Antisocial Media: Why We Are Angry on the Internet

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Angry man, weak manI’ve been using the Internet since it was the old DARPANET, having sent my first email in fall 1981. Though I obviously use the medium, I am not  a fan.

Over the years, I’ve seen the conversation on the Internet turn more shrill and caustic. It especially bothers me when Christians add to the acid. Something about the Internet can bring out the worst in us, particularly when it comes to things interpersonal.

A couple weeks ago, I had lunch with Rick Ianniello, a fellow Christian and Cincinnati-area blogger, and we started to touch on the phenomenon of being angry on the Internet. In keeping with the gist of that talk, I’ve ruminated on that face-to-face conversation and want to share a few thoughts.

In fact, I’m going to jump right in and post my basic points:

People still desire interaction with others.

The inflammatory draws us because it provides points for interaction.

In a world of wrong, something in us needs to be seen as being a defender of what is right.

“An eye for an eye” is embedded in our sense of rightness.

Because Internet communication is so instant, its fleeting nature demands we respond instantly or else face exclusion from interaction.

People  still desire interaction with others.

And thus completes the cycle.

I believe that this cycle explains much about our conversation through social media on the Internet and the way we interact with others through this faceless medium.

Thoughts:

Without a doubt, I spend far less time in face-to-face conversation with others. The excuse I hear is that people are so busy. I find it odd, though, that the vacuum that is the average day is increasingly filled with electronic communication, often hours of it. When someone posts an unusual (and often inflammatory) bit of info on the Internet, time was spent finding and reading that info. Add enough of that together and hours go by.

In a way, we suffer from a collective forgetful delusion: We no longer recall how we spent our time before the digital came to rule us. How did we interact before Facebook? How did we communicate before texting? How did we accumulate knowledge before Google? Instead of what we once did, which seemed to make us happy, we have substituted something else, and few of us are asking if we’ve made the right trade.

I used to spend a great deal of time talking with friends over a good meal. Now that almost never occurs.

But we humans still crave connectedness with others, so we post on Facebook or comment on blogs. It used to be long emails, but email is passé and Twitter taught us to condense everything into 140 characters. So we do.

And the way to generate conversation on the Internet is to post links to weird, interesting, or inflammatory statements we, or those who inform our worldview, make. Like the matador waving a red cape, we want the bull to notice us—except in this case, the bull is another person from whom we seek interaction.

We’re suckers for the red cape, aren’t we? It’s something in us. Both in waving it and reacting to it we reaffirm that we have significance at a time when so much of life seems pointless, redundant, and stupid.

“See? The bull charged. I still matter.”

We all want to matter. In the United States especially, inconsequence is a mortal sin. There’s always a cause to defend, an opinion to be had. Our democracy is built on the ideas of people who could not sit idly by without letting their thoughts be known. Something always has to be said. The Internet brings that ability to say anything about everything like no other medium in history. It is the public square on a globe-spanning level. Under that magnifying glass, every statement becomes inflammatory to someone.

So we react with what we’ve been taught from the Old Testament school of justice: an eye for an eye. If someone hits me verbally, I hit them back. I take their accusation and reverse it so that it hits them. Their strike is my counterstrike.

That sense of conversational revenge drives what passes for discourse nowadays. Few people ask whether it makes sense to lunge at the matador’s flung cape. They react with an animal’s mind and charge. That spear in their back demands a horn to the gut. And we witness all the gore played out in a public space.

Like a genuine bullfight, our reflexes must be lightning fast or else we get left out of the action. Who hasn’t come to an interesting Facebook post a couple hours afterward and found 25 comments and an already burned-out conversation? The matador and picadores went home. The flowers are already wilting in the ring. Too late.

The Internet waits for no man.

Impatience is the worst failing to pair with the inflammatory, and it’s here that we see the genesis of the anger that has come to dominate the Internet conversation and spill over into all other forms of discourse.

Before newspapers started to die because they are not fast enough to keep up with the lightning pace of information today, there was the letter to the editor. The op-ed section of the paper was our public arena for anger.

But the funny thing about a letter in those days was that it took time to write and mail. Plus, the conversation lagged by a few days. The inflammatory story of Tuesday became the slightly peeved letter to the editor of Friday. In the meantime, everyone had taken a few deep breaths and calmed down.

Whenever I was angry enough to write a seething letter, it’s funny how the seethe eased out of me as I wrote by hand. And more often than not, when I was truly livid, Jesus often said to me, “Why don’t you sit on this one for a day?” And I would. Ironic how many of those letters never got mailed. Something about a day passing made the anger of the moment seem like nothing more than an ill-thought, knee-jerk reaction.

Today, our online conversation demands the ill-thought, knee-jerk reaction. In fact, without that automatic, instant response, the Internet loses its raison d’être and no longer becomes the necessary touchpoint we have made it.

That said, for a lot of people, the Internet and social media are the only touchpoint with others they still possess. Yet what a sad trade this has been, as something precious has been lost in our rush to life online and too much coarseness has been gained.

People seem unhinged nowadays. Too many of us think we alone are the arbiters of all truth. Just witness the craziness in the aftermath of the death of Osama bin Laden, when people demanded to see his death pictures so they would believe. We’ve reached a point where only my seeing and my opinion define truth.

Christians need to take this all back and react differently. This is what we say we believe:

I am dust, a vapor that passes through today and is gone tomorrow.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, even me.

I am to esteem my neighbor better than myself.

I am to love my enemies and pray for those who hate me.

All the law and the prophets are summed up in loving God and loving my neighbor, for love is the pinnacle.

Truth is truth apart from what I think or say; it can stand on its own and will go on without me.

The wise listen much and speak little.

“An eye for an eye” has been replaced by incomprehensible mercy, even in the face of hatred.

No one is unredeemable until he or she draws that final breath, so I must trust God in His dealings with people, particularly foes.

God has been patient with me and my slow growth, so I must be patient with others.

Jesus did not break the bruised reed or snuff the smoldering wick, and neither should I.

God made us to depend on each other because each of us is differently gifted by Him.

If you and I forsake gathering together in person, we lose something invaluable.

I can spend hours unpacking those realities for you, but you are smart people. You know how they should apply to our discourse and how we interact with others.

Now if we would only believe those truths enough to practice them, think how the world—even the online one—would be different.

7 thoughts on “Antisocial Media: Why We Are Angry on the Internet

  1. Before the Internet (B.I.), I would write long treatises on matters spiritual, philosophical, and political on my Mac Classic, plus fiction. But I had very little audience: whoever would read my printouts. After the Internet (A.I.), I had a “worldwide” audience, mostly for my poems. Funny, when I was teaching myself Web design, I did not know what to put up on my first site. So I put up my poems. I never branched out into any other kind of site.

    My friends and I would spend hours wandering around in our cars and eating out. We rarely talked about much of consequence. I used to go to church five to seven days a week, but to different churches, and I made hardly any friends from these numerous churches. Now it is a struggle to drum up the interest to go to church meetings once or twice a week.

    Ironically, the Facebook Event feature can bring us full circle. You have a large circle of Facebook friends. So plan an event and invite all the Facebook friends you want to invite. Some will come. Some will not. But that is okay and not as time-consuming and discouraging as phoning or emailing each friend individually.

    Honestly, pre-Internet, I didn’t have that many close friends. I still don’t. So what’s the difference?

  2. Mad Dog

    You should pitch this to Christianity Today or a similar outlet. A paid piece and a publication credit would draw some blog traffic and maybe some new freelance clients.

    My observation, lots of Christians are now shaking off a hangover or morning-after regret from the bitter excesses of online rhetoric of Christians being “concerned” over the last decade.

    Very timely.

  3. Jeremy

    Dan,
    Well said. Its funny you write this today. Last night I finished up a semester of seminary and a couple of the students asked if I was on Facebook bc we won’t have class for the summer. One student in particular will no longer be in the program bc she is pursuing another degree at another institution. When I said I wasn’t on Facebook everyone looked at me like I was a lost soul. The one student said goodbye to me as if we would never see each other again, as if there was no other form of communucation. I have email for goodness sake but apparently that doesnt cut it anymore.

    I am saddened that we have reduced our possible interactions to cyberspace and lost the effort of driving somewhere to sit on someone’s deck and drink coffee over a good conversation. I would trade my computer for more of those types of personal conversations instead of the cyberspace rhetorical arm wrestling we do over ideological topics.

    By the way…how many souls have I won to the Lord during internet conversations…ZERO! Maybe the Christian needs to be counter cultural in this area and shock people when we show an interest in meeting them face to face.

    • I led one person to Jesus years ago on IRC (Internet Relay Chat). I was on a channel dedicated to Bible debates. A visitor entered who directly said he wanted to be saved. The regulars immediately launched into a debate (with the visitor, but mostly among each other) about what salvation was. I left for about five minutes. I figured someone would lead him to the Lord. When I came back, the channel was still hotly debating salvation. I privately messaged the visitor and asked him if anyone had led him to the Lord yet. No! he exclaimed. So I led him through the sinner’s prayer and gave him a little advice about what to do after that. He was so thankful and said he was weeping on his end, and he left shortly after that. I did, too. The debate on salvation raged on.

      I witnessed to a former coworker not too long ago on Facebook’s chat. I had not witnessed to anyone for a long time, and I liked it, even if it was Facebook and not face-to-face. She has not accepted the Lord (yet), but she regularly walks in the park near where I live, and she wants me to walk with her some days. She is much the loner, like I am.

      Facebook is a good tool for communication as long as you avoid the time-wasting aspects of it. It (and Twitter) could be what I might call the online equivalent to small talk. How are you? I am fine. How is the weather where you are? That kind of thing. Even if you balk at using it, we engage in face-to-face small talk all the time, even with our dearest loved ones. Sometimes small talk leads to deeper conversations. Not often, but sometimes. The same is true of Facebook.

      Facebook and social media like it are replacing phone, email, and online chats. Just like the phone began replacing face-to-face visits. Get on Facebook. Use the Event feature to invite friends over to your house for coffee. Or just post a personal invite on their Walls. They may sound embarassed to decline when you call on the phone, and they may never check email or voicemail. But an invite on Facebook can be read on their own time at their leisure.

      These are just tools, like Gutenberg’s press. This is the latest one.

  4. Waiting a day to respond to something difficult — best advice. I have never regretted waiting a day to respond to a comment, write a blog post, send an email — never regretted it. I’ve often regretted NOT doing it, since you can’t take words back, but I’ve never regretted waiting a day.

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