This week we talked about “Black Mirror: Hated in the Nation”, read the article “How the Internet created an age of rage,” and a short video called ” Bad Behavior Online,” just to name a few but all along this theme of online rage and behavior. Going into the episode of Black Mirror, it starts off with a detective giving her testimony on a murder of a journalist, and other murder’s, and the event that lead up to it. A journalist is being hated for an article that she released to the public and has been receiving hate mail, hate messages, death threats online, a thread on her that is a #deathto_ , and even a hateful messaged cake that was delivered to her house. She dies in her house and her husband, terribly wounded, said she killed herself. Soon after, there was another report of a similar incident of a man receiving pains and trying to kill himself out of nowhere and another similarity was that both these victims received hateful messages online and the thread of #deathto_ with their names at the end. The thread #deathto is designed for the people to vote for the most unpopular person and whoever has the most votes dies. They come to realize that it was an ADI bee that got into their brain and was pressing on the pain center causing them to kill themselves. They have ADI bees in replacement for bees for the environment due to the endangerment of bees. Someone, however, hacked the system and took control of some of the bees and targeted only those individuals who were number one on the death toll. They tried saving the 3rd victim but they did not succeed. The hacker then took control of the whole system and took control over all the bees and then targeted those who posted the thread and used the #Deathto. The hacker wanted for people to pay the consequences of what they say and do and give them a moral lesson. A ton of people died and they cops then had eyes and location of the hacker and the episode ends with that. 

Going into depth of this episode, the cops went and confronted this lady who took part in the thread and her response was that online is not real and she only half meant what she had said. 3D is real life, online is not, it’s just funny. With this, I think a lot of people have this mindset but the receiver of all these hateful messages feels otherwise and it is in fact real. Also, people who partake in this has a sense of diffusion of responsibility because others part take in it as well so they start to point fingers and say other people do it and as a result, they refuse to take full repsoibilies of their own actions. Another point in this movie that I would like to point out is that the hacker targeted people who took part in the thread. It showed that instead of the evil person society targeted, the actual evil person were themselves and they didn’t even realize it. 

With the short video of “Bad Behavior”, it goes more in depth of online bullying and hateful words that are being posted and people think of it as funny. People online experience disinhibition because they can’t see the other person that is their target so it has to impact on them. In the article, “How the internet created rage,” they talk about how people experience deindividuation which is when social norms are withdrawn because identities are concealed. Many people experience this when online or commenting on other peoples accounts. Have you ever experienced hateful online comments/ posts? If so, how did that make you feel ? Have you ever taken part of online bullying or targeting a person and making hateful/ hurtful comments? 

This article is about cyberbullying and the impacts it has on the receiving individual

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200122080526.htm