DeAnna Woolston

Have you read “Lord of the Flies?” Maybe you have but it’s been a really long time. Or maybe you’re like me, and have tried to block a lot of it out, because it gives you BPTSD (Book Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).

Briefly: A group of boys have their plane shot down during World War II and are stranded without adult supervision. They quickly descend into barbarism paralleling the war that is going on in the grown-up world. Before the conclusion, wild pigs and other little boys are gravely harmed by other little boys (read: tortured/killed). Only one moral conscious (Ralph) remains.

Perhaps author William Golding was onto something. Maybe without supervision—we can’t be counted on to supervise ourselves.

When reading an article online or a post on a public Facebook page, do you ever read the comments below? As you scroll down the page it is like entering a new level of hell. Polite comments soon descend into armchair bullying where everyone slurps down the bait, and comes out tearing and ripping in one giant typed-out dogfight.

Normally civil people turn brutal. Maybe it’s because there are volumes of comments—who cares if I rant something judgmental and mean about the article itself or another commenter? It’s lost in the noise. We are virtually anonymous online—we can invent our own identity or hide it from others while commenting. When no one knows who I am, I can pretty much say anything I want—things I would never have the guts to utter to someone’s face. There is no adult supervision. We can’t see the other person’s face when we type our words out. We probably think more about what munchies we want to shove in our mouths than how we just verbally punched someone in the gut.

We worry about bullying and pull our hair out about the online behavior of teenagers picking on each other, but many adults are participating in the same exact behavior. I’ve done it myself—gotten riled up by another person’s comments and responded equally toxically. There are trolls—people who make outrageous comments just to get negative attention like a pasty, prepubescent boy on steroids looking for a reaction. Sadly, I think even well intentioned, otherwise conscientious people will type very differently than they would speak to another person.

Our technology has changed so rapidly, our ethics and etiquette have not caught up. Is it alright to write differently than we speak to strangers? When do we cross a line on how we speak to one another? Is it all freedom of speech and therefore anything goes? Or should sites be more monitored? When the sole intention of a comment is to tear someone else down—is that freedom of speech or hate speech?