A Psych 101 THW-1 (1st Sem AY 2016-2017) group project of students from the University of the Philippines Diliman studying the social media phenomenon of "the Keyboard Warrior"
Members:
Filipino netizens are vulnerable in making huge ad hominem fallacies. Most ‘keyboard warriors’ will not even tackle the issue on the table, and instead tackle the person instead.
In this comment thread, the person insulted our fake account “Brianna Godusa” by suggesting that we kill ourselves instead. Such violent comments are so carelessly publicized that the senders and recipients become numb to such offenses.
Such a society has been propagated by the lack of consequences in online bullying.
A perfect example of ad hominem, encouraged by reciprocal determinism.
Reciprocal determinism is the theory set forth by psychologist Albert Bandura that a person's behavior both influences and is influenced by personal factors and the social environment. Filipinos online have been encouraged by their environment to act hostile against people who have a different view from them. Instead of attacking the argument, most people would choose to insult the opposing person. And because people rarely face any consequences when insulting people behind the safety of a digital screen, nothing stops them from bullying strangers and encouraging others to do the same.
My friend told me this when I explained to him why I was unable to correspond with him for awhile-- because I was fighting the good fight in the confines of my room, armed with my laptop and reliable sources. I also told him, rather smugly, that I won, after I was able to shut my opponent after a series of heated arguments (mine sounding factual and logical, and his, biased and untrue).
"That's what everyone thinks." That stuck with me after he said it. Did I really win? What constitutes winning against a troll anyway? Shutting them up? If I did shut them up, I only managed to do so temporarily. He is still going to believe his flawed beliefs. He is still going to continue spreading his ignorance all over the internet. And like many before him who has succeeded in propagating their nonsense, I will still encounter them on my Facebook feed. I may have slept soundly that night knowing that I won the battle. But as long as he roams online with his so called "free speech," I have not won the bigger war.
Is there really any way to win against a Facebook troll?
With the onslaught of new media and technology that continually provides newer platforms to share and disseminate information, it is high time we become responsible users and citizens by avoiding the spread of a misinformation epidemic. A video, put together by BuzzFeed and developed by Facebook, itself, shows exactly how we can shut down fake news and trolls from spewing their ignorance to the world. Happy reporting!
Once, I laid my eyes upon a gorgeous man in white long sleeves and Aaron Samuels hair (hair that looked sexy pushed back) at a friend's 20-something birthday.
He was across from me, smiling, with nothing but a bottle of Pale as company. Naturally, I made my way over to him and introduced myself as the host's best friend. He nodded like he knew who I was all along and offered me another bottle, and a conversation. I was ecstatic, of course, to meet someone well-mannered and obviously good looking. It was going so well, too well in fact, that I started to wonder that maybe something was up. How can someone this close to perfection, who adored his little sister (at some point he showed me a photo of her as his background), be single and unattached? There must be a catch.
There is always a catch.
As we approached dinner, and I remember this was before the elections, I nonchalantly asked who he was voting for. I figured it could either be harmless or enlightening, depending on his answer. He replied that he was in favor of Duterte for his politics. Before I could follow up with another question, as loud and clear as the day he broke my heart the second time around (finding out he was far from perfection was the first), he said the words I have never imagined his lips could utter-- "At syempre, si Bongbong Marcos."
Bongbong Marcos. BONGBONG MARCOS? This guy was a Marcos Apologist dressed in nice clothes and delicious perfume! Exactly like how a Dementor sucked up all the happiness in your world, I was deflated. I felt metaphorically kneed in the stomach, and hung my head... in shame? Disgust? I was not quite sure. I just stared at him for a solid minute, and wished I turned back the time to when I was ignorant of his faults. Unfortunately, I have now realized I willingly stepped into the devil's lair and I was afraid the devil might be too charming for me to let go.
I spent the night picking his brain. I questioned him over and over again why he deemed the dictator's son as worthy of becoming vice president. Like all Marcos Apologist, he was sprouting the same BS and the same arguments.
"Noong Marcos era, nagboom yung economy natin."
"Noong Martial Law, lahat disiplinado. Wala ka naman dapat ikatakot kung sumunod ka lang sa batas eh."
"Dami kaya niyang pinatayo na infrastructures na hanggang ngayon, napapakinabangan pa rin natin."
"Hindi naman kasalanan ng anak ang kasalanan ng kanyang ama eh."
"Yang mga NPA na yan..."
He was a die hard fanatic! I was frustrated, enraged, rebutting him with every logic and fact, and he still somehow managed to let himself believe that the Marcos family are absolved from whatever sins and stones we were throwing at them. I felt defeated, and unhappy, and I wished so bad he was just pulling a prank on me. But he was not kidding, because growing up, all of these were taught to him. It was his upbringing and socialization that made him the Marcos Apologist that he is today. And this was more dangerous because it was misinformation disseminated by the very people he first looks up to and learns from.
Despite almost throwing a cake on his face, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I actually believe that people can date regardless of their political differences. I thought I can become a modern day hero by ridding the world of one less Marcos Apologist. I was up for that challenge. Also, he just really wanted to make it up to me. So I accepted.
It was a good three week run. He was fairly a decent guy and a lovely cook. All the while, we never once engaged politics in our conversations because that would just upset both of us. I happen to comment on the inaccuracy of his facts here and there, but nothing too major. It was not until we became facebook friends and I saw all the Pro-BBM groups he was in and the Pro-Marcos posts that I was completely revolted. Yet again. They were sharing stories of how Marcos once made this a great nation, spreading lies about the Aquinos, and spearheading hate towards people against them.
And just like that, I suddenly realized that we can never leave out politics in the relationship because it is literally everywhere. It is also downright insulting for me and my craft, as a social science major, to subject myself into that kind of one-sided and biased narrative, without room for my own voice to be heard.
So I exploded into a tirade of repressed speech, and explained to him (for the nth time), why I can never sit in his car and pretend that there is nothing wrong with his beliefs. His political beliefs might just be one part of the whole, but it already says so much about him and his principles. I do not blame him entirely though. It was practically embedded into his consciousness and for others, that can be hard to get rid of since they have lived through it all their life.
In an argument against close-minded apologists, there is no winning. There is only losing. Even when you slam them with fact after fact, or historically-informed and correct information, they will turn their back on you and refuse to listen. They do not want change. They are living happily and conveniently in their misinformed bubbles. Although I do not speak for everyone nor do I remain hopeless in the plight of enlightenment.
Misinformation is a grave illness in our society today that needs to be cured, and battled with, otherwise, the world will be run by Mocha Usons and Sass Sasots, and that is a world I do not wish to see. Fortunately, there are still Ethel Boobas out there, fighting for the truth.
I came. I saw. I may not have conquered a Marcos Apologist, but that does not clearly end here. There are still a lot of battles to be won. As long as we keep the light on, they will not prevail.
If we try to understand the narrative of the so-called keyboard warriors, we find their statements senseless because their comments are mostly assumptions and have no basis. It is evident that there is a problem with their logic or critical thinking.
Where does this logic come from? It comes from their own beliefs and is highly affected by the exposure to misleading information. Mocha Uson is known for her blog. The Mocha Uson Blog is a Facebook page and blog which serves as a political advocacy page that primarily caters to supporters of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
I find the Mocha Uson blog disconcerting because its main message is that President DU30 can do no wrong. Unfortunately, when people call Mocha’s attention over factual errors or sweeping statements or when people are against their beliefs, they are automatically labeled as:
"Anti-Digong"
“Anti-Marcos”
"Yellowtard"
"Elitist”
“Bayaran”
These labels are usually paired with some accusations bordering on harassment and cyberbullying such as:
"Ma-rape ka sana ng adik"
"Lumipat ka na ng bansa/planeta"
"Mamatay ka sana"
"Tandaan niyo ang mukha ng gagong ito"
"Tae ka"
“Bobo, utak-daga”
“Masyado kang maganda para mag-rally, kantutin nalang kita”
Refer to some screenshots below.
Mocha Uson’s blog posts have a huge influence on the mass. It is improper to voice out her opinion in an unprofessional way. Yes, we all have freedom of speech but there is also a corresponding responsibility for having this right. The spread of ignorance and false information must be put to a hault.
Duterte also has a huge impact/power (or is influential) over people. His acts encourage and even empower people to be equally distasteful and unruly.
To those keyboard warriors who keep on throwing the same arguments over and over again, I hope you find time to educate yourselves. It’s about time for you to read books or articles from credible sources.
Classical Conditioning and Stimulus Generalization in Online Political Discourses
The increasing hostility and political divide in the country arising from the election of Rodrigo Duterte as President raised the subject of mind conditioning to the spotlight. The said divide, evidently seen in social media discourses, are believed to originate from the conditioning tactics by online actors like Mocha Uson, “fake news sites”, paid trolls, and Keyboard Warriors. This conditioning led to violent exchanges of thoughts in social media platforms. Looking this phenomenon in a psychological lens, Ivan Pavlov’s concept of Classical conditioning offers a compelling case on how this situation came to be. Furthermore, his idea of stimulus generalization dominates the bulk of these discourses.
Classical Conditioning characterizes the political divide in Filipino social media space through the seemingly automatic responses of each sides to various stimulus. In jargon terms: the base sentiment is the unconditioned stimulus; several keywords or tone is the conditioned stimulus; and the comments are the conditioned response. A negative sentiment is responded by a negative response, but the presence of few words or misunderstanding of tone can also incite a negative response even if the actual sentiment is neutral. Furthermore, these conditioned responses are fast and often generic in nature like Dutertards, Yellowtards, Baayran, Dilawan, Tuta, and others. Certain tones and words like a constructive criticism, even if not necessarily negative, normally receives negative responses.
But that’s not all of the Classical Condition occurring in the current social media discourses. The specific concept of Stimulus Generalization is also widely seen, wherein a relative subject matter may also incite an unintended response. An example of it is the little social experiment we conducted shown in the pictures below.
In this social experiment, we tried to emulate a Duterte supporter by commenting a positive defense for the announcement of foreign affairs secretary Yasay to avoid the discussion of the South China Sea dispute with China. The political correctness of the stated political moves is beyond the scope of the social experiment. Our comment is characterized by agreeing to the president while also detracting those who oppose such move. With such sentiment that doesn’t necessarily warrant our persona to be a Die-Hard Duterte supporter, many responses suggested that the persona is a Dutertard or Dutae and similar sentiments. The comment doesn’t explicitly argue devotion to Duterte but rather a simple agreement to a policy announcement of his foreign affairs secretary and a possible negative consequence in the form of war against China. Despite being not strongly tied with Duterte, the sentiment of our Persona is seen as exclusively related to Duterte and the responses of Dutertards and Dutae were formed. This case can be argued to be a form of the Stimulus Generalization. This Stimulus Generalization persists and dominate in many of the discourses, with neutral sentiments are seen immediately as insinuations, and therefore a stimulus.
To put everything in one point, the current political discourses are flooded by senseless exchange of responses seen in the different labels each side have. Unfortunately, this seemingly automatic responses further the phenomenon, even affecting those that might not be necessarily tied closely in the issue at hand. The Filipino political discourse are now characterized by people barking to each other without a substantive cause.
With all that is happening in the world right now, for some reason, many of the people in our generation have become incredibly “sensitive” and easily offended especially when their opinions don’t agree with others.
Most of these circumstances happen in social media, even when someone just posts a simple harmless opinion, people would start to stomp their feet in protest. We all know that there are tons of problems we are facing right now from sexism, to racism, to homophobia, to a fight of political correctness and other issues.
We always find plenty of debates blasting all over the social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. It seems like every day I would see a long status posted on Facebook from people who are trying to clarify issues people are arguing about, i.e., Marcos Burial, President Duterte, Trump winning the presidency, etc.
So why do people get easily offended?
Many people would suffer from Misinformation Effect, they tend to believe misleading information after reading posts on social media that are quite convincing, adding the fact that these posts are shared by thousands of people, they don’t feel the need to look for proof and just believe everything they read.
So, if they suddenly see a comment that is against their beliefs they would get easily triggered. People would always tend to assume and presume rather than seek facts or look at the bigger picture. Trying to approach them logically may not work because their first goal is to eliminate the pain they fell when triggered into feeling offended. They project their feelings towards you, thinking you’re the one picking a fight with them. They lash out and think this is the quickest and most effective way to feel better and it somehow gives them satisfaction.
This defensive habit says a lot about our present generation, about the Millennials. Now that everything is accessible in the Internet and people’s thoughts are easily posted with just a simple click of a button, most of the time we don’t take the time to think things through and just act based on our emotions.
Misinformation and fake news with unreliable sources have been widespread, feeding off the gullibility of the modern Filipino, and leaving others to wonder who or what is to blame for the sudden change of tune by the millions of Filipinos.
The burial of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Heroes’ Cemetery, officially known as the Libingan ng mga Bayani, has been a hot topic in the Philippines recently. Numerous protests have been staged all over the country, various institutions and groups have voiced out their opinions, and unsurprisingly, social media has exploded with countless posts and coverage about the issue, mostly by millennials and various pages such as the notorious Mocha Uson Blog.
This current period of time may arguably be remembered as the height of historical revisionism present in the Philippines. Misinformation and fake news with unreliable sources have been widespread, feeding off the gullibility of the modern Filipino, and leaving others to wonder who or what is to blame for the sudden change of tune by the millions of Filipinos.
Perhaps one perspective that can provide a clearer view on the phenomenon that is historical revisionism is the field of psychology, particularly memory. Memory, obviously, is an important aspect of how history will be remembered and eventually applied in the current setting. As mentioned earlier, the rampant dispersal of fake news may be one of the leading factors for historical revisionism. This may best be explained by the misinformation effect. The misinformation effect is the “tendency of misleading info presented after an event to alter memories of event itself.” In the Philippine context, the fake news always seems to be focusing on the supposedly “good” things that Marcos has achieved during his tenure as president. Marcos apologists have always championed his spending on infrastructures and the discipline that he instilled in the Filipino citizens. However, due to the misinformation effect, they seem to overlooking the fact that his apparent spending left the country drowning in debt with future generations having to shoulder that debt as well. They also seem to be forgetting about the countless human rights violations and abuses committed during his regime.
Furthermore, the atrocities committed during Martial Law may not have been stored in the people’s long-term memories in the first place. Education is definitely a key component in shaping a generation. However, it seems as if the Philippine education system has failed in instilling a consciousness among the youth about what the country went through during Martial Law. This kind of education has alarmingly bred a generation of neutrals, who simply want to “move on.” These people definitely do not know the gravity and the severity of the consequences of the Martial Law period.
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