Online Interaction

Many problems can arise from online interaction, social or language, is mainly the spread of misinformation. By people who do it for self-gain, financial gain, or just to stir the pot. Sometimes all of the above, usually by trolls whose lives are so miserable it makes them feel better about themselves. If you watch YouTube for a while you will eventually hear a Youtuber talk about the time they were swatted or swatting which is when a troll, usually, prank calls 911 sending them to an internet personality’s home thinking they have done something vile. This has resulted in deaths of streamers, their pets, or entire schools being shut down. One of the Youtubers I watch talked about how an old address of his was swatted and it caused a whole school to shut down for hours. This quickly has become illegal and it usually ends in whoever calls 911 having an arrest warrant out for them. Many internet personalities have given their name and address to their local emergency responders to try to avoid this. Luckily this has helped by instead of a SWAT unit showing up to their house it’s just one or two cop cars. I think what baffles me the most is why people do this and would you go out of your way to make someone else’s life miserable. As someone who watches a lot of YouTube, one thing I have learned is there are two ways to get people to despise you: either abuse the copyright system or swat someone. There is usually no coming back from that.

Something that I have witnessed grow ever since 2016/2017 is the spread of misinformation for self or financial gain by either making up a story out of thin air or picking pieces of a story and then making leaps in logic that if you think of for more than two seconds makes no sense but there are people who fall for it. Who will believe it no matter how absurd it may be or how the facts easily prove them wrong. It is mind baffling but also entertaining, it’s endless. I do think it is slowing down a bit. It is definitely a minority group who is just extremely loud. Because this group gets laughed at when they call out something or someone for no reason just to make a point by making extreme leaps in logic. It is on both sides of the political spectrum usually more the right than the left but it’s only the extreme believers. An example of this was last year was the launch of Hogwarts Legacy which was one of the biggest games of last year. Which led to a whole bunch of people freaking out, boycotting the game because of homophobic comments J.K. Rowling has made in the past. Most people were respectful about their opinions but you had others who were going to the extreme where they set up a website so you track who was playing the so called homophobic game. The site was quickly taken down. One of the Youtubers I watch was talking about when the game launched. People in his chat were commenting the N word just to get him banned for talking about the game. The developers of the game have even come out and said they don’t support J.K.’s beliefs. But this is one of the extremes, it’s hard to be optimistic about the future but maybe one day we can have civil discussion online again.