Keyboard Warriors of Today or Law Abiding Lackeys of
Tomorrow?
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| Can you imagine the battlefield that would unfold if this video had comments? |
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| And this is what happens when you allow comments. |
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Now that's just a
cheapshot.
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In the coming 21st century the internet is
becoming a bigger part of how we communicate. It is increasingly useful as a
source of information, both good and bad. Before, to publish your opinion you
would need a local newspaper to approve an advertisement/article, but now all
it takes is a couple of minutes to set up a blogger account and you have got
yourself a platform. And with this growing age of shared opinions tempers tend
to clash, so where do we draw the line with what can and cannot be said in a
public forum?
Anyone that has ever been on YouTube knows that one way or
another, the arguments in the comment section below will eventually boil down
to the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s American citizenship or who had intercourse
with my mom. The same presence can be felt on sites like Facebook (if people do
not care about losing a friend or two in the process) and Tumblr. It seems as
though everywhere you go there is a 12 year old keyboard warrior ready to
pounce on your opinion at any given moment.
Anyone that regularly visits a forum can understand that all
it takes to filter these hateful comments is a good moderator. For some sites
like Reddit.com where moderators monitor inappropriate posts based on the ideas
that the forum stands for. Subjecting moderators to web-giants like YouTube
would be a waste of time simply because of the amount of traffic that it
receives, but what about smaller news outlets like Popular Science?
This “cancer” has become so prevalent that it has spread to
online newspapers and magazines, causing magazines like Popular Science to
disable their comments section on some articles. Their main reason being “Even
a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a
story.” This is understandable for a purely scientific journal where there
should be no room for opinions to dispute the facts but rather only facts and
research. But what does that say for newspapers and other magazines that have a
comment section? Don’t their stories
reflect bias that has already skewed
the public’s opinion on a story? And what kind of power can a comment really
have on that? Then again Popular Science is a factual publication and so there
isn’t much to dispute there unless you bring religion into the picture or a
peer reviewed journal. There is always a small bias towards one thing or the
other regardless of what we write, that is just how it works, but is it small
enough to be argued against?
It may seem like a smart move for a magazine like Popular
Science to discontinue its comments section because of how opinions tend to
persuade people’s beliefs in another spectrum. Considering the fact that 1 in 5
Americans believe in pure evolution (Darwinian definition of it) it would make
sense why those related articles would retract the commenting option. A survey
done by YouGuv (a professional research and consulting organization based in
the US) asked a representative 1,000 Americans what they thought about
evolution and its theories. When YouGuv asked the same question in 2004 only
13% of those surveyed agreed with Darwinian evolution. So at least we’re making
progress, right?
The internet now is becoming a larger part of our social
communication than it was ever before. It is now as much of a pedestal as
propaganda and radio was way back when. But who is to decide what can and
cannot be said in this public medium? Sites like 4chan allow members to post
virtually anything about anyone at any given point with no censors, only the backlash
of its viewers. This also of course welcomes trolls and keyboard warriors that
will stop at nothing but to see you break down as you pound the CAPS LOCK key
in frustration. But it also lets everyone be on the same level with the exact
same power of reaching the “masses” which the internet as a whole has allowed
people to demonstrate.
I frankly do not believe in the idea of censorship simply
because if I have the right to share my opinion then so does a Neo-Nazi or a
creationist. In fact I share my opinion so often that it became a trend of
sorts when I started my blog (baciacalupo.blogspot.com) back in grade 9. At
first it started off in the form of rants and “free write’s” as Ms. Wolfe calls
them. But as the years went on I developed my opinions and writing style to a
somewhat bearable fashion. Go on and see for yourself, I welcome trolls and
intellectuals all alike and I don’t censor comments so go at it. Otherwise it
would be a ridiculous double standard that would go against what the blog
stands for. So go ahead and take a look for yourself what an unfiltered opinion
is like, I hardly bother to edit anyways.
It isn’t right to censor someone’s opinion simply because
you disagree in a public forum, not on a political or factual side but on a
humanist side. However, there is a clear line between opinion and fact which
has become blurry for some users of the internet. Which is unfortunate but it
also forces those that want to be heard to find other creative means of
reaching out to people and share their ideas because of how watered down online
opinion pieces have become. That’s what the RAG was all about before, an outlet
where students like me and you could share our unfiltered opinions as long as
they weren’t malicious. But now we have to find other outlets if we are to
truly share our opinions in their unfiltered and natural form.
Cheers, MarkL
P.S. Keep in mind this was written for my school's RAG (a circulated opinion based paper)
P.S. Keep in mind this was written for my school's RAG (a circulated opinion based paper)
