The Internet is the Land of First & Last Impressions

Maybe I'm the last person who should be talking about incivility on the Internet or maybe I'm the best person.  Like Nixon going to China.  Anyway, when I go on Facebook and such a lot of times I leave comments on articles and very often there will be annoying comments back and sometimes we can exchange comments back-and-forth for hours.  This Onion article sums up Internet people pretty well.

It occurred to me that the whole problem is the Internet is a land of first impressions.  Since there are so many random users on at any given time, few people know each other unless you're in a smaller group or on a relative's page or something.  But if you comment on a news article or something like Comic Book Resources then you're likely to run into a lot of people who've never met you and you've never met them.  And the fact that you can't see them and they may exist thousands of miles away and you're not likely to see them again means that people (especially those like me) feel more uninhibited.

So the end result is we tend to make these snap judgments about people.  And after a while it becomes pretty comical.  I've been called a libtard, Trump supporter, Bernie Bro, snowflake, and bully all in the same day.  Because everyone just goes by snap judgments.  So if I say something negative about Trump (not hard) then I'm a "libtard."  If I (rarely) say something not negative about Trump then I'm an idiot redneck Trump supporter.  If I don't agree with something Hillary says then I must be a Bernie Bro and it's all my fault she didn't win!  If I say something in support of immigrants, transgender, gay, lesbian, Muslim, etc people then I'm a "snowflake."  But if I say I don't want to see videos of fat girls in skimpy bikinis supporting "body positivity" then I'm a body shaming bully!

And of course if you make one little typo then you're an idiot.  Because no one else ever makes typos, right?  Or if you don't know everything about every subject, then you must be an idiot!  How stupid you are to not know everything about everything!

It can really make your head spin after a while.  And just really tire a body out.  I mean I dish as much (or more) than I take but sometimes even I think, "Geez, can't we just give the hostility a rest?"  Or as Rodney King famously said, "Can't we all just get along?"

After the Parkland shooting was especially disgusting to see all these trolls telling the "spoiled kids" or "brats" to shut up.  Spoiled?  17 of their classmates were murdered!  I mean this wasn't like a bunch of hipsters trying to make the lunch menu vegan or something; they're trying to use this tragedy to make a difference so other kids like them won't go through the same.  It just sickens me when people are that cruel for no good reason.

I guess the solution is pretty simple:  just don't comment on stuff!  Don't post on Facebook pages!  Don't Tweet!  Don't comment on blogs like this!  (Well, most people don't comment on this blog anyway.  Zing!)  Or I guess if you do you can just post boring stuff like "Thanks for sharing."

Sometimes though I'm just bored and/or tired and a little rough housing helps to pick things up.  But then sometimes it can go on too long and just become tedious.  Like when the sixth person calls you an idiot because you said babies aren't born with teeth.  (Yes they are!  Yes they are!  They're under the gums!  Why didn't you know that you stupid idiot!)  Christ, sorry I don't know everything about fucking juvenile dentistry.  My bad.

The worst though are the "Well actually..." crowd.  All those people need rounded up and set adrift to a very dark place without electricity.  Forget about Russian trolls swinging elections, those are the real Internet villains.

And the next most annoying are people if you say, "Who cares?" will say, "Well you must have because you commented."  Like that's so fucking clever.  No, idiot, there's a difference between actual caring and just saying "Who cares?" because I'm bored and/or just want to register my irritation.  One time I was at a Biggby Coffee in Fenton and every two minutes I kept getting a Facebook ping from this asshole trying to make me admit I cared about...some damned thing.  I cared so much I don't even remember!  Something about one of the crappy DC TV shows or something.  And I kept trying to explain that I'm answering you because you're replying to my comment thread and every time you do Facebook pings my phone.  Oh well you must be obsessed about this because why else would you be replying?  Because I'm supposed to be writing but it's like 10:30am and I don't really feel like writing because my frappe hasn't kicked in yet?  That.

But that's the thing, first impressions are so often wrong, making it easy to jump to the wrong conclusion.  You think I'm obsessed with you when really I'm just trying to avoid work.  You think I'm dumb when I'm, like, really smart.  You think I'm a liberal or conservative or whatever.  The Breakfast Club had this right 33 years ago:  we try to pigeon hole everyone into a neat little box when really we're all a combination of those things.  Sometimes I'm a "libtard" and sometimes I'm a Trumptard.  Sometimes I'm a snowflake and sometimes I'm a bully.  Hey, wouldn't that be great for a Breakfast Club reboot?  Quick, someone find the overpasses Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estavez, Anthony Michael Hall, and Ally Sheedy are living under!  (Now someone on Facebook would say that I'm such a bully for that.)

I guess we should try to remember that just because someone says something we don't agree with doesn't mean they're our mortal enemy.  Hell, they might not even really exist.  I might not exist.  This might all be the Matrix.  AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!

I haven't officially made a resolution to stop commenting or anything, but I've been trying to get sucked into arguments less.  I mean nowadays you're probably just arguing with some fucking Russian assholes paid by Putin's goons so there's no real point to it.  Not that there ever was a point, but it takes most of the fun out of it.  A lot of the time now on Facebook I'll just hide the comment and move on.  Sometimes I'll block a person.  In the long run it's better than getting worked up about the stupidity of other people.

Ironically Facebook suspended my account for 24 hours on Monday because of some violation of "community standards."  I think it was on Yahoo News weeks ago where someone was lamenting the "good old days" and I said, "oh yeah back in the 'good old days' when you could call gay people fags and black people niggers."  Which wasn't calling anyone in particular those slurs; it was stating a historical fact.  Anyway, I decided I should just unfollow Yahoo News, Comic Book Resources, and Mashable since those are usually the ones where my keyboard gets me in trouble.  Leave violating the community for the Russians.