Social Media Tantrums and the Zombie Apocalypse
Speaking as a grandma, I’m pretty concerned about what’s going on in my Twitter and Facebook feeds these days for many reasons. One of the most concerning things I see, however, is the hellacious number and virality of tantrum videos that are circulating out there. I am reminded of the old “flame wars” back in the 1980s (because indeed, I am a grandma). Gather round, children, let’s talk about this. I want to explain what we know, what’s going on, and give out a few pointers on how to deal with the new zombie apocalypse.
Zombie apocalypse you ask? Well, yeah. The people running into Trader Joe’s to scream about masking have clearly lost their minds. They are not thinking, they are emotionally acting out. And brains…well… brains are the problem.
Back in the day, we had these warm, friendly little Usenet groups and listserv communities: for the most part fun, sometimes earnest — full of awkward nerds and geeks who were never part of the cool crowds. We got together asynchronously. We played games, wrote bad science fiction, and we got into all kinds of causes (owing to our Trekkie belief in the future of humanity and democracy and whatnot). I was in grad school, with a new baby, over a thousand miles from my family when I discovered alt.rec.parents. Or was it alt.rec.new.parents? It was the late 1980s and a very long time ago.
In any case, the anti-vaxxers arrived in the group, infiltrating it, getting to know us. They were very good at gaining social trust. Then, someone (probably a covert troll confederate) posted a worried note about their fictional sick baby and the fictional baby’s recent vaccination. This moved onward into emotional land, with fictional hospitalization, stories from other confederates about brain damage, the promotion of fake research on the dangers of vaccination — stories that are now familiar but at time, very disturbing.
This was the era when the whole thing started and the catchphrase “Don’t feed the trolls” was born.
But what about the zombies, grandma?
What we learned in the 1990s was this: most people who engage in trolling are sad, deeply troubled people who usually do not have a dog in the fights that they start. The anti-vaxxers didn’t have kids. The people who invaded the political discourses did not give a fig about politics. The trolls who amplify content to deliberately divide society, cause fights, and promote controversy usually do so for the kick it gives them. It makes them feel smarter and more capable than the people whom they are fooling. Some are paid, of course. And some truly wish to see democracy and civil society fall into violence and chaos for reasons of their own. For whatever reason, these are the deliberate sources of a different kind of viral infection, the outside agents of this emotional epidemic. Propaganda in the form of emotionally heightened material, delivered straight to a person’s psychological vulnerabilities, amplified by friends and family, is one helluva drug. It can disable people’s reasoning and entice us into alternate realities where we feel more powerful, more beautiful, smarter, and far more capable than we really are.
People in trouble, seeking distractions, seeking to feel better, are at risk here of being drafted into the war against democracy and civil society. Social media becomes like a series of super fun parties where we are flattered and provided with tasty alcohol and tainted drugs for the soul. While we may get the drugs and alcohol from friends and family, they have received those drugs from people in the shadows with a dark purpose in mind. Those people are in the shadows are there to infect us and control us in the same way one might control a bunch of meth heads or coke fiends.
Our friends and neighbors who show up to those parties on the regular have become increasingly irrational, belligerent, and indifferent even to their own well-being.
Some people are particularly vulnerable. If me and my husband, for example, don’t want to talk about our personal problems, it’s very helpful to find topics we can agree on. And we can root for the same team and get heavily involved in everything about the team, it could even save our marriage, take our minds off our troubled kids, our problematic jobs, our uncertain future.
The parties make us feel good. But now things are changing and for some people, this altered reality is beginning to wear thin. How can those people who begin to see that their reality is in jeopardy manage to get back that sense of confidence?
One way to get back the old feeling of “being right and righteous” is to pick a fight.
Hitting someone else’s “hot buttons” is a fine way to pick a fight, and picking fights with strangers can be fun (if one is drunk and intoxicated, anyway. Just incapacitated enough to feel invincible).
My hypothesis, based on a hunch and a fair degree of understanding about social behavior and the Internet, is that for every one of these videos in which someone appears to have gotten well-deserved retribution, likeminded people who are already in the early stages of zombification see and reinterpret these videos as “heroic acts.” I think they are inspired to go out and do likewise, consciously or UNCONSCIOUSLY. When the inner demons activate, due to problems at home, they become more susceptible to a zombified temper tantrum.
Social psychology has shown that when people see a behavior modeled for them, they are more likely to go forth and copy that behavior if the opportunity comes up. If we drive by a car on the side of the road and someone standing there beside it, we may stop or do nothing. If we see someone getting help from someone else on the side of the road, and we come upon another car with someone needing help, we are far, far more likely to stop and offer help — because we have just seen that behavior.
If our friends and neighbors see videos of people “championing” their belief system, then it follows that they, too, are more likely to give it a try, especially when their emotions overwhelm them. The more videos are shared, possibly even the very “Karen gets her just desserts” videos, the more our friends and family are exposed to these behaviors. Our infected friends and neighbors may not see the world as we do and may reorganize and reinterpret these videos in a more heroic light, with the zombie as the hero, not the villain.
And thus, the behavior itself has come to Costco.
The Costco Incident
My friend from church described a woman standing behind her, on the phone, talking very loudly into it about how the Bible says it’s forbidden to wear masks. My friend’s husband has had a serious health issue and is immuno-compromised. She’s in Costco in the early morning shopping hours for older customer and people immune concerns. The woman is behind her and keeps coming closer and closer, not masked, talking loudly, not maintaining six foot distance.
What can my friend do? The line is long. If my friend leaves the line to tell the manager, she’ll lose her place.
First, realize that in a case like this, the woman talking on the phone is there to pick a fight. She wants to go off on someone. She wants the drama, she’s ready to attack. It may be conscious and deliberate. Or, just as likely or even more likely, she may simply be on auto-pilot, a zombie, acting and reacting, driven by her inner demons.
Whatever you do, don’t reward her by speaking to her. It’s important that everyone ignore the zombie. Attention is what she’s here for. Make sure the only attention she gets is from the store manager, security or the police.
Realize in a situation like this, there are a few, somewhat ugly, options:
One option: talk to the people ahead of her about the issue. Try to enlist allies. Make it a group problem, a shared problem. Ask them to forward the message up the line to the cashier to get a manager to come right away, please. Ask the people ahead of her if they think someone should call the store manager about this. Make “getting the manager” into a group thing.
This has some risks of elevating the drama. The zombie gets what she wants, or at least what her inner demons want — attention and the opportunity to vent her spleen. Personally, I am not a fan of giving these zombies the opportunity to show-boat, just to relieve their own inner demons. But it’s harder on her if the whole crowd reaches a consensus that she has to go.
I’m not sure that I personally could pull this off, if I was alone.
Option two: Don’t say anything. Close down. Don’t look at the woman. Give her absolutely no attention whatsoever. A variant of this to stay quiet, but complain to the manager about the woman when you get inside. What a hassle if you choose this route! And it may also give the zombie the opportunity to indulge in her drama anyway.
Option three. Leave the line, go to your car, and call the store. Tell the manager or security what’s going on and that you felt so insecure, you have gone to your car. This way, at least you won’t get into the drama. Costco can wait another day, or there is always some other store.
This is probably the hero’s choice. If other people follow you, and we all get in our cars and call the manager, something will be done. Oh, she’ll get the drama, of course. But the store MIGHT get a clue about protecting customers in this vulnerable situation.
I wish I had better answers, folks. But this is all I have. Of course, there is option four: whip out the cell phone, record her behavior, and post it to the Internet for the kind of rough Internet justice that might or might not come into being. And would that stop this behavior? Or encourage it in some weird way? I have to say, I feel it would be a grave mistake to contribute to the social hysteria we see around us. I think it feeds the zombie mass hysteria we see today.
I do know one thing: I do not share those crazy videos of zombie behavior myself. It’s a behavior that needs to be extinguished and the person who is doing it should be seen as a sick individual, not entirely to blame for her derangement.
But I might text it to the store manager as a matter of public health.
One Last Note
As horrible as this person has been behaving, it is important to realize that this little stunt they’re pulling is not all that there is about this person. We are all consuming the toxins of social media. We are all a little intoxicated. Our own judgment is probably a little compromised. The public shaming of this behavior may have a positive social purpose, but in the end, there for the grace of God go I. Or your sister. Or your friend-that-used-to-be-close before, in a weak moment, they allowed these demons into their brains to consume their ability to reason, to feel, and to see the world clearly.
The goal of the people in the shadows is to make us hate one another, feel self-righteous and angry. Staying calm, applying critical thinking, and dealing with the problem with at least some compassion and care is hard. It’s also necessary.
The real zombie apocalypse is the breakdown of our social norms. To mend our society, to mend the soul of the nation, we are going to have compassion for, excuse me for using a technical term, for assholes. For people who for whatever reason became so drunken, so caught up in the anti-social revelry, that they have forgotten themselves. Everyone is going to need help to get through this. Jesus said, Blessed are the peacemakers. It’s pretty hard to be a child of God. But as a social media grandma, I feel I have the responsibility to point this out.
I pity the zombies. I shake my head rather than shake my finger. WHY? You may ask — because it’s the same reason I wear the mask. I don’t want to spread the infection. I don’t want to get infected MYSELF (with rage and a sense of self-righteousness that will disconnect me from my moral core ). And I don’t to contribute to the zombie apocalypse. It’s probably best to walk away and shake my head.
Be good, loves. And be responsible.
But most of all, be kind.
