Matthew Taylor | Opinion Editor
So much of what we do at The University Times centres on the internet. In articles, and in conversation it is undoubtedly the most dominant topic and even we, the generation that grew up with the internet (I think the first time I used it was when I was 6) can’t quite assess the fullest extent of its impact. It is a collective entity, while also allowing us to express our individualism and spread our personal opinions to a previously impossible extent. It is, indeed, exactly that; collective individualism. This can be a good thing, a democratising and information spreading phenomena which has brought light to dark places and made tyrants answer for their crimes. It can also be used to bully a 16 year-old drunk girl because she’s acted like a bit of a twat.
The internet, as supreme arbiter and director of mob justice, is blind to the difference between the dictator of Egypt and a foolish teenager. They are punished, hounded and disgraced, because the internet is not just the tool of justice; it is the ultimate enabler of mass schadenfreude. In this particular case, we are mocking some girl because she said some really stupid stuff in a pizzeria at like 4 in the morning. I couldn’t bring myself to watch more than a minute of the thing, but when I read through the comments section, the hate speech was really unbelievable. And most of it was really stupid too, stuff that if recorded and put on YouTube would also make a viral sensation. Example: a 60ish year old man who said that she was the voice of our generation and how we should all be condemned. Thanks for the tip gramps, but maybe pick on someone your own size.
They don’t call it viral for nothing. It is a virus, sick and debilitating, spreading through the body-virtual and contaminating everything it touches. This video is the worst of what the internet can do. In this day and age, you’re not allowed to make a mistake because if you do, it can become public knowledge. At the click of a button your reputation is irreparably and irrevocably damaged. If you linked that video, you spreaded the disease. What particularly riles me is that she clearly didn’t want to be recorded. Right from the start she waves away the camera, and at a later point knocks it down. I can’t say for sure if she knew the people recording it but if she does she needs some new friends, and to my mind they are the real villains of the piece. Her privacy has been very directly violated in real terms, as her Facebook page and her fathers LinkedIn page have been widely distributed and she has had to delete both her Facebook and Twitter accounts to stem the tide of personal abuse being sent her way. If you did the same thing with letters you could go to prison, so the question is why necessarily do we make the distinction between the physical and the virtual where one is essentially an extension of the other? I’m not saying anyone should go to jail, but as equally as we all need to think before we drink, we need to think about our online behaviour. The tide of web-related suicides is rising, and we need to stop deluding ourselves that the internet is some gimmick, where what we say and do doesn’t have impact because in the 21st century, it simply isn’t true.
