My flight from MCO to PHL was delayed last Monday evening. Thankfully, the Orlando airport has free wireless. I fired up my netbook to help pass the time. Having spent the weekend out of town, I decided to check the local news. I came across an article about a “flash mob” that took place in Center City (Philadelphia) on Friday night.
The thing that I found interesting wasn’t the article itself, but the reader’s comments that followed:
“These crimes committed by minors will end the day a judge docks $200 a month from the welfare check of the perp's mother. When a child's misbehavior is made to hit the parent's pocket, suddenly the parents pick up the job of teaching the little devil how to behave in public.”
“The black man is having difficulty gaining the white man's trust. Sucker punching defenseless white women, dropping out of school, fathering numerous children and supporting none of them and committing violent crime at nearly 10 times the national average will go a long way to help alleviate that. Why are so many black kids acting exactly as the racial stereotype white racists have of them?”
“My idea is simple - start a program to pay young girls and boys to get sterilized. It won't help the problem now, but if we can prevent more unwanted children from being born, maybe we can save the future. This all boils down to people who shouldn't have kids having them.”
Comments like these were followed with feedback from other readers, many in support of what was being said.
I realize that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions, but wow...some of the stuff being said was just scary.
Of course, all of the posts were somewhat anonymous in that they could not be linked to an individual, just a screen name/alias like “phillymom.” It seems pretty easy to hide behind a computer and say hateful things. I wonder how many people would be saying these things if, after their comment they were required to give their full name.
1 comment:
A newspaper columnist had a similar viewpoint on the anonymity of Internet comments and their direct relationship to virulent speech.
Our proximity determines our attitude toward others.
The Internet, text messages, calls to radio talk shows and other "anonymous" forms of communication make it easy to spew hateful things. Once we have to display a photo and name our opinion changes.
People are often cowardly, and I have found that when verbal bullies are confronted face-to-face their attitude changes. They generally back down from a challenge, or at least are taken aback by someone who actually speaks to them.
It's the same reason kids are bullied anonymously on Facebook. Give people a new form of communication and they invariably find ways to manipulate it for their own purpose.
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