Fear the Social Media By IVARTHECLUESS
From the moment I opened the article by Bill McKibben I knew which side of the political atmosphere this article was coming from. The article begins with letting the reader know this by stating, “In a world where the president goes on Twitter to call a woman ‘horseface’ it seems pointless to call for “civility.” McKibben goes on to talk about the death threats he and one of his fellow reporters face and continues to talk about the president as if President Trump caused this atmosphere. He continues by giving an example of someone doxing him, which is an inexcusable act of giving out a person’s legal information. What really caused me to understand how this article could not possibly understand the subject and how to move forward with creating a better internet was when he said, “I know that this is much worse for women…I know enough American history to understand that for people of color the deed has followed the threat with chilling regularity.” I will address all of this further down the line. At the end of the article, he talks about having a beer with an adversary and how America should return to a gentler time.
I went on to read three other articles that share much of the same information and opinions as Bill McKibben. They use words like predator and phrases like ‘dark and scary place’ to get the reader into the mindset of a dangerous and untamed wilderness. They want to create a sense of fear and paranoia. While there are good points made in these articles it does not address the problem at hand, humans. The idea that it is technology that has suddenly made people into assholes, stalkers, and bullies is naïve, to say the least.
The biggest offense of this article and many like it is that it believes that only certain groups of people are affected by this and that the focus should be on them. As stated before the author believes that women and minorities suffer from this more than anyone else and that it applies to them more, but this is untrue. All people face this type of harassment not just the perceived victims of this society. These trolls and internet bullies focus their hate on what they believe will hurt their victim’s feelings. When faced with this myself they often chose my race, but they also chose to attack the fact that I box believing that since race didn’t cause me to react that attacking boxing would since they knew I was passionate about it. The same goes for minorities and women; they attack those physical identifiers because they know most minorities are passionate about their race, sex, and gender. Even the author admits that his sunken chest was used to attack him; a physical trait that has nothing to do with race. The bully suspected that the author would be sensitive about it. This proves that these trolls seek out only what they think will be effective and are not always motiveated by racism. Instead, they use it as a tool to attack their victims.
Though not all articles fall completely into this problem “Social Networking Abuse” by Sue Lynn Carty does give a lot of good information about what it is and how to deal with it. I believe that the article takes the issue and acts as if it is much more serious than it is, but it gives good advice like never engage, block accounts, make one’s account private, and report as necessary. Standard.co.uk also gives some good advice on what to do on each social media platform. It does lean left as most of these articles do, but none the less the advice is good when dealing with serious abuse and bullying.
Cyberbullying and online abuse can lead to some very depressing stories, but reacting to as if there is a serial killer on the loose doesn’t help the issue. Neither does acting like this is a gendered and racial issue. People from all accounts of life face this issue and here are a few ways I believe that can help. One, teach your children about it before letting them on the internet. Children are being exposed to this earlier and earlier and teaching them that there is more to the world that the device in their hands would help them not get engulfed by it. If we don’t teach kids to do other things than be online, then they will grow up in the toxic environment that is online gaming. Two, one should go offline after months of dealing with cancer that is online gaming I decided to give up on it completely and play the games that didn’t require someone to be online and play with strangers. The same can be said about any platform. I once ran a popular Facebook page called Nordic Gods, which is now gone, by doing this I got myself a lot of hate and attacks online such as people telling me where I lived. I dealt with this by not bothering with it, which was what I did when hate groups against me and my page shot up. I took it as a compliment and let them talk until they tired themselves out and they went away. I may be called out on having white male privilege for saying this, but most of this abuse is not serious and goes away. By teaching people that the virtual world is not serious and not to fret over it they can begin to tell the serious abuse from the abuse that isn’t.
(Main Source) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/opinion/sunday/lets-agree-not-to-kill-one-another.html?rref=collection%2Fissuecollection%2Ftodays-new-york-times&action=click&contentCollection=todayspaper®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=18&pgtype=collection
https://socialnetworking.lovetoknow.com/Social_Networking_Abuse
https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/internet-safety-online-abuse-what-to-do-a3921751.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/04/social-media-detox-facebook-twitter-august