Imagine you’re scrolling on some sort of social media. Upon any app, you’re bound to come across all types of content. Whether it be informational, entertainment based, or an attempt to persuade, it’s there. However, there are some that most people would deem “strange”. They find it weird and question why a person would even think about posting it. It doesn’t fit their standards of what posting on social media should be, and therefore dislike it.
These individuals can’t fathom the idea of another person posting something without any guidelines. Someone feeling so comfortable with themselves that they would feel no shame in posting whatever they wanted. This can result in these individuals feeling the need to express their distaste to the poster. They believe that it is their duty to alert the poster that their content is just “weird”. They do this through leaving comments or reposts under the post. They can pile up, and eventually lead to mass bullying of a person online for simply existing.
When people leave hate comments they are expressing their opinion publicly. A person is more likely to leave a hate comment if the majority of the other viewers agrees with them. This is because no one wants to be the only one being mean. They understand that they are being cruel, but when others are doing it too, that makes it okay and they feel more comfortable speaking however they want to this person. If everyone is leaving hate comments left and right, original posters may be forced to turn comments off completely, which is unfair.
In the past, social media sights were more basic, there were only a few actions that could be performed per each sight. Comments weren’t even developed until much through the process of creating them. And, even still, these different sight characteristics were very crude and crashed when used too often. Due to these simple ways of navigating social media, everyone was kind online for the most part. Online hate was rare and when it happened it was a big deal. “Cyber-bullying”, the act of bullying someone online, was mostly unheard of until about 20 ish years ago. For the first time ever, there was a space created where people could be hidden while simultaneously making someone feel horrible about themself.
Nowadays, individuals are more comfortable than ever commenting on posts and typing out the most foul things to someone. Even while using extremely public profiles, with their family following them and often their school credentials located somewhere on their profile, they say nasty, horrible things. But why? What has caused this mass comfortability?
Social media platforms were created to connect people. Even across the globe, everyone is more connected right now than they ever were in any other point in time. People feel linked together in a way that involves them all in the same group. People naturally want to be in groups. They desire to be included in something, even if that something involves putting another person down.
In conclusion, toxic behaviors on social media platforms have been on a steady rise for a very long time. I believe that if we confront the situation head on and discard our prejudices and opinions about what is “right” or “wrong” to post, online sights will as a result, be much happier and funner spaces to be on.
