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Alivian Haley

Dr. Brian Bailie

English 1001

1 August 2018

The Internet and its Troubles

Throughout the years, the web has grown into a never before seen monarch for

civilization. It appears there is a new device or application that connects the world every time I

open Facebook. Which is extraordinary considering where we started and how quickly we

advanced. As all good things, there are flaws. With the ability for anyone to roam the internet

and do or say as they please, trouble is inevitable. This is amplified with the privilege of

anonymity and loose rules. We communicate like wild fire and that makes even the slightest bit

of misinformation dangerous. The internet has revolutionized the world and has connected its

peoples in so many ways. Unfortunately, the once inspirational tool that was going to pave the

road for a better future is influencing its users to be arrogant, hot-headed, and unproductive.

There is no doubt the internet is essential to most of the people living in a first world

country. Most of us do not usually go a day without some form of technological connection. This

is proven with a study from ITU (International Telecommunications Union) that shows in the

years 2005 to 2016 the number of users went up from 51% to 81% in developed countries

(Internet). Nearly everything in our day-to-day lives involves using the internet. Including

politics which is evident of our most recent United States presidential election. Never have the

people seen two potential Presidents of the United States hash it out on social media, live,

unplanned, and promptly ‘blocking’ those who joined the discussion and even each other. Of

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course, I am talking about the iconic 2016 Twitter war between ex-secretary of state, Hillary

Clinton and businessman, Donald Trump. In the screenshot below, Clinton retaliates to Trumps

remark about Barack Obamas endorsement to Clinton and their whole argument spirals into a

high school esque sass competition.

Trump replies with, “How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up--and

where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?”. And on the spiral goes with several other

politicians getting involved in the Twitter heat with hundreds of thousands other people to watch

and interact from around the globe (Scott). After all was typed and tweeted, nothing was really

accomplished except a good ol’ fashion internet brawl. Now everyone was able witness just how

nasty politicians act behind the camera thanks to the internet drawing the curtain, and just like

Dorothy finding out the Wizard of Oz is just a man, we’re all disappointed too.

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Not to say men are disappointing, it just seems as though politicians should act more

politically when it comes to public occurrences. At a time when topics such as education, taxes,

and national health care, should be the focus of all matters, there is a distraction that takes the

spotlight away from common politics. This can be given credit to the “outrage culture”. A 21st

century term for the, “I’m right you’re wrong la la la la la”, person. If you have ever been on

Twitter or Facebook, you have witnessed a lot of people getting mad at each other in the

comment section but nothing ever being solved. This is because people love to argue for their

opinions but do not enjoy listening to the ‘wrong opinion’. In a faceless world, it is easy to

assume and straw man people to satisfy ones’ narcissism. This is particularly common with

politics with the red vs. blue outlook which Huffington Post author, Michael Shammas, puts very

nicely, “I suspect that social media—with its capacity to collate like-minded people into echo

chambers promoting brevity at the expense of nuance, likes and re-tweets at the expense of

knowledge—is helping outrage culture proliferate” (Shammas). Shammas describes a common

human trait of confirmation bias, as in we like our thoughts to be enabled, it feels good to be told

you’re right. The 2016 president nominees gave into this feeling and embraced the culture by

refusing to communicate online and Clinton went the extra mile by essentially telling Trump to

commit social media suicide when she asked him to delete his Twitter account. They were no

better than the stream of hate coming from their comment sections. Outrage culture has boiled

down political conversations to, ‘kill yourself’, and ‘lol nice one’. Which is childish, but it seems

to be the only thing that gets people involved after all, Clintons tweet is one of the most re-

tweeted posts during the campaign.

Let’s look at the benefits this mindset has had on social media when we look at the fact

the culture is commonly oversensitive and reacts harshly to less-than-perfect standards. People

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now commonly go to Twitter to complain about a service or quality and usually @ directly to the

verified company in question. Most of the time the customer gets a reply and the situation is

made right within a couple of days. This is good publicity and helps avoid calling the awful guest

service number. In cases such as Walter Palmer, a dentist with a taste for hunting large animals,

was publicly shamed when he killed a well-known lion, Cecil, and boasted about it online. The

internet reacted violently to Palmers gross and unnecessary actions. His dentistry was given

negative reviews based solely on his non-business legal actions (Gallardo). Is this fair? Like Al

Capone who was arrested for tax evasion when police couldn’t get him for ordering hits on

anyone who opposed him, the people hurt Palmer only way they could, through social media and

online reviews and they can get away with it. As Kristine Gallardo, A Vanderbilt University Law

School graduate, talks about in her article, “Taming the Internet Pitchfork Mob”, defamation is

hard to prove in this case and if it was it is challenging to find all the people responsible. The

faceless internet mob has the upper hand and it does not take much to provoke them to swiftly

ruin someone’s life. Ten-year-old jokes made in bad taste can lose you your job or training your

dog to put up their paw at the sound of “sieg heil” will land you in court for a hate crime. The

outrage culture actively jumps on the chance to negatively affect someone’s life for the smallest

mistakes. Whether or not some of these mistakes caused any real harm is out of the point, they

are punished by people who think the world needs protecting from the little things when in

reality, blowing up the little things causes far more damage to society and moral.

Arguing has always been prominent in way of the world but instead of conversation it

seems the goal has changed to who can ruin and socially humiliate the other. When presented

with a conflict such as the 2016 election, everyone took sides and vilified the opposing party,

unwilling to understand or change. The text book, The Aims of Argument, makes a solid point to

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why some people hold on to their beliefs without consideration of others and it turns out that

humans have stronger feelings in matters they know the least about because they are unaware of

the facts that would challenge their points (Crusius and Channell 9). This could explain why

outrage is so rampant on social media, most don’t really understand what their arguing, so there

is no convincing them right or wrong, and trying to understand an opposing view means giving

into the enemy. Social media also gives us the benefit to see how many ‘followers’ a politician

has and how much they are liked in real time. A study funded in part by the Economic and Social

Research Council found that, “a citizen looking to sign a petition would be most likely to sign an

already popular petition, and someone looking to follow a politician (other than their

representative) would be likely to choose one with many followers (Hale).” This gives in to more

people following whoever seems to be the most agreed upon and abandons original thought. It

appears some try to victimize themselves because that’s their only case in a matter, they have

nothing to back their claims except for personal experience and everyone to blame. Some have

even gone as far to call for wide spread censorship to screen harmful behavior and words. But

who will be footing the bill and doing all the work? A writer and researcher, Maya Indira

Ganesh, writes in her article about how, “Governments controls the infrastructure of the

internet…” but having something so important controlled by a single government is not usually a

good idea if we’ve learned anything from Korea. Ganesh additionally questions the “public

interest in a privately-controlled internet.” Which means we have less options than we thought

when it comes to solving the internet’s problems.

I believe that our world will preserver through whatever new world problem is thrown at

us. The internet is still very new, and more is being discovered every day. With new ways to

figure out who we are and what direction we’re heading in as a people. We simply must be

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patient with each other and understand that we all cannot know everything there is to know in the

world. We have been given the greatest advantage to excel and we should take advantage of our

opportunity to learn about one another and solve our problems instead of creating more. I

understand it’s easy to think that we are not guilty of these internet crimes but from what I have

seen, we all are in some way. So, I ask to be patient and listen, even if your screaming the whole

time because you will have your turn next and that’s what it means to live in a society.

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Works Cited

Crusius, Timothy W and Carolyn E. Channell. The Aims of Argument. 8th ed., McGraw-Hill,

2015

Gallardo, Kristine L. "Taming the Internet Pitchfork Mob: Online Public Shaming, the Viral

Media Age, and the Communications Decency Act." Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment

and Technology Law, vol. 19, no. 3, 2017, pp. 721. Accessed 31 July 2018

Ganesh, Maya Indira. "The new green: the landscapes of digital activism." Arrows For Change,

Mar. 2016, p. 2+. Opposing Viewpoints In Context,

http://link.galegroup.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/apps/doc/A468852869/OVIC?

u=ucinc_main&sid=OVIC&xid=6bbe1293. Accessed 11 July 2018.

Hale, SA, et al. "How Digital Design Shapes Political Participation: A Natural Experiment with

Social Information." Plos One, vol. 13, no. 4, 2018, pp. e0196068. 27April 2018.

https://doaj-org.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/article/e50ca7b818fa4c0684eaf75c58608abb

Accessed 11 July 2018

@HilliaryClinton. “Delete your account.” Twitter, 9 June 2016, 11:27 a.m.,

https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/740973710593654784

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"Internet." Wikipedia, 21 June 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet. Accessed 11 July

2018

Morozov, Evgeny "The Internet, Politics, and the Politics of Internet Debate." technologyreview,

3 Dec. 2014, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/533086/the-internet-politics-and-the-

politics-of-internet-debate/. Accessed 11 July 2018.

http://journals.sagepub.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/doi/full/10.1177/1368431016677976

Accessed 11 July 2018

Scott, Eugene. “Clinton, Trump battle on Twitter: 'Delete your account'.” CNN 10 June 2016,

https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/09/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-delete-your-

account/index.html Accessed 11 July 2018

Shammas, Michael. “Outrage Culture Kills Important Conversation.” Huffington Post 27 Jan.

2016, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-shammas/from-liberal-college-

camp_b_9070894.html Accessed 29 July 2018