The shield of the internet

As usual, it’s been a while since my last time posting here. And as usual, I promise that I’m working on becoming more consistent about putting things up. But one thing that has definitely been a struggle for me to understand lately, and is the main focus of this post, is how critical and demeaning people have become online, especially in the last few years.

In January, on the day of the Capitol riot, I wrote a post on Facebook (that I may eventually put up here) about the riot and the former US president and the effect he had while he was in office for his single term. And most of the feedback from the people who saw that post were positive. One friend of mine, however, started going off on some tangents unrelated to the topics I was focusing on and making remarks that could easily be seen as insulting or derogatory. He and I messaged more in private, and it was clear to me that we weren’t going to be seeing eye-to-eye on things. But we at least managed to end on a relatively peaceful note.

That’s hardly the case for most of the rest of the internet. It’s hard to see a post these days from a credible news outlet without someone raising some criticism of what it’s about. One that I follow, Deseret News (one of the most prominent and generally conservative ones in Utah), can hardly go more than one or two articles without someone feeling the need to complain or criticize. For instance, as I wrote this post, I’m looking at an article from just a couple hours ago regarding a lambda variant of the coronavirus. Here are some of the first comments I saw on it:

The cynicism is strong with these comments. But they’re not isolated examples; nearly every post related to COVID-19 has people who write this type of comment, calling them out for “fearmongering” or “fake news”. If it’s about someone like Mitt Romney, one of our elected senators in Utah, there’s bound to be someone calling him a RINO (Republican In Name Only) or much, much worse. And for things that aren’t even political, like a movie review, I’ve seen people complain about the post not being something “important” as if they disregard the fact that most newspapers – which used to be Deseret News’ only kind of media – have an entertainment section.

The kinds of people making those comments also seem to be… interesting on their own profiles as well. The things they post are quite often sensationalized headlines for random site that claim to be news outlets, memes that get over shared (and quite often with misinformation), or edgy pictures of themselves with “patriotic” overtones. And when looking at where they’re from, that’s surprising as well: in the picture I shared above, one of these guys is from Oregon, a few states away, and another is from over in the UK! What they’re doing commenting on a news outlet based in Utah is beyond my comprehension.

Now obviously this is all just commentary from some random guy on the internet. Anyone reading this post now is likely to be someone I already know in person. And I’m far from any kind of “internet police”; I’ve got no jurisdiction, as it is, as to what others decide to put online. And that’s why I’m writing in my own personal space, not wanting to harbor any kind of confrontation. Comments on public pages like what I showed up above just seems like people are out looking for a fight, which ends up happening quite often. But if I were a betting kind of man, then I’d wager that if these people were talking face-to-face with each other, or to whatever outlet they’re replying to, then 9 times out of 10 they wouldn’t be nearly as aggressive without the barrier that the internet provides these days. And sure, there are still some who won’t stop even in person – the incident with Mitt Romney waiting in an airport some months ago is an example – but hopefully those who take things too far end up learning the consequences of their actions.

This might be more of a rant kind of post than I usually do, but like I said these were just some recent feelings that I wanted to get out. In any case, I hope you’re doing well, reader, and I’ll be back soon! I promise this time.