Have a nice Wednesday everyone. I won’t let you off without a bit of ranting this week, even though the topic is significantly more serious. For a change, today it’s not about a specific game, but about the internet in general. Because I am ashamed of many things, on behalf of those who should be. There’s strong language involved, by the way. You have been warned.
The Everyday Life in Twitch Chats
I’ve been spending quite a bit of time on Twitch in the last few days. Usually, I watch the streams comfortably in full screen from my bed, but somehow I thought it was a good idea to observe the chats as well. And it really took my breath away. While I obviously know that this is the internet and idiots can traditionally stand out particularly easily here, the sheer number of primitive comments surprised me. As soon as a woman between 16 and 30 years old shows up in the stream, comments like these pile up:
“Tits or Riot!”
“I would totally rape her”
“Fuck the bitch against the wall”
I must have missed something. There have always been idiots, but in the past, they were isolated. Those who cause a ruckus are excluded. Those who can’t follow the rules have to play elsewhere. But since when are these people tolerated in such large numbers that they suffocate everything else in its infancy? Even the streamers seem to have partially resigned themselves to it – what choice do they have?
Facebook and the Far-Right
I actually didn’t want to get too political, but I can’t avoid Facebook and the far-right when discussing this topic. I love profiles like Kittens against Baldies, whose operators have made it their mission to dismantle Nazis and their “arguments” based on their own posts. While I can still grin broadly at the first 10 posts and chuckle over the next 20, each additional image makes me sadder.
Every click shows me another person whose hate is so strong that he seems to forget any sense of humanity. Every single like on a message like “Hopefully the doors were locked from the outside when the refugee shelter burned” (of course in the original with many spelling mistakes) makes my faith in humanity crumble a little more.
The internet has become a platform, a tool that is perfectly suited for the construction of hatred. That’s why I thank everyone who somehow stands against it – even if I don’t agree with every single post and some of these groups go too far.
“Our” Glorious Internet?
Don’t worry, I don’t want to get more political here. But while the older generation is slowly coming into closer contact with the “new territory” of the internet, people are behaving like wild animals. Whether it’s hate slogans on Facebook or apparently “funny” calls for rape on Twitch, all of this is increasing so quickly and to such an extent that it is simply alarming.
How do we explain to the people who will get to know the internet properly in these and the next years, such things? How can we justify to them that the freedom of the internet is something that needs to be protected, despite such dark sides? Of course, the idiots wouldn’t disappear if you took away their platforms. But what is currently forming into virtual mass movements of primitive hatred exceeds all limits of tolerance.
No Solution
Yes, I know what some will say. Spouting big words, complaining all the time, and being unable to offer a solution. But I just don’t see them. I like the freedoms of the internet, the anonymity, and all the wonderful things that a connected world brings. But the number of idiots is increasing and I fear the day will come when the costs outweigh the benefits. Then someone will take action against it, and we can’t prevent it – and we probably don’t deserve it either, because we failed to protect the internet when it was still worth protecting. And we are approaching that limit in many areas.
What do you think? How should we deal with this issue? What could we do to diminish hatred?
