So a few days ago I came across a post on Instagram about a teenage girl who had made an inflammatory post on the same platform about how she didn't care about George Floyd's death, that if he didn't want to get killed he shouldn't have broken the law, and that nothing anyone told her would change her mind. Then she posted some kind of "MAGA" remark. Someone responded angrily and she let slip she had been admitted to a certain place of higher education. Someone contacted said institution and they ended up deciding not to admit her. She also of course probably received lots of angry direct messages.
I don't want to post a link to the story because I don't want the thread to revolve around that particular incident -- it's meant only as an example, or an illustration. Call-out culture, and campaigns to punish, or "cancel" dissenting voices (campaigning hard to get events and speeches involving them cancelled) has become endemic online, as have echo chambers where anyone who disagrees is scolded and kicked out, and this idea that only the members of a certain in-group is even entitled to mention or discuss a given topic, be it the plight of African-Americans, or transgender rights.
I've discussed all kinds of skepticism topics for years and years, from belief in UFOs and supernatural creatures to 9/11 edgelords and antivaxxers. One of the things I've come across when discussing antivax in Norway is a certain kind of... sub-culture of antivaxxer trolls who will harrass and try to sabotage the lives of particularly outspoken people who disagree with them. They will send them hateful messages, carry out smear campaigns, often trying to paint them as bullies or even more horrible things like pedophiles, and, call their employers to try to sabotage their careers. I always considered the latter a particularly vile tactic, and it's come to be something I associate with trolls with no scrouples.
Now, however, calling out, and punishing people for forbidden opinions, or even bad jokes, seems to be becoming more and more common. Not something done only by knuckle-dragging Internet trolls, but by more and more oh so cool and woke Internet activists on anything from LGBTQ+ to BLM supporters. The pattern seems to be that they stay in echo chambers for too long, and/or experience events in society that makes them angry (often very, very rightfully so, let's be honest), and they end up interpreting statements in a far worse way than they were intended, deciding that anyone not in their in-group can't understand or relate to what they're going through or have a qualified opinion, and venting their mounting anger on random people online who are discovered and highlighted by particularly influential individuals. Oh, and obsessing over insignificant, minor details like someone using the wrong word or something in an otherwise innocent post or conversation.
The pattern is pretty clear and worrying: if you meet someone with the wrong views, they're not to be reasoned with or simply ignored, they are to be shamed, shunned, harrassed, and punished. There is no live and let live, or reasoned debates with facts, just us-versus-them. Anyone opining in the thread about the Instagram post I mentioned earlier were told they "supported racism", or for that matter that they had no right to have an opinion in the first place, because of their skin colour. Starting posts with disclaimers like "I hate Trump with a passion, but..." seems more important than ever in this age of emotion and polarisation.
So... what do we do about this, and, if we take a step back from the anecdotes, how big and prevalent a problem is this really? I tried telling them that all of us have views that someone out there finds horrific, and that all of us have made off-colour jokes, or posts we didn't think through properly, or statements in real life or online in an "edgy", provocative manner, and that we can't just go around punishing whoever says something we don't like or agree with. Don't think that made any difference with any of them.
I tried a "how would you like it if it happened to you" approach, pointing out that this probably just creates more vindictiveness and polarisation, and quite possibly more trumpkins, and a stronger idea of "radical triggered libs", but I don't know if that had much of an effect either.
I considered sending a supportive message to the girl in question, telling her that I in no way condoned what she said, or had any love for Trump, but that what happened to her was reprehensible and I wished her all the best (I could do this as they'd of course helpfully posted a link to her profile so that people could pile on and send hate mail), but I have no idea if the person in question had deleted the account and it had since been hijacked, and the trolls appeared to be naming and shaming people reaching out to her for support, too.
So... what do we do about this development, where not only Internet trolls, but also an increasing number of people across the political spectrum are starting to do things like this? And is this actually as big a problem as it seems, or just another case of a minority appearing much bigger than it is by being, well, very vocal?
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2YB2hah
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