Craig Canine

That is the great megatrend which the social web is part of: the abusive society, a great stagnation cresting into a wave of anger. Do you think I overstate my case? Then step back for a moment and consider the rise of right-wing extremist parties across the globe. It is fuelled by the resentment and frustration of stagnation. And that anger and frustration, whether it is perpetual outrage, or the passive aggression of bitter irony, is perhaps today’s defining culture feature. We abuse one another, having been abused ourselves.

We have created an abusive society. We have normalized, regularized, and routinized abuse. We are abused at work, by the very rules, norms, and expectations of our jobs, at which we are merely “human resources”, to be utilized, allocated, depleted. We are abused at play, by industries that seek to prey on our innocence and literally “target” our human weaknessses. And now we are abused at arm’s length, through the lightwaves, by people we will never meet, for things we have barely even said. We live in a society where school shootings are the rule, not the exception, where more people will have taken antidepressants than not…and now one where nearly everyone will have been abused on the web…for a random, off-hand, throwaway comment, an idle thought, something trivial, unremarkable, meaningless.