I am beginning to think that the members of The Xavierite have some sort of vendetta against the Internet. Only last month, a colleague of mine named Lauren Dwyer (our Features Editor and my sometimes-arch-nemesis) wrote a piece blasting the site Buzzfeed.
Last week, Bridget Goedke – our very own Viewpoints Editor – wrote an article in which she expressed concern/disdain for a new app called Tinder.
For those who read “The Crusader of Sanity” on a regular basis, you know that I am also no stranger to complaining about people online who use the Internet as a source to criticize the likes of others and to destroy people’s self-esteem on message boards.
I think I’ve about summed up my feelings of the online world that seems to be taking over more and more of our lives.
The Internet is a land of extremes. More often than not, the internet becomes a place where something is either the best thing ever created or it is the worst thing ever created.
Look up any movie on imdb.com and what you will find is a congregation of movie nerds ready to defend or destroy a film with words at any cost.
Go on Buzzfeed and “read” (if you can call scrolling through GIFs with captions reading) an article (if you call GIFs with captions articles) that tells you why your generation’s toys were the best or why the generation before yours had better stuff.
Consider this scenario: a Martian comes to Earth and decides that he will judge humanity based upon what he sees on the Internet.
If he is pleased, then humanity can live. If he is displeased, then we will all perish in a “War of the Worlds”-style invasion. I wouldn’t take that bet. I’d probably just tell the Martian not to waste his time and to just destroy Earth and all its inhabitants to make way for a Martian race that is much less obsessed with the internet.
To find the ugliest of humanity is not hard. Do you want to see people engaged in the most ineloquent debates ever recorded?
Simply go to a message board on Redditt and witness some of the most inflamed rhetoric in the history of human speech over the most mundane topics of conversation.
Want to see people get so upset over a movie or TV show that they result to insulting and mocking those who disagree with their opinions?
That should only take you about 10 minutes on most IMDB message boards.
Do you want to see how truly shallow the depths of human connection have become? It’s an app called Tinder.
Do you want to know how obsessed with watching people make fools of themselves so that we can feel better about ourselves?
Search “Best Fail Videos” on Youtube.
In all of this, I feel that I must be fair. There are people on these websites who use them for their intended purposes – to entertain, to educate, to learn and (mostly) to communicate.
These people are few and far between, in my observation. But, they deserve to be defended. They should always be separated from the internet antagonists.
To make a comparison, the internet has become much like our television news media. Are you a conservative? Watch Fox! Are you a democrat? Watch MSNBC!
The Internet has found a way to speak to those who only want to hear certain messages.
Are you nostalgic for shows like Clarissa Explains it All, Boy Meets World and Full House? Odds are you get sucked into those “Why TV from the 1990s was the Best!” articles on Buzzfeed and the articles and websites that are like them.
I must admit, I get sucked into those articles sometimes as well.
I am not above feeling extremes of anger, happiness, confusion and humor that the internet caters to so well and I find my own attention being grabbed by said articles that I find floating around Facebook and other social networking sites.
With this article I do not mean to be a great accuser. It’s fun to go online, look stuff up, talk with friends and goof around.
But, the Internet is where people seem to be most comfortable blasting the most extreme sides of their personality into cyberspace for all to see.
Now, given the choice between an individual shouting their rage online on a message bard or focusing their efforts into becoming a Travis Bickle-esque avenger who transforms into a killing machine to quench their most extreme animalistic needs, I would certainly rather that an individual chooses the former option as opposed to the Scorsesian latter.
Though I don’t seem to know why people can’t just let their feelings be their feelings and need to plaster them over the world.
The sad truth of the matter is most people don’t care about how you feel. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it’s true.
Most people don’t give a damn about what you ate for dinner, what you thought of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (which was awesome, by the way) or how stressful your finals week has been.
But, when we put it online and see that other share our pain we feel better. The same goes for the petty nonsense as well. We take comfort in knowing people hate something as much as we do or simply share similar feelings.
Just remember, that in seeking these people out we divide an already divisive society even further and we can thank the Internet for that.
Now, I’m not going to end this by saying, “Go play outside, kids! Make new friends and have your own adventures!” I realize that we are a little too far-gone in the other direction to say anything like that and people won’t listen to that stuff anyway.
But I hope that if you’ve read this much copy already, then I hope you will part with this: what’s online can never match the connection of real-life human interaction.
It may mimic it, it may even seem like it, but online interaction will never be as enveloping as a face-to-face conversation.
Not only that, but these conversations teach you how to communicate like a human being and not some punk hiding behind a keyboard.
Author’s Note
I apologize for the longer-than-usual copy. This one just seemed to get away from me.
This article was also something of a vanity project. I hadn’t been published in print for the last few weeks.
We’d been short on space and I don’t really mind being printed online (which may sound irionic given the context of this article).
But, alas, it was time for me to return and I wanted to strike back with a vengeance.
It has been a long time since Viewpoints has ever printed a full-page article (though, without the picture, pull-quote and directionary note at the bottom this really wouldn’t be a full-page article) and I wanted to try something that we haven’t done in a very long time.
Yet, I spent so much time on this article as I want to know what you, the reader, thinks of the content of this article.
Please write a “Letter to the Editor” and let us know what you think.
Directions for writing such a letter can be found within the editorial box on the previous page.
Thank you for reading and thank you even more if you choose to take up the challenge and decide to write us a letter to give us your feedback.
Don’t be afraid to say that you agree or disagree.
Viewpoints is meant to represent the opinions of the student body. We would love to hear from you directly.
There is no better way to do that than with a Letter to the Editor.
As always, thanks for reading and giving a crazy man with a computer and an opinion the time of day.
Respectfully,
Brian T. Laughran