Social media is exceedingly difficult to avoid and no matter how much you might hate the misery it inflicts, you find yourself going back for another taste. It’s as if the anger and adrenaline become addictive

Sep 26, 2015-This past week has been one of great tumult, with the promulgation of Nepal’s new constitution. There were those who were enthralled with the document, those circumspect and those who outright rejected it. While there were celebrations in the streets of Kathmandu and black flags in the streets of the Madhes, all three camps took to social media with a passion. There were posts about jubilation but just as many virulently condemning the statute. As expected, there were fewer moderate posts —those that admitted that thedocument was flawed and needed to be quickly amended but still welcomed it wearily as the product of a process that had at times seemed endless.

Things went even more terribly wrong when India issued a statement that ‘noted’ the promulgation of ‘a’ constitution. The ensuing firestorm on social media was a sight to behold, an ugly, hate-filled spectacle. Gone were the reasonable, replaced by shrieking harpies that called on every vile, racist, xenophobic and insulting name they could throw at India. Twitter, as is often the case, was the worst, but Facebook wasn’t far behind. #backoffIndia began to trend and the Indians began to take note. First, some attempted calm, with a few offering olive branches like ‘we hate our government too’. But faced with an onslaught of hate, they too began to turn, firing back with posts just as contemptible.

In all, it was an ugly display, one that I wish I had not witnessed. But social media is exceedingly difficult to avoid and no matter how much you might hate the misery it inflicts, you find yourself going back for another taste. It’s as if the anger and adrenaline become addictive.

A level-headed friend pointed out sagely, “The internet makes us assholes” and I found myself wondering just what is it about the internet that seems to bring out the worst in us. During times of disaster, like the April earthquake, social media was a connective tissue of sorts, bringing people together in ways miraculous. But social media is a two-faced Janus and it turned just as quickly.

Perhaps it is the relative anonymity that gives us the confidence to utter what we wouldn’t have otherwise. This would account for the mindless hatred that is much more common on anonymous portals like 4chan, Reddit and even Twitter. Facebook, with its network of friends and family, is less deranged, since people tend to want to portray themselves as rational and sensible to their near and dear ones. But when surrounded with an echo chamber of friends who look like you, talk like you, hold the same beliefs and are pretty much from the same socio-economic class, many feel comfortable expressing themselves even on Facebook, because they know that there will be enough support in the form of ‘likes’.

Anonymity is certainly a strong reason, because people tend to say things that they would otherwise never utter to another’s face. I am certain that there are many on Facebook who wouldn’t dare go up to a Madhesi or an Indian and call them ‘dhoti’ but on social media, such insults are commonplace. Perhaps it is also because there is the lack of an empathetic connection. When you insult someone in real life, you can see hurt, or anger, on their faces, in their eyes. And most people aren’t that callous. Seeing someone else hurt hurts you too. Empathy is hard-wired into our brains, in what are called mirror neurons. But online, in front of a computer, there is no immediate visceral feedback. You are allowed to spew your hate because the target is someone distant, someone you might never see. The feedback loop is effectively cut off, leaving you to revel in your own sense of self satisfaction.

The Twitter game

Recently, I came across another theory for why we behave so badly on the internet. In an article on the magazine Slate on Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, writer and software engineer David Auerbach uses the philosopher’s exploration of language to account for the state of discourse on the internet. He writes,“The shift to online communication, textual interactions separated from accompanying physical practices, has had a persistent and egregious warping effect on language, and one that most people don’t even understand. It has made linguistic practice more limited, more universal, and more ambiguous. More people interact with one another without even realizing they are following different rules for words’ usages. There is no time or space to clarify one’s self—especially on Twitter”.

For Wittgenstein, language held little intrinsic meaning. According to Wittgenstein, language is essentially a practical ‘game’ that we all play. There are certain rules that need to be followed and certain contexts within which those rules apply. The rules, however, are not static; they change over time and place. Words, therefore, carry within them a certain history of passage, in how they’ve been used before and what meanings they’ve taken up. Essentially, and this might seem patently obvious to us today, language is an evolving thing; it is a living, breathing set of rules that acts independently of human volition but also depends on human contexts to acquire meaning and relevance.

On the internet, the physical human context becomes hopelessly abstracted. Without physical cues from the other person, language becomes an end game in and of itself. Instead of a vehicle for communication, it becomes a device for pronouncements, a one-sided conversation. This is most obvious on Twitter, where, because of its inherently limited space of expression, there is no room for context or explanation. It is impossible to distil a reasonable argument into 140 characters. Hence, you have Twitter wars that are inexhaustible because no one is listening to anyone else and no one is ever convinced of the other side. On Twitter, everyone is there to express their own prejudices, and it is a perfect medium for that, because it is a space where your views simply cannot be challenged reasonably. Bereft of a physical, targeted recipient of your words, you might as well be yelling into a well, hearing only your own echo.

If you are unsure of this, spend a day on Twitter. Either you will revel in its obstinacy and refusal to be proved wrong by anyone or you will come away aghast at the state of online discourse. Or perhaps, like me, you will stick to retweets and an occasional attempt at a pithy, one-line statement that is inoffensive and neither here nor there. On social media, that often seems like the safest—and sanest—way to be.

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Published: 26-09-2015 10:24