Online Violence and our Civil Society

I have a friend who has become a best selling author of a number of children’s books through a well known multinational publisher.  He happens to be a Christian, who loves children, and has that rare gift of being able to communicate with kids in person and in groups, as well as in his remarkable books.  With a high platform, and commercial success, comes scrutiny. That’s to be expected. But, if you imagine that his critics are atheists or people of other faiths you’d be wrong.

You might imagine that within Christian circles there are constructive critics of the genre, and I would expect that. What neither he nor I expected, but is now normal in the new media environment, is ongoing virulent attack through many online forums. So my friend suffers a widely published textual assault that’s damning and personal, that tells lies about his character, asserts fallacies about his sexual orientation, distorts the narrative line of the books, and attacks the orthodoxy of his church.  Worse, it’s coming from people in other churches, even within his denomination, who have set themselves up as Christian thought police.  (An oxymoron, surely)

Now, my friend has never met these people, they don’t know him, nor have they tried to talk with him to chat about concerns they may have.  They’ve simply resorted to character assassination of the worst kind, and given themselves some sort of mission from God based on a peculiar interpretation about the content of the books.

It is of course painful.  It’s distressing.  I wonder if someone might try and act out the threats and abusive language by stalking my friend and causing him bodily harm.

But have you read the online comments to news stories recently?  A story about Steve Jobs this morning and the mean spirited attacks on each other by the readers took even my late-fifties-and-a-journalist breath away. Online comments on the Rugby World Cup reporting have yielded vicious remarks between fans. It’s everywhere on the net, people demonizing one another – we’ve all seen it, perhaps you’ve done it? Demonizing. Finger pointing.  Dehumanizing others.  So that computer driven hurting, maiming, killing, genocide, become in the end… OK?

It’s not the fault of the internet that large numbers of people reveal what’s really in our human makeup. That could be regarded as good, right?  People being “out there,” exceedingly, honestly?  Well, no if they’re not ashamed of behavior that causes harm.  Of how many suicides do we need to read, about people whose characters copped assassination over the net, before we accept our words, our texts have serious power?

Sacrificing face to face relationships for online virtual relationships might just be the thin edge of a wedge, toward a very dangerous and uncivil society, a society which regards politeness as a curse and cussing out a person, cutting them down, as heroic virtue.

When we look into someone’s eyes we get to appreciate far more than words on a screen can tell us about their author.  So my plea is – be careful how you respond to those with whom you disagree, online.  For every one who is faking a persona, there are more of us who aren’t. But even so, we’re someone’s brother or sister, someone’s child, someone’s parent and we all still bleed when cut.

~ by cgilbertlpmedia on October 22, 2011.