Episode 65: Rage, Powerlessness, & The Internet 3: Revenge Of The Keyboard Warriors

"Start a rumor/buy a broom/or send death threats to a boomer/or DM a girl and groom her."

                    -Bo Burnham, "Welcome To The Internet"

  What? A threequel to a blog? Rage, Powerlessness, & The Internet is now a trilogy??

   It shouldn't come as a surprise that I can get three blog episodes of writing out of this topic. The internet is a broad topic, a well of information that can constantly not only be used, but talked about. 

   I believe I've talked about keyboard warriors in 1/2 of this particular Mr. Hardy Saves The World miniseries, but I wanna dedicate this third and final part of the trilogy to them entirely. Because they're back, and more annoying than ever. Just kidding, they're not back. They never left. They just keep getting worse.

Refresher

  A keyboard warrior is one who takes advantage of the anonymity of the internet to make themselves come across as tougher/bolder/more aggressive than they actually are in real life. The anonymity of being behind a keyboard makes these people exaggerate themselves into this edgy personality that's ready to hurl swear words and personal insults. But, these people, if faced in a real-life confrontation, would probably be too scared to go through with it, or would be much weaker than their keyboard allows them to pretend they are, and they'd get the snot beaten out of them.

Facebook and other social media 

   I've noticed in recent years that young people are migrating off of Facebook, in favor of other social networks, mostly Instagram and Snapchat. Many of those who remain frequently using Facebook are older people, and among these older people are a hotbed of conservatives. People who share that vaccines will give you space AIDS and that China is using the moon to spy on us and put malware in our Apple products that will track every time you go poopy. Stuff like that. 

    So much misinformation that it has to be labeled as that. Then, they cry that their free speech is being silenced. There's a difference between stunting free speech and putting a stop to dangerous misinformation. 

   I rag on conservatives a lot, but that's mostly because, to me at least, their behavior seems to be more vocal and more aggressive. I'm slightly left of center, so you'll find me agreeing more with liberals than with conservatives, but it's not like I'm getting a tattoo of AOC and sipping Starbucks while I plan my next protest. Liberals can certainly be annoying on the internet too, and they too can be keyboard warriors.

Gaming

  Ah, voice chat. What a plague, a stain on the lovely industry of gaming. Voice chat and the anonymity of your gaming account, when you play with strangers, often unlocks a beast within angry gamers. I've never played voice chat with strangers, but I've heard tons of stories and seen plenty memes. Literal children yelling racial slurs when they lose. People saying otherwise nasty or just downright weird things because they know that they'll most likely never have to interact with the people on the other end face-to-face. 

Conclusion

  The internet gives everyone a false sense of power, a false sense of strength. Don't deny you feel it, because we all do. What matters is what you do with that anonymity, that power you get from knowing your behavior towards others will have little real consequence. It's in an integrity thing. We're supposed to be good people all the time, not just when we won't be rewarded for it, not just when we won't be punished for being a bad person.

   It reminds of the shopping cart return thing. That goes like this:

   It's a completely optional thing to return your shopping cart to the cart return. There are no consequences for not doing so, and there are people whose job it is to collect stray carts. But, it's still a nice thing to do, and you're technically supposed to do it. That's why the cart returns are there in the first place.

   The thing says that those who take their cart to the cart return are people who will do the right thing even when no one is watching, when they won't get anything in return for doing so. I like it and I agree with it.

    So, I guess - put your carts back. Not just literally, but figuratively. Put your carts of your political divisiveness and gamer rage into the return so they're away from you before you go scrolling online, so you aren't mean to people just because you're protected by internet anonymity.

Anyway, see you next week!