The Internet Doesn’t Hate People; People Do.
I think it would be best to begin with a story. Because stories help us to understand messy things. That is their basic function. That’s what they do.
My sophomore year of college I was roommates with the living, breathing, millennial version of Superwoman — minus the half-naked costume. She was (and is) a Bio-Chem major with a Math minor in the Honors program. She was (and is) active in more campus clubs than I can count and turned down Washington University in St. Louis. She was educated in a Catholic school but was always the girl raising her hand to ask why it was her responsibility to not tempt men with the way she dressed.
It was that year that she became the president of a club, one that focused on women in STEM fields, recognizing the struggles that women often encounter when pursuing these fields and working to bring awareness and support to the issue. One of her first events was to be a female student-female faculty mixer — a networking and mentoring event of present and future women STEM workers. Everything was going well. The e-mail invites had been sent. It was only when the computer science department responded that problems began to occur.
I won’t go into the gritty details. But, in the end, a department invite to a club event turned into a trail of emails between my roommate and two male faculty within the department who criticized her event, belittling it and calling it well-meaning but, poorly planned. You see, the computer science department has no female full-time professors and therefore, would not be able to be represented at the mixer. The two male faculty blamed my roommate for this problem and told her that events like this only made gender problems in the STEM fields worse. They also CC’d the singular female faculty member, an adjunct, who remained silent until she was contacted by my roommate, only to say that this was normal. I might also add that this took place at a liberal arts college where 60% of the student population is female.
I awoke at 6 A.M. that morning to one of the strongest, fiercest women I have ever known, crying in her bed.
As I read Astra Taylor’s provocative article, “How the Cult of Internet Openness Enables Misogyny,” I was repeatedly reminded of my friend and her troubling encounter with the misogyny of the technological world. What does it mean when strangers attack strangers? And what does it mean when faculty members attack students?
I guess my main thought was actually a different, shorter question though: why. Why do people feel entitled to act in such a way that hurts others and seemingly empowers themselves? Why are they able to do this in a digital space and not in the real-world? What is the difference? What does the internet provide that the real world does not that fosters horrible cultural norms like misogyny, racism, and bullying of all kinds?
I believe that it comes down to the fact that the internet is a catalyst. It takes all normal human interaction and puts it on an intensive steroid regiment. You don’t just communicate with someone on the other side of the world — you do it instantly. You don’t just ask a group of people an open ended question — you search it and settled the matter right then and there. You don’t just have a discussion — everyone has an opinion, a voice. You don’t just hear that someone achieved a milestone in their life — you know about it the day it happens and you stalk all of the picture evidence too. And these are all intensely promising and intensely frightening things. The internet as a catalyst is a double edged sword.
More than this, there seems to me to be no real middle ground between the two ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, you have the seemingly utopian ideal of free positive thought, discussion, and creativity. Think Upworthy, Google, Wikipedia, and Kickstarter. And be sure to think of these examples in their most ideal forms.
On the other hand, there is the not-so-pretty side, the side that your mom would scold you if she knew you were on. This side is home to misogyny, racism, and all forms of discrimination. Trollers breed like rabbits and stay for the welcoming atmosphere. These are the Reddits that have gotten out of hand, the Youtube comment sections that eventually have to be removed, and the Wikipedia articles of women scientists that begin by stating who they were married to.
The internet seems to take whatever is good and amplify it by a hundred volts. But, it also seems to take whatever is bad and do the same. It takes whatever is going on in the real world and kicks it up a couple notches.
It seems to be because the internet presents a powerful combination of anonymity, free speech, and wide-spread access by diverse people. People feel allowed to discriminate because no one is looking back at them. They place hate in a comment box and not to someone’s face. Referring to the rampant internet misogyny, Taylor agrees with this idea, stating that, “Unfortunately, it turns out that openness, when taken as an absolute, actually aggravates the gender gap.”
Adding to this is perpetual misunderstanding inherent in digital communication. It’s the reason why we use emojis in our texts and why a winky face from the cute guy you gave your number to is such a big deal. Only 7% of our human communication comes in the form of words. The other 93% is body language. One comment can be interpreted to be more extreme than actually meant, or more aggressive than intended. This then can snowball, and we are left with situations like Donglegate where to say things have gotten out of hand is to put it lightly.
Julie Wong aptly calls it “old problems in new media” — a phrase that Taylor has quoted in her article. Prejudice is one of the oldest and greatest ailments of human kind. The internet is only seconds old in comparison to its current life span. It is not the cause of our problems but, rather, a shiny new way of showcasing them. This brings me to what I believe is one of Taylor’s most powerful statements in her article:
“If equity is something we value, we have to build it into the system, developing structures that encourage fairness, serendipity, deliberation, and diversity through a process of trial and error. The question of how we encourage, or even enforce, diversity in so-called open networks is not easy to answer, and there is no obvious and uncomplicated solution to the problem of online harassment.”
The internet does not make us prejudiced. It’s not capable. If you don’t believe me, I invite you to open up a browser, pick your poison (Youtube, Reddit, Facebook, whatever you fancy), put your cursor in a comment box and wait. Your browser will not type out hate for you. Youtube will not suggest an insult for the woman who appropriately does not look like a model. No. Your cursor will sit and blink and wait for you to use it in the way that you choose. The faculty at my university had to make the choice to type those e-mails to my friend.
And I think that’s the bottom line: it’s a choice. We can’t blame the internet for the unprecedented amount of bullying or sexism or hate. We can only blame ourselves for making poor decisions and not educating and understanding each other like we should. We like to believe that we live in two separate worlds — the digital and the actual. We have our social media selves and our real selves. We’ve embraced this dichotomy, grown dependent on it actually. But, the difference is a lie. There is no difference. Your real self is your digital self. It is the self that acts when it thinks no one or everyone is looking but, it is still you. And perhaps that is a scarier truth than all of them. That there is no separation between us and the monsters we’ve created.
