The advent of internet and social media is a good thing. It has opened up the world and brought us all closer together. It has also reunited old friends. The positives outweighs the negatives by miles.
......but......
The internet and social media has also dredged up all hatred and nastiness within the mankind. Envy, bitterness and blind hatred. Mostly in anonyme comments added to news stories.
I read a story early this morning about an ex football player who had gone through hell with substantial substance abuse after he retired from football. He was only saved by a private clinic set up by other ex footballers. After many years as a suicidal alcohol and cocaine user, this ex footballer is now OK again and so is his wife and children. A really feel good story... until you read the reader comments. The hatred and nastiness runs like raw sewerage through the comments people has published as anonymous. I have problems understanding that any human being can be that hateful nasty. Then again; Holocaust has proven how low the mankind can sink. The anonymous comments fields in the newspapers and internet forums just replicate the hatred and nastiness which ended up in this genocide. Nothing has really changed.
Would these people really write these things if they was made to sign with their own names ? I doubt it. But remove the name (and the responsibility that means) from a person and you will get a lot of nastiness and hatred. Not from responsible people, I hasten to add. But there is a lot of haters out there and they have their say in the anonymous comment fields in every newspapers from Vladivostock to Los Angeles. And their hatred and nastiness is not pretty. It is like staring down a raw sewerage pipe.
I have over the last year come to the conclusion that having anonymous comments fields is not a human right. The haters are free to express their nastiness and hatred. But only with their full name and with a contact phone number as the guarantee that the name is a real name. The anonymous comment fields is also a good reason not to become a politician or have a public profile. I have thick skin, but I do not want my family to be exposed to the many pages of hatred and nastiness even a feature story like "He saved the world" will provoke these haters to produce. Nobody deserves hatred like that and I doubt we will see the right people volunteer their lives as politicians and public figures in these circumstances.
And that would be the end of democracy based on altruism. Is a civilization based on hatred really what we want ?
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