The Internet: The Best/Worst Thing

     I will start this out by saying that I am in complete love with the internet. I honestly believe that the internet is the most important item that has been invented in the past 50 years. I'm completely unapologetic about as well. The concept of freely accessible information across the entire world is something right out of a sci-fi novel. Yet every single day we take it for granted. Does anybody else realize that up until 20 or so years ago, this technology wasn't widely available? Seriously, if I could travel back in time and bring one human invention with me, it would be a world-wide network of computers that allows instantaneous exchange of information. See how impressive that sounds? Although I will be the first person to readily admit that the internet is terrible in many horrific ways. But specifically, I want to talk briefly about internet misogyny. I have blogged about political misogyny in the past, but I think that casual misogyny needs to be recognized and addressed.

It's not a great photo, but at least it doesn't have a Guy Fawkes mask in it.

          It turns out that if you give the average internet user the mask of anonymity, they're going to be horrifically terrible people. If you've ever found yourself on a forum or bit of the internet with a "post as anonymous" function, i'm sure that you're readily aware that it seems that everyone is a dirty racist, homophobic, misogynistic jackass. Hell, you don't even need to be anonymous, you just need a handle that isn't directly linked to your personal identity. I'm looking at you, "BluntSmoking420HaloChief." Let me cite the following screen captures from popular websites:

     I found this particular bit of wisdom on a youtube video of a woman being injured in a magic trick mishap:

    Oh, Phatso816, you really know how to make a joke. Now this comment in itself is pretty bad, but what's worse is that 192 individual people who happened to stumble onto this video gave his comment a thumbs up. Great, fantastic, wonderful. Oh, and it gets much much worse, I promise. Take for example this thriving community on the website Reddit:

I literally had to go get a beer after putting this up here. It's a PBR and it is warm but it's better than nothing.

     A more subtle subreddit would be the fiercely active r/mensrights. Let's take a look at what they're promoting: 

     I'll just let you peruse what they've written. It speaks entirely for itself. Not only are the posts terrible, but there are over thirty four THOUSAND people who currently subscribe to that subreddit.To but that in perspective, that is approximately one half of this entire city that believes that men are actively being discriminated against. Huh.

     I suppose that in my mind, I started this post to have a message, to prove a point. But in actuality, I'm not sure what i'm supposed to do about this. I mean, I suppose at the very least I have brought your attention to the sweeping misogyny on the internet (and if i haven't, spend 30 seconds on a google search for "Make me a sandwich". It's about as common and is normally paired with, "get back in the kitchen" as a misogynistic insult. Oh wait, let me do that for you).

     That is twenty-eight million people who have said that on the internet. That is approximately three times the population of North Carolina. I mean, we can account for some of those as being non-derogatory, but I'd be willing to wager that most were not.

     So, what do we have here? We have a substantial community of people on the internet that seems to believe that misogyny is acceptable and that it is a funny joke. This is completely unacceptable. I have argued against misogyny in my past post, so I don't need to be redundant on my reasoning behind my opposition. I'm just appalled. I'm mainly concerned about the children that are growing up today with unfettered internet access. I'm concerned for the young males that seem to congregate on the sites like reddit and digg. I'm afraid that they'll unconsciously (or consciously) absorb this widespread misogyny and incorporate it into their identities. I will admit, that my previous statement is probably one of the most Lib-Arts things I have ever written, but none the less, it concerns me. Maybe I'm sensitive about misogyny, as I was raised by women. I'll admit that I might have bias about it, but I will be damned if i'm willing to let it continue without notice.  As with most of this blogs, my righteous anger and frustration has turned into a kind of sad sense of defeat. I can't personally educate every person on the internet about male privilege. So, what am I supposed to do? I honestly don't know. Beverly Tatum has an excellent analogy about institutionalized racism being a moving walkway. Those who do nothing to stop are still participating in institutionalized racism by moving forward. I want to run backwards against this socially-accepted misogyny, but I'm not at all sure how. So for now, until I find a plan to fix it, i'm just going to remain angry.