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Social media: toxified by rage
Insight
Essay Social media: toxified by rage
www.thelancet.com/psychiatry Vol 1 October 2014
felt increasingly tiring and random. I remain profoundly grateful for my online existence, but my honeymoon feeling about it has mostly dissipated. Many have said the same about blogging and internet dating, that these once cosy-seeming communities have been blighted by trolls. A partial solution is to silently and passively “like” or “favourite” someone else’s words as a safe way to join an argument, without making yourself a target, as the culture of performative correction becomes ever more normalised. Not for nothing has Twitter been called “the anger factory”, because social media has given voice to something that human beings carry with them every day but have generally lacked the means to properly (and legally) express: pure unadulterated rage. Rage is carried through generations and is in us from our first day of life. If we have not processed it sufficiently, its toxic effects will continue to leak out of us into our daily lives. In social media, I observe two main types. One is the rage of frustrated entitlement, often expressed by the men who relentlessly threaten women with rape and murder. The other is rage from past trauma, individual or collective, and is often expressed by women and people from ethnic and sexual minorities. This trauma can emerge as stressed infighting and anger on others’ behalf. Both types of rage involve the shaming of others, and the projection on others of feelings that are intolerable to hold onto. The internet has enabled millions of previously unheard stories of violation and dehumanisation to be witnessed: rape, child abuse, physical violence, and emotional bullying, in addition to the ongoing perpetual microaggressions of daily life. The darker parallel to this catharsis is that it has also provided a forum for free-flowing hate and frustration, a very public uploading of the id. But just when all this buried fury has found its public outlet, we find ourselves under increasing surveillance. You cannot walk down the street, or send an email, without a self-elected superego (governmental or citizen) taking liberties with your action for their own ends. Have an argument on a bus and you could find yourself filmed and viewable by millions, forever. If you receive an email that you didn’t ask for and it contains a so-called questionable image, you might find yourself in court, in public, with a criminal record. For me, the utopia of public technology has been gradually stifled by a profound state of paranoia. Comedian Stewart Lee describes Twitter as “a state surveillance agency staffed by gullible volunteers” and “the Stasi for the Angry Birds generation”. And Stalin would have been in clover; as Martin Amis describes in Koba The Dread, “You might denounce someone for fear of their denouncing you; you
xkcd comic
I am considering deleting my Twitter accounts. This proposition, for anyone who knows me, is quite a big deal. A few years ago, I took to Twitter with great enthusiasm. I discovered issues I’d never properly thought about, and the surreal humour kept me going on long bus journeys. I met new friends and found work. Now, however, I experience anxiety, irritation, and boredom the moment I get on there, and I’m not alone. I’ve lost count of the friends saying things like: “The longer I stay off Twitter, the happier I am.” What happened? I’m going to concentrate on Twitter and Facebook here, because they are the social media that I and my peers use the most consistently. I am a fairly tireless advocate of technology. I am constantly explaining (sometimes patiently and sometimes not) why a smartphone is just like a book or a newspaper, that babies are not going to have ruined lives because the internet has “changed their brains”, that Facebook has not created a new “epidemic of loneliness”, and that online pornography has not suddenly taught children to have sex. Life would not improve, I think, if we went back to the days when families played card games by the fire of an evening; those same days when there was nowhere to go if someone was abusing you, or your sexuality wasn’t what it was supposed to be. While acknowledging the privilege inherent in having internet access at all, I’ve argued for hours about the benefits to mental wellbeing of online life: the access to information and support, the inclusion of anyone housebound (whether for family, health, or disability reasons), and the platform for those who struggle to participate in a world run by extraverts—or, to use a less controversial definition, those who thrive on interaction with others in person. It took a lot of staying in alone and tinkering to create computers and the internet, so it seemed fitting that online was the space where introverts and sports rejects could blossom. As with real life, things were never perfect. With the good (you could find someone on the planet who had the same likes and needs as you) came the less good (the ability to attack someone anonymously without needing to know where they live or work). With the positive (you could communicate your views to thousands or millions of people) came the less positive (like a bucket of water or a bomb, your message will hit everyone in range, not just your target). But now, I’m increasingly hearing expressions like “Facebook clearout” and “Twitter cull”. These events sound uncomfortably like people-cleansing, but I sense a growing movement to protect personal boundaries for the sake of sanity. I have unfollowed people whose political views I strongly agreed with, but whose unending attacks on others
337
Insight
For the xkcd comic Duty calls see http://xkcd.com/386
338
could be denounced for not doing enough denouncing; the only disincentive to denunciation was the possibility of being denounced for not denouncing sooner; and so on.” Online, we have created an all-seeing internalised parent, an emotional singularity. We look for mirroring in this parent and in return we get community, but we also get exposure and shame. At worst, for a single word out of place, you can be jumped on by crowds of people you have never met. Posting becomes a tightrope walk, held on the inbreath. There are trigger warnings and counter-trigger warnings, and the fact that tone can be as triggering as content is (oddly) often forgotten. There is nowhere to hide, even from the comfort of your iPad. If you object to the fighting, or are simply not in a towering fury, you are “just wanting everything to be nice” as if it is somehow immoral not to be constantly enraged. Real life, of course, isn’t nice (as the Stonewall riots, the Greenham Common peace camp, and the civil rights movement show), and online conflicts can at worst seem like no more than armchair bullying, however important the cause. You could be forgiven for becoming confused by the ever-changing ingroups and outgroups. Who is good and who is bad might vary from one week to the next. Standing back, this jumble is hardly surprising. Unprocessed trauma can give rise to self-expression that might elsewhere be labelled “borderline”: black and white thinking; intense but highly changeable emotional states; maladaptive use of other entities (whether human, chemical, or virtual) in an attempt at self-regulation; hypervigilance; and the inability to sit with difficult feelings. The problem is that, online, this collective state of mind is being fed, all day and every day. Most of the time, the high levels of aggression would never be expressed to a real person, but the anxiety (unsustainable by one individual for long) can be carried by thousands forever. One especially negative outcome is that activist groups can end up with the self-defeating reputation of being perpetually at war with themselves, which is a potent political weapon in the wrong hands. Arguments that once took place in back rooms with an audience of seven can now be witnessed by millions and the most extreme comments taken out of context. And, as you step out of the fray, it’s worth remembering that—as any paramedic or lifeguard will tell you—the people screaming the loudest are not necessarily the ones who are most hurt. The endless vigilance also has a positive purpose. Misogyny and bigotry need to be contested, because the threats of rape and murder just keep on coming. Women are continuously bullied and humiliated online, and many people have attempted suicide as a result. Unfortunately, law enforcement (although improving) has been slow to catching on to the fact that the internet is a place, just like any other. “Just switch off your computer” is not an acceptable response in 2014.
You can protect yourself by being low key, balanced, or ambivalent in your views (or by not being a woman), but this approach is effectively self-censorship. You could be forgiven for concluding that social media is being won by bullies, narcissists, those who actively revel in creating tension, and those who are immune from anxiety. These people, of course, are the ones who survive the best in the workplace and in other group situations. For a minute back then, I thought the rest of us had found a place in the world where we could finally be ourselves, but it looks as if the internet has finally turned into real life. What I’m describing must seem profoundly unbalanced to the unfamiliar reader. To top it all, some of the most militantly relentless online warfarers are actually quite pleasant in person. Good luck trying to explain these interactions to someone who doesn’t use social media. They will be baffled because they have just been out at work or with their kids, or playing sports, or at a gig, and you are talking about World War 3 enacted on a screen in the corner of your living room. And you might be shaking or even crying, and they might tell you that you need to get out more. And they would have missed the point, although you couldn’t really blame them. I’m well aware that it’s very hard to critique social media without enacting the very behaviour you are critiquing. I have in the past ranted heavily, used a performative sardonic tone, and retweeted other people’s expressions of personal fury with no thought as to the effect they would have on others, or whether they were even factually correct. But now I think we’ve gone way beyond the much-loved xkcd cartoon, where someone is at a screen, tapping away late at night, and their partner calls out to them. “Are you coming to bed?” “I can’t. This is important.” “What?” “Someone is wrong on the internet.” Next to today’s Orcs vs Klingons savagings, this gentle parody has the nostalgic sweetness of a 1890s Pears Soap advert. Life in the UK has become measurably harder for most people in the past 5 years. The collective mental health of the population has been affected, particularly for those who have few economic means and little political influence. What to do about it? There is a Facebook group whose members post pictures of their cats, all day, every day. It will sound like hell to some people, but the posters often comment that the flow of innocent domestic delight is an essential counterpoint to the stressful torrent that gushes all day long around it. Online and off, where I possibly can, I try to gather the people and things around me that make me happy, and quietly remove those that don’t. The more I deal with rage and trauma in my real-time work as a therapist, the less space I am willing, or able, to give to them online.
Tania Glyde www.thelancet.com/psychiatry Vol 1 October 2014
Essay Social media: toxified by rage
www.thelancet.com/psychiatry Vol 1 October 2014
felt increasingly tiring and random. I remain profoundly grateful for my online existence, but my honeymoon feeling about it has mostly dissipated. Many have said the same about blogging and internet dating, that these once cosy-seeming communities have been blighted by trolls. A partial solution is to silently and passively “like” or “favourite” someone else’s words as a safe way to join an argument, without making yourself a target, as the culture of performative correction becomes ever more normalised. Not for nothing has Twitter been called “the anger factory”, because social media has given voice to something that human beings carry with them every day but have generally lacked the means to properly (and legally) express: pure unadulterated rage. Rage is carried through generations and is in us from our first day of life. If we have not processed it sufficiently, its toxic effects will continue to leak out of us into our daily lives. In social media, I observe two main types. One is the rage of frustrated entitlement, often expressed by the men who relentlessly threaten women with rape and murder. The other is rage from past trauma, individual or collective, and is often expressed by women and people from ethnic and sexual minorities. This trauma can emerge as stressed infighting and anger on others’ behalf. Both types of rage involve the shaming of others, and the projection on others of feelings that are intolerable to hold onto. The internet has enabled millions of previously unheard stories of violation and dehumanisation to be witnessed: rape, child abuse, physical violence, and emotional bullying, in addition to the ongoing perpetual microaggressions of daily life. The darker parallel to this catharsis is that it has also provided a forum for free-flowing hate and frustration, a very public uploading of the id. But just when all this buried fury has found its public outlet, we find ourselves under increasing surveillance. You cannot walk down the street, or send an email, without a self-elected superego (governmental or citizen) taking liberties with your action for their own ends. Have an argument on a bus and you could find yourself filmed and viewable by millions, forever. If you receive an email that you didn’t ask for and it contains a so-called questionable image, you might find yourself in court, in public, with a criminal record. For me, the utopia of public technology has been gradually stifled by a profound state of paranoia. Comedian Stewart Lee describes Twitter as “a state surveillance agency staffed by gullible volunteers” and “the Stasi for the Angry Birds generation”. And Stalin would have been in clover; as Martin Amis describes in Koba The Dread, “You might denounce someone for fear of their denouncing you; you
xkcd comic
I am considering deleting my Twitter accounts. This proposition, for anyone who knows me, is quite a big deal. A few years ago, I took to Twitter with great enthusiasm. I discovered issues I’d never properly thought about, and the surreal humour kept me going on long bus journeys. I met new friends and found work. Now, however, I experience anxiety, irritation, and boredom the moment I get on there, and I’m not alone. I’ve lost count of the friends saying things like: “The longer I stay off Twitter, the happier I am.” What happened? I’m going to concentrate on Twitter and Facebook here, because they are the social media that I and my peers use the most consistently. I am a fairly tireless advocate of technology. I am constantly explaining (sometimes patiently and sometimes not) why a smartphone is just like a book or a newspaper, that babies are not going to have ruined lives because the internet has “changed their brains”, that Facebook has not created a new “epidemic of loneliness”, and that online pornography has not suddenly taught children to have sex. Life would not improve, I think, if we went back to the days when families played card games by the fire of an evening; those same days when there was nowhere to go if someone was abusing you, or your sexuality wasn’t what it was supposed to be. While acknowledging the privilege inherent in having internet access at all, I’ve argued for hours about the benefits to mental wellbeing of online life: the access to information and support, the inclusion of anyone housebound (whether for family, health, or disability reasons), and the platform for those who struggle to participate in a world run by extraverts—or, to use a less controversial definition, those who thrive on interaction with others in person. It took a lot of staying in alone and tinkering to create computers and the internet, so it seemed fitting that online was the space where introverts and sports rejects could blossom. As with real life, things were never perfect. With the good (you could find someone on the planet who had the same likes and needs as you) came the less good (the ability to attack someone anonymously without needing to know where they live or work). With the positive (you could communicate your views to thousands or millions of people) came the less positive (like a bucket of water or a bomb, your message will hit everyone in range, not just your target). But now, I’m increasingly hearing expressions like “Facebook clearout” and “Twitter cull”. These events sound uncomfortably like people-cleansing, but I sense a growing movement to protect personal boundaries for the sake of sanity. I have unfollowed people whose political views I strongly agreed with, but whose unending attacks on others
337
Insight
For the xkcd comic Duty calls see http://xkcd.com/386
338
could be denounced for not doing enough denouncing; the only disincentive to denunciation was the possibility of being denounced for not denouncing sooner; and so on.” Online, we have created an all-seeing internalised parent, an emotional singularity. We look for mirroring in this parent and in return we get community, but we also get exposure and shame. At worst, for a single word out of place, you can be jumped on by crowds of people you have never met. Posting becomes a tightrope walk, held on the inbreath. There are trigger warnings and counter-trigger warnings, and the fact that tone can be as triggering as content is (oddly) often forgotten. There is nowhere to hide, even from the comfort of your iPad. If you object to the fighting, or are simply not in a towering fury, you are “just wanting everything to be nice” as if it is somehow immoral not to be constantly enraged. Real life, of course, isn’t nice (as the Stonewall riots, the Greenham Common peace camp, and the civil rights movement show), and online conflicts can at worst seem like no more than armchair bullying, however important the cause. You could be forgiven for becoming confused by the ever-changing ingroups and outgroups. Who is good and who is bad might vary from one week to the next. Standing back, this jumble is hardly surprising. Unprocessed trauma can give rise to self-expression that might elsewhere be labelled “borderline”: black and white thinking; intense but highly changeable emotional states; maladaptive use of other entities (whether human, chemical, or virtual) in an attempt at self-regulation; hypervigilance; and the inability to sit with difficult feelings. The problem is that, online, this collective state of mind is being fed, all day and every day. Most of the time, the high levels of aggression would never be expressed to a real person, but the anxiety (unsustainable by one individual for long) can be carried by thousands forever. One especially negative outcome is that activist groups can end up with the self-defeating reputation of being perpetually at war with themselves, which is a potent political weapon in the wrong hands. Arguments that once took place in back rooms with an audience of seven can now be witnessed by millions and the most extreme comments taken out of context. And, as you step out of the fray, it’s worth remembering that—as any paramedic or lifeguard will tell you—the people screaming the loudest are not necessarily the ones who are most hurt. The endless vigilance also has a positive purpose. Misogyny and bigotry need to be contested, because the threats of rape and murder just keep on coming. Women are continuously bullied and humiliated online, and many people have attempted suicide as a result. Unfortunately, law enforcement (although improving) has been slow to catching on to the fact that the internet is a place, just like any other. “Just switch off your computer” is not an acceptable response in 2014.
You can protect yourself by being low key, balanced, or ambivalent in your views (or by not being a woman), but this approach is effectively self-censorship. You could be forgiven for concluding that social media is being won by bullies, narcissists, those who actively revel in creating tension, and those who are immune from anxiety. These people, of course, are the ones who survive the best in the workplace and in other group situations. For a minute back then, I thought the rest of us had found a place in the world where we could finally be ourselves, but it looks as if the internet has finally turned into real life. What I’m describing must seem profoundly unbalanced to the unfamiliar reader. To top it all, some of the most militantly relentless online warfarers are actually quite pleasant in person. Good luck trying to explain these interactions to someone who doesn’t use social media. They will be baffled because they have just been out at work or with their kids, or playing sports, or at a gig, and you are talking about World War 3 enacted on a screen in the corner of your living room. And you might be shaking or even crying, and they might tell you that you need to get out more. And they would have missed the point, although you couldn’t really blame them. I’m well aware that it’s very hard to critique social media without enacting the very behaviour you are critiquing. I have in the past ranted heavily, used a performative sardonic tone, and retweeted other people’s expressions of personal fury with no thought as to the effect they would have on others, or whether they were even factually correct. But now I think we’ve gone way beyond the much-loved xkcd cartoon, where someone is at a screen, tapping away late at night, and their partner calls out to them. “Are you coming to bed?” “I can’t. This is important.” “What?” “Someone is wrong on the internet.” Next to today’s Orcs vs Klingons savagings, this gentle parody has the nostalgic sweetness of a 1890s Pears Soap advert. Life in the UK has become measurably harder for most people in the past 5 years. The collective mental health of the population has been affected, particularly for those who have few economic means and little political influence. What to do about it? There is a Facebook group whose members post pictures of their cats, all day, every day. It will sound like hell to some people, but the posters often comment that the flow of innocent domestic delight is an essential counterpoint to the stressful torrent that gushes all day long around it. Online and off, where I possibly can, I try to gather the people and things around me that make me happy, and quietly remove those that don’t. The more I deal with rage and trauma in my real-time work as a therapist, the less space I am willing, or able, to give to them online.
Tania Glyde www.thelancet.com/psychiatry Vol 1 October 2014