Because you might just get it. And in this instance, not get what you want but "get it," as in punishment from an angry God.
What am I talking about? The Facebook group that prays for Obama's death.
Obviously, this is sick and disgusting. It continues a trend of "mainstream"-terrorism that I discussed in yesterday's post. It also stands as a stark sign of growing incivility and anger in this country. Finally, it is more evidence that our digital media encourage such hate and divisiveness through their brevity, anonymity, and the ease with which we can sling hate speech.
The connection between incivility and digital media is a topic near and dear to my scholarly research interests, and one I plan to address on this blog in the near future. Here, all you have to do is click "like," and very quickly you can join a group of over one million people praying for the death of a major public figure. It is particularly sad that this group has more members than the group that is asking facebook to remove the Obama-death praying group.
Good thing is, there is no God, in any of the religions, who would ever listen to these evil bastards. No moral or ethical system can be based on hate for your enemy and the active spreading of ill-will. In fact, the notion of karma holds that when you spread such hate, hate is sure to return to you. Karma is not like an automatic spiritual force with an instant feedback. You don't cuss someone out and then immediately stub your toe. Karma is a very simple and imminently rational principle that proves true time and again. When you live your life full of hate, you end up hating your life because most people hate you. And vice-versa, spread love and expect love in return.
So for those members of this facebook group, be on the lookout. If not God then at least Karma is coming for your ass. Have a nice life.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Interesting subject - I'll leave the teabaggers alone though - the idea that digital media increases hate speech.
ReplyDeleteI've wondered before if the very medium itself is transformative, or there are a bunch of old bastards who lack any experience (because its so new) and behave within what would be offline cultural norms. For example I would imagine that a teenager these days doesn't really separate their online identity from that of their offline. Haven't done any real research of course ;-)
Ultimately though it just seems because its so accessible and 'flat' that it exposes a myriad of new options, even though many are myopic niches, and that there it fosters a certain digital diversity that seems good. At least it would seem potentially good from an evolutionary perspective (in our offline biology anyway). So maybe now it just seems especially miserable because the whole thing is really just starting up and people society can't handle the stress of it in some ways - (although potentially may result in the best opportunity for change).
Kelly, thanks for the comment, and I agree with a lot of it and will be contributing more on this subject soon.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the whole idea that we are new to this and evolutionarily speaking the 'miserable" aspects of digital discourse are just overreactions from the old-timers seems unjustified. I mean, can we really say it is new anymore? The Internet started in the 70s, and certainly people from our generation have spent most of their formative years with virtual-digital worlds as a major element of that formation. Plus, the speed of Internet dissemination, I think, justifies some conclusions that it might have taken longer to decide. For instance, facebook hit a million users in like 9 months. It took TV like ten years for that, and books a century. So, the speed of its uptake means we are seeing some of its mature impacts now, not years from now.
Also, this is a phenomenological insight, not an empirical one. The brevity, anonymity, and ease of posting, I think, breeds a form of incivility less common in face to face, book, and even TV discourse... To be continued