions, because conversations are friendlier when
other people can look you in the eye. But even though moderates make up a
majority of the spectrum on any issue, most don't feel the need to wade into
the abyss that is online discourse. When you begin to consider horror the norm
you have to constantly remind yourself that countless non-crazies are lurking
in the background. Otherwise you start to think that most of the country shares
the beliefs of the guy screaming, "Kill Obummer and his monkey
friends," and you end up with a view of the world that's as depressing and
unrealistic as theirs.
#1. You Start
Viewing Local Information as Unimportant
Hey, would you like
to know how the latest Nicolas Cage thriller, Left Behind, is doing critically
and commercially? The Internet has an ironic love for it, which means I could
summarize half a dozen reviews and the opening weekend results. In fact,
because the Internet generally loves pop culture, I could probably tell you the
reception of every major movie and video game released recently. I can also
tell you all about the latest American political scandal, or draw the latest
battle lines in Syria,
or where to find the newest "Han Solo with breasts" porn site that
was created within the last six minutes.
 |
| Another marriage saved. Thank you, Internet! |
When you get your
news from the Internet you tend to only learn about what the Internet thinks is
important - big global affairs, American politics, news of the weird, sports,
and pop culture. Local news? Forget it - unless something in your city
exploded, it's probably not interesting enough for the Internet to care about.
For that kind of stuff, you have to turn on your TV like a caveman. So I can
confidently brief my friends and family on the current geopolitical situation
in the Middle East, yet stare at them blankly
when they ask me what I think about the dude who got murdered down the block
last week. More often than not, I learn about something the mayor said or some
crime that happened downtown by listening to my friends talking about it and
then feigning knowledge.
 |
| "I as well cannot believe that the mayor robbed a liquor store. Current events, am I right?" |
When the Internet
(and see how I'm already referring to it as a hive mind again?) talks about a
subject, you go and read up on it extensively, because it must be important and
you want to look like a not-dumbass. But you don't go out of your way to read
about anything the Internet doesn't discuss at length, because how big of a
deal could it be if the rest of the world doesn't care? On some level, you
know that's silly, because while someone who lives in North
Africa won't care about the new restaurant opening a few blocks
away, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't go check it out. But you have to
consciously remind yourself to follow local news, even though the delayed
opening of a local nursing home isn't trending on social media. Otherwise you
could be more well-informed on world events than anyone you know and still come
across like an ignoramus. For most people, local news is more important, since
they have a tendency to actually go out and interact with the places and people
that get reported on.
 |
| "You didn't hear that Jim-Bob replaced the diner stools? It was on the news, man." |
I'm not saying you
should ignore world news, mind you. I'm just saying that it's important to
remember your own backyard, or else the municipal government might announce a
purge, and you won't have a clue until someone's chain-sawing through your
front door.
~Blog Admin~
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