This morning I visited the web site of a local television station to read a story about a tragic violent crime. I then read about 40 or so comments (of 200) posted in response to the news report. As with many of the threads on YouTube and major city newspaper sites, at least half of these posts were, to be charitable, antisocial.
If you were to extrapolate from this graffiti the depth and breadth of our society, you’d likely despair. (Or, if you’re Michael Haneke, rejoice at the start of your next screenplay.) But there’s good reason not to mistake all that rage as our true if hidden natural state. We’re all fakes.
We are copies of each other. We begin imitating as infants and never stop. Consciously and unconsciously, whether speaking or yawning, we are responding to the world around us, taking cues from one another just like flocks of birds. Or schools of fish. Or swarms of locusts.
Online spaces are still so porous, so amorphous that they often fail to provide clear indication of who is present and, thus, what is permissible. Many more of us are assholes online because we literally can’t see each other and, thus, can’t see ourselves.