Technology doesn’t change us. Technology exposes us
— Gary Vaynerchuck
With technology getting more advanced day by day, one thing stands out. We use it in our everyday life, in our businesses. Internet is the core of our society and with the new technology that is being developed, it gets faster, better with more functionality and becomes even more necessary since most of the things that we use need Internet to fully function.
Internet allows us to have access to information on the spot, it allows us to communicate across the seas, buy things, develop and share our work. It also allows us to post our opinion for everyone to see.
From Facebook comments to articles and videos, you can post your opinion and share it with everyone. By doing so, that means you are ready to get criticized on it. You are ready to face the conflicts that may arise. And how you will respond to it, it’s up to you. The thing is, that Internet allows us to post our opinions or comment to someone’s else’s anonymously, using nicknames. If that’s not the case, (e.g. Facebook) and you have to use a real name, you can still comment on someone’s else’s opinion even if he or she lives in another country.
When you stand behind a screen and you don’t face the person that you are “discussing” with, then the real problem comes up.
Anonymity, you see, it’s one of the things that makes us feel protected. At least enough to expose ourselves without thinking the consequences. It brings our bad side out, we say the things that normally we wouldn’t.
Although expressing your opinion is not something bad, most of the times it gets out of control. You can see a very good example of that in online games.
In video games (e.g. League of Legends , Counter-Strike) you have the capability to talk to your teammates in order to organize your perfect strategy to win the game. However most of the times that is simply not the case. If you make too many mistakes most of the times your teammates will neither try to help you nor explain what you did wrong, they will attack you by using offensive language that it may get out of control.
Toxicity is one of the problems that the game companies have to face and try to resolve for years, using report systems and bans. Even-though there is a penalty for your actions, players continue being toxic nevertheless.
That kind of sudden character change and aggressiveness, does not appear when two people are on the same room. But it’s very common to see it happen on the Internet. There is a difference between typing something to someone you don’t see and it’s another thing to be offensive to the person in front of you.
Being offensive to someone differs from person to person on how he/she will receive it. Others don’t mind, while others might get traumatized and because you never know to whom you are talking to, there is also the extreme case of getting physically assaulted. There are some extreme cases of people finding the person that harassed them online and physically hurt them because of it.
The problem is bigger than you think. So next time that you are tired or angry with something think again don’t start harassing people on the Internet and don’t post things that you wouldn’t say in person.
What’s your opinion on the matter? Do you agree or disagree and why?
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