Your guide to the worst things online
It was amusing when my dad started spending time online, watching YouTube videos of Britain’s Got Talent (he first introduced me to Susan Boyle). And it was also amusing every time he’d express shock at some of the idiotic comments attached to his favorite online videos.
As a relative newcomer to the online world, my dad has started accepting some of the more rotten aspects of the Internet. Stuff like:
Normal person + anonymity + audience = Total f***wad
The Greater Internet F***wad Theory was originally “coined” by John Gabriel, a character from the popular web comic Penny Arcade, to describe the antisocial tendencies of online gamers. Yet the fact that anonymity turns normal, decent people into total jerks also applies to any kind of online community.
This is why websites like YouTube are full of racist, bigoted, and plain stupid statements, made by people who wouldn’t dare say the same things in person. It’s human nature at work: without the threat of embarrassment or disdain, people are free to say what they want.
Two years ago, a woman pushed a mentally unstable teenager to hang herself through messages sent on MySpace and AOL Instant Messenger. When an investigation traced the messages back to her, the woman was suddenly apologetic.
Trolls: Don’t feed them
It’s very easy to become irritated or angry at what you read or see online. Yet many people learn quickly not to feed the troll.
As defined by Wikipedia, an Internet troll “is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.”
In other words, trolls are those who live on pushing the buttons of other people online. The classic example: an online group chat for fans of a popular musician may be invaded by trolls posting messages that question the musician’s sexuality, attack the artist’s race, etc.
There’s always room for constructive criticism in any discussion, but trolls act rude (and worse) to attract notoriety. If you give in to knee-jerk reactions and pay attention to them, they win. Many good online communities have moderators that keep trolls’ statements — and any foolhardy replies to them — from seeing the light of day. But such websites are the exception rather than the rule.
What has been seen cannot be unseen
If the Internet makes it easy to share any kind of information, presented as text, pictures, music, and videos, then it’s easy to assume that you’ll encounter things you’ve never seen before — and will never want to again.
The best example of this is 2 Girls 1 Cup, the one-minute trailer of a pornography film centered around one of the most offensive fetishes ever — you’re welcome to search on Google for more details. The video became very popular as a dare of sorts. Those who actually watched the trailer were never the same again, and viewers filmed their own reactions (or the reactions of others) for humorous effect.
Works based on Rule 34 (if it exists, there is porn of it) are another example. For all its capability, imagination can be very twisted. You may wonder why people actually spend time drawing their favorite cartoon characters in coitus — and publish them online — but there they are.
Not everything that you “cannot unsee” is based on twisted “creativity” however. Many times they’re driven by grossness. Search for pictures of “rectal prolapse” online (not recommended for the faint-hearted) and you’ll see what I mean.
The point is that the Internet features pictures and videos that will surprise even the most desensitized, and that some people actually share them with others for shock value. Awareness of this reality reduces the resulting trauma a bit however, and makes a strong argument for supervised web surfing for kids.
Not safe for work (NSFW)
If your friends or online contacts have marked what they’re sharing with NSFW, watch out! Those four letters are a quick way of saying that something shouldn’t be viewed at the office (it’s “not safe for work”) and is most probably not for the kids as well.
NSFW is popular among those who share naughty pictures of their favorite celebrities, pornography films, and the like. A considerate modification of NSFW is NSFS — not safe for sanity. That’s used to tag things you “cannot unsee” (see above).
Not everything online is terrible
Admittedly, my rundown may have given the Internet a bad name. Many parts of the online world are wild and unregulated. But saying you shouldn’t surf the web at all is like characterizing all of Mindanao as a terrorist stronghold you shouldn’t visit. Like anything else, the Web has its share of good and bad things.
