Is it just me, or is Internet Culture...the
trolling, outrage and endless hate, starting
to eat itself?
This election brought out the worst in almost
everybody, from real people to Twitter eggs
and anime avatars.
People are constantly attacking others and
saying things they would never dare do to
someone's face.
The real scary part of this isn't the words,
you know I love speech, but there seems to
be no bottom to this hole of anger.
Just think about your Facebook or Twitter
feed for a moment, are they enlightening,
interesting and bringing joy and goodness
to your life?
Or is it an endless cascade of rants and raves,
pyschotic ramblings, endless fighting and
non-stop virtue signaling?
I'm gonna go out a limb here and guess that
for most of you the answer is the latter,
not the former.
And yes, there are also a lot of baby pictures,
which also can be quite annoying.
What I think is interesting about our constant
state of bickering, isn't the obvious fact
the internet can bring out the worst in all
of us, but it seems to me this behavior, and
the reaction to it, is now bleeding out into
the real world.
I'm slammed with emails everyday, in which
people explain how they're suffering real
world consequences for what they post, or
don't post online.
People are getting fired over tweets, losing
friends over Facebook posts and god only knows
what happening on snapchat.
But perhaps worse than all of that is the
chilling effect that this state of outrage
has on the rest of us.
This is why I've said it before and I'll say
it again, the biggest threat to free speech
is that we are actively silencing ourselves,
not the government silencing us.
The threat to free speech isn't just that
protestors are violent at a Milo event, it's
the trickle down effect that has.
Now they're violent at events for people like
conservative and libertarians like Ben Shapiro
and Charles Murray.
But of course it doesn't stop there, eventually
they'll come for liberals too while at the
same time, de facto plenty of other people
who just won't want to deal with the threat
so won't accept invitations to speak in the
first place.
The outrage machine eventually will just dull
us all down to the point where we won't share
any original thought because we won't want
to deal with the repercussions.
This is exactly what's happening with Trump
right now.
The mainstream media and the Twitter brigade
go bananas every time anything happens.
The result is people won't be able to gauge
that proper outrage if he does something that
truly warrants it.
Yes, he eat his steak well done with ketchup.
That sounds horrible to me, but deal with
it.
Remember the boy who cried wolf?
Now we've got the media who cried Trump.
Think I'm being alarmist?
Do we seem more politically correct or less
politically correct than five years ago?
10 years ago?
Do you find that you censor yourself more
or less than you did even last year?
Who is forcing you to censor yourself?
Is it the government?
Nope, I bet you need only look in the mirror.
And guess what, this creep of stifiling speech
for fear of being ostracized isn't going to
magically reverse itself.
We have to proactively fight it, and we should've
started this a long time ago.
Take a minute and think about our current
television programming.
Could All in the Family, arguably the best
sitcom in television history, with a bigoted,
yet lovable Archie Bunker, be on network television
today?
The beauty of Archie was we all know someone
like him, whether that person is white, brown
or blue.
Only through seeing these people, poking fun
at them and showing the short sightedness
of bigotry can we change our society to be
more thoughtful and decent for everyone.
Even when I watch Seinfeld, with all of it's
quirky racially based characters, jokes about
gays, women and everyone else, I think the
authoritarians will come for the show about
nothing, which really was about everything,
one day.
It won't be the government kicking Jerry and
the crew off the air, it'll be the next generation
of social justice warriors upset about the
episode where George wanted a black friend,
or when Kramer wouldn't wear the AIDS ribbon,
or characters like Ping the chinese delivery
guy, or Babu the pakastani restauranteur.
Beyond the outrage machine there is another
nefarious layer here which is a whole group
of people getting off on the outrage itself.
This is the group of people who react to anything
and everything so get clicks and ultimately
money from our constant state of outrage.
So when Pewdiepie makes a stupid joke about
Jews as he did a couple weeks ago, the bigger
reaction is from those who want to capitalize
on the moment rather than those who are actually
outraged by the joke itself.
Then the mainstream media gets involved, with
the Wall Street Journal writing about the
incident, which subsequently led to Maker
studios ending their contract with Pewdiepie.
This destructive force will take anyone down
who has moved up too far.
The YouTubers attacking Pewdiepie wish they
had his 55 million subscribers and the Wall
Street Journal sees how his influence, believe
it or not, is now dwarfing their own.
As online culture gets woven into every facet
of our lives, its vital we all pick and choose
our spots when to fight and when to be outraged.
If we're outraged at everything, then we're
outraged at nothing.
If we spend all day online trying to find
enemies, guess what, enemies will present
themselves.
Making some intellectual point over an opponent
has value, but we have to be careful the value
isn't because of the retweets and favorites
it garners.
I'm sure I could be better at some of this
myself, by the way, especially on Twitter.
Trolls are always gonna troll, but those of
us who want to change things for the better
have to actually be better ourselves.
Final thought: I was a guest on the Alex Jones
Live show last week.
I'm not even fully familiar with Alex beyond
the little bites I see of him screaming, generally
going nuts.
This said, the guy has a huge audience and
is clearly influential as mainstream media
crumbles and online media rises.
As I've said before, this comes with positives
and negatives, but regardless, the fact is
the guy is talking to a huge amount of people.
Immediately when I got the request to be a
guest, I thought I shouldn't do it because
of the large amount of hate I would get.
Then I realized, if I didn't do the show,
I would only be holding myself hostage to
the same ideas which are silencing so many
other people.
So, I did the show, with no preparation or
advance questioning, and Alex let me say what
I wanted to say.
While I got the usual hate from the usual
haters for just appearing on the show, I also
know I got some of the ideas I care about
to be heard by his audience.
Now maybe some of them will come here and
learn more about the issues you care about.
If you're one of these new viewers, welcome,
I don't yell as much, but I think you'll dig
it around here...
... But, for the record, I don't believe a
secret group of lizard people are leading
a shadow government who's trying to undermine
our freedoms.
It's really a group of frogmen led by Pepe,
and they're actually a bunch of freedom fighters.
Good luck to us all.
