Unkindness abounds as life becomes darker
I just posted the other day about the possibly imminent Middle East war, so I know life is rough right now and situations are scary—far beyond just that latest downbeat news in the feeds. Knowing that life is rough, I know tempers get short, patience frays, and sometimes people read things too shallowly or too quickly to understand nuance.
The kinds of things that make people snap at folks or get mean even if they aren’t typically internet trolls, general bullies, meme-style karens, or the like. I get it; we all have our bad moments.
But—and I hope I’m wrong here but I don’t think I am—people are getting meaner. The bullies are more vicious and the people who weren’t bullies before seem more comfortable getting catty with folks online or dragging them when there is no need for dragging to be done.
I’ve seen it not just generally in feeds but in some of my own posts, where I express a happy thought and the negativity rolls in, calling upon me not to get too used to it or that I shouldn’t be happy about it or that I don’t deserve it or whatever. Whether stated openly or heavily suggested, I’m pretty sure I’m getting more negative sentiments in response to light posts, jokes, or joyful announcements.
I fear the growing callousness and cruelty of the world—along with growing pressures on people’s emotions, time, and finances—is making people lash out, and where safer to lash out than online, where you’re not face-to-face with the person? What is the old adage...Wait long enough and you’ll become what you hate? I think that’s it. And I see people who weren’t trolls or bullies before becoming that which they once mocked or denounced.
My coparent has shared some of his own observations on this front recently too. Like a social media post by a neurodivergent woman holding what she thought was the perfect butter knife she found at a thrift store, along with the sentiment that it was a shame it was the only one—a simple, happy post. It didn’t take long for someone to pop into the comments and say that because a small part of her hand tattoo is showing and we can see her beautifully manicured nails, this post obviously isn’t about the knife at all but about showing off her hands.
Or the post he saw at a science humor group on Facebook. Remember “science humor” because it’s important. The original poster said something to the effect of, “I have a PhD in computer science and I’m a senior accessibility manager and when I need to type the é in a word I have to go to the Wikipedia page for Beyoncé and copy it from there.”
You know, an ironic and self-deprecating post. A person who should know the keyboard shortcut doesn’t. Who among us hasn’t been there? Having a bunch of knowledge in a field and still having to find workarounds because we don’t remember the “right” way. And somehow, despite this being an obvious lighthearted joke post—again, in a science humor group—a guy dropped a comment shaming the original poster for humble bragging about his degree and position to get shameless attention from strangers online. As if the PhD and his position aren’t important context and a key part of the joke—and as if this isn’t a group where having a PhD probably isn’t that special.
I believe there are times to get petty and to hit low, especially when someone started things out that way. But I fear more and more of us are becoming more willing to go low and be petty just to feel like we’re on top for once. I fear that so many of us are so beaten down that we are looking to people to grind under our heels. We’ll go out of our way to find deserving targets just to pick a fight that doesn’t need to be picked, and sometimes we’ll pick on undeserving targets because they’re closer at hand.
I think that as social media becomes less sociable—and it definitely has declined over the years in that way—we need to be more conscious of how we behave and we need to be less willing to become that which we once stood against and still should.