Our culture has become inundated with cyber attacks. Attacks fostered by the identity-shielding force of our computer screens. We spend hours tucked into our dark rooms in front of televisions and computer screens. We stalk people’s profiles and judge them from afar. We like, tweet, post, tag, meme and rant all day, everyday. But sometimes we add to a toxic swamp by commenting maliciously and anonymously. The separation the screen gives us has allowed us to be cowardly, and to express the evil thoughts/negativity that resides within so many of us. No longer facing the repercussions of opining or bullying in person, we do what we would not have the nerve to do were the object of our nasty barbs standing in front of us. The internet has enabled us to be malicious with no consequences.
My friends and I have become obsessed with a digital series that explores fictional and often dystopian story lines. “Black Mirror” intelligently comments on our society’s utter reliance on and obsession with technology and how it can control and/or ruin people’s lives. Each episode makes us question our lives, because all of them seem somewhat plausible in our increasingly savage modern world. However, one episode in particular, “Hated in a Nation,” hits a little too close to home to be a story of futuristic make-believe.
In the episode, bees have become extinct and the British government has created millions of robotic bees which are able to pollinate. The public takes part in a new Twitter “game” where one tweets "#deathto" about someone one doesn't like. The show calls it a game in an ironic way because in reality the person with the most #deathtos tweeted about them is killed at 5 p.m. each day. Once the public realizes that the game is real, there is an increase in the number of #deathto tweets daily, eventually putting the Prime Minister on the top of the list. Detectives discover that the robotic bees dispatched for pollination have been the murdering devices for those sent to death by the Twittersphere. Ultimately, the bees kill 388,000 citizens (all the citizens who had tweeted #deathto), “bringing to justice” all those who played the “game.”
So, why did this seemingly fictional dystopia hit so close to home? Because I could see this “game” happening at any moment in today’s society. I could picture people either saying “No! This can’t be, let me tweet this to see if it’s actually true,” or “OMG I can kill a person with a tweet? Sweet!”
Behind our computer screens, we feel impervious to the real-life implication of our actions. We are capable now of trolling and bullying through the internet without anyone knowing who we are. Our computers are both shields and invisibility cloaks. Our president, Donald Trump, said in the first presidential debate, “Anyone could’ve hacked us. It could have been China. It could also be someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”
We have come to a point in our world where Cyber Warfare is not fiction. We have the ability to attack a country through the internet without being detected. So as we, commoners, take part in smaller acts of rebellion on the internet, we just add to the technological advances that will result in a future of wars enacted through the cyber web. We make it acceptable in a sense. Normal. Implicit.
A young girl will post an embarrassing photo on Facebook of her “friend” to make her feel bad. But, the poster wouldn’t mock her “friend” by the lockers for fear of getting in a fight or seeing that girl cry or facing repercussions. So, what’s the harm in tweeting a #deathto anyway? Is a tweet an actual action? Is it physical, physical enough to touch a person? How can it impact a person if you are not there to witness it? And who cares if that person is hurt—they deserve it, don’t they? Isn’t that how it works?
That’s the mindset the internet has enabled—an emotionless one or rather one that refuses to recognize someone else’s emotions. One that shapes a society where people can get away with heinous acts and not be caught or prosecuted, making it more important than ever for people to have a moral code.
And instead, we have become accustomed to it, numb to it. Numb enough to believe that our actions over our devices don’t really mean anything. Chat forums have become a hub for evil actions, enabling anonymous hateful conversation. There are chat forums focused on hating Obama, hating Jews, "Why Jennifer Lawrence Should Die" and so on. And with this outlet for evil speech, it’s almost as though it encourages and increases the hateful actions. We egg one another one and push each other to produce more hate. It subverts the worlds moral code, making our the globe more toxic than ever before.
In the same way that people in “Black Mirror” tweet #deathto, U.S. citizens voted anonymously for a candidate who preached: the deportation of millions of illegal immigrants, and the refusal of entry to Muslims. Our dystopian society has just elected the ultimate bully. He mocked people with disabilities and sexually assaulted women and bragged about it. We elected a man that gets off on the excitement of a Twitter battle. Like the world of "Black Mirror," our country anonymously elected the embodiment of our own malicious impulses. But we did so anonymously, so who could it really hurt…
Lizi Byrnes-Mandelbaum is a Trinity sophomore. Her column, “dear dystopia” runs on alternate Mondays.
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Lizi Byrnes-Mandelbaum is a Trinity junior. Her column runs on alternate Tuesdays.