When people think of bullying, you probably think of the classic “give me your lunch money” scenario, or the physical bullying that happens to someone in the gym locker room. As times change, so does the way people get picked on or made fun of. People, especially teenagers, won’t just stop making people feel bad about certain things, because they need to find a way to hide their own insecurities. With the technology today you can see how it has become even easier for these kids to do this to one another. They can now hide behind a computer screen and say whatever they want, even if they don’t know the person at all.
In class we watched a John Oliver segment where he was shedding light on how the internet can take off and run with a story when they really don’t have the facts all lined up when they are circulating a misleading title for an article or a blog post. He was talking about the case of this little boy who jumped into his aunt, accidentally knocking her over. She ended up breaking her wrist and needing 3 surgeries to heal it back up. The story circulating was that she was suing her nephew for over 100,000 dollars and that she was this monster of an aunt. The catch was that this fact was not true at all. The real story was the insurance company that she had would not cover the costs, but the home owners insurance would that the boys parents had would. The family was happy to help with that and let them sue their son because they thought it would not be a big deal at all just some formality, but the internet had to twist everything and almost ruin this poor wombs life. She even said she had to go through great strides to just get her life back.
Another thing Oliver talked about that I want to touch on was the Jerry Springer show and how this was a pre form of what is going on today. Not going to lie it is a pretty interesting show and it is fun to laugh at how much peoples lives are a mess like that, but we have to remember these are real people.
One of the videos we watched this week was the “Bad Behavior Online: Bullying, Trolling & Free Speech | Off Book | PBS Digital Studios” video. Here they tased about how bad online trolling has gotten. What made me very upset during that video was how there would be memorial pages for people online and there were people trolling them and kicking their loved ones when they were already down. This ties right in with the article “How the internet created an age of rage” where they talk about how easy it is to just get angry and say mean things to someone you have never met. Honestly I think it is just a bunch of losers behind a computer trying to make themselves feel good.
My question to you is, Why do you think people do this online trolling and bullying?
Cancel culture has become a way for people to publicly shame others who they feel have acted inappropriately. In some ways it has brought attention to many injustices and called individuals out for their bad behavior, but it also has consequences. It is easy to hide behind a desk and a computer and say things that you wouldn’t normally say to someone. What has happened to our ability to talk things through and engage in conversation? According to a Harper’s Magazine article, A Letter on Justice and Open Debate, the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. According to experts, we are becoming a society of intolerance to opposing viewpoints. The normalcy of public shaming and censorship is going to be stifling to our democracy.
“The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.”
-A Letter on Justice and Open Debate, Harper’s Magazine, July 7, 2020.
The opposite side of this argument is discussed in the Independent article, The Spiral of Silence: How Social Media Encourages Self-Censorship Online. The article argues that social media stifles discussion on important issues. This resonates with me because I know that sometimes I would like to post my true opinions but resolve to not post them because of facing backlash from others. I also don’t want to “have it out” with family members who may feel opposition to what I am saying. I really just don’t feel like arguing with anyone. Yet, I also am weary of not being able to have real discussions with others. I feel like now, politics are so tied in with everything that is going on that it would be difficult to have a thoughtful and informative discussion. In the article, How Social Media Encourages, researchers produced a report suggesting that Facebook and Twitter make us less likely to express opinions if we think others will disagree with us. The researchers concluded, “An informed citizenry depends on people’s exposure to information on important political issues and on their willingness to discuss these issues with those around them.” I wonder what will happen to our democracy if we are unable to have real discussions?
We have become a nation of shamers and judgement makers. I have a hard time knowing how to feel about this because in the moment it can seem like a good thing if someone is facing consequences for their bad behavior. Quite possibly, they wouldn’t have been caught and could go right on through life being a jerk. But where does it stop? This is a difficult topic and I don’t think there is necessarily one solution. It only takes one minute to post something on social media that you regret possibly for the rest of your life. Does that mean that you should lose everything when there is the possibility of learning something?
In the Black Mirror episode, Hated in The Nation, we saw what happened to the people who publicly shamed an individual by posting #deathto_ The journalist, Jo Powers was sent a cake with obscenities and constantly harassed online and had obscenities shouted at her when walking down the street. When Jo is murdered, Blue who is working with the police suspects it has something to do with her online column. Blue and the detective, Karin have opposing viewpoints and Karin downplays the effects of internet rage when she says, “That internet stuff drifts off like weather. It’s half-hate, they don’t mean it. The hate in a marriage, that’s in 3-D, that’s had work put into it, that’s sincere.” When they continue to investigate the murder, they speak with a teacher who also applied the hashtag and find out that it was crowd-sourced. The teacher tells them about the #deathto_ hashtag and doesn’t see anything wrong with it. She thinks it is funny.
Black Mirror: Hated in The Nation, Netflix
When they do the autopsy of Jo, they find the ADI drone honeybee lodged in her brain and that is when the episode takes a further twist. Blue figures out the connection between the bees and the hashtag and finds out that the person who gets the most hashtag in a day will be killed. Unaware, the hashtaggers are sought out and attacked by an individual ADI bee which seems to attack their nervous system giving them a seizure and convulsions. “The technician said that the ADIs crawl through the area of the brain where you feel pain, causing immense agony.” They meet a woman who is badly shamed on the internet and her roommate, Garrett is the one responsible for the attacks. He had written a manifesto explaining that he is doing this to show the effects of public shaming. They discover that he has a list of everyone that has used the #Deathto_ hashtag. He then sends the swarm of bees to kill everyone on the list for using the hashtag. He escapes, but it is later shown in a remote city with Blue tailing him. It is implied that justice will be served. I thought this was a good episode in that it highlighted Internet bullying, harassment, public shaming, and the dangers of AI all in one episode.
How do you feel about public shaming? Have you ever been the victim of internet bullying?
The Black Mirror episode this week “Hated in the Nation” it brings up something that over the last couple of years and the blow up of social media. This being what we like to call as cancel culture. It shows individuals that have done things deemed to be unliked or hated by most of society. In the episode people are posting to a social media site like twitter where you’re able to post pictures, videos, hashtags, and reply to other peoples post. Then someone makes a post called Game of Consequences where people use the #Deathto with a persons name. Then the name with the most hashtags dies after 5pm each day and then the game resets after each day and you’re able to pick a new target. Now while post of the people doing these post did not know that these people were being killed they were still participating in it and it was the gang mentality of targeting someone who did something you did not like from a take in a news article to posing in a picture to look like they were peeing on a war monument. These two acts sparked a rage among people and they went all out on belittling and using the hashtags on these people who ended up being killed because of it. While cancel culture now a days does cause the person to be killed but pretty much does the same thing from getting a person fired from their job, losing draft position or not even being drafted in sports, and to just everyone knowing you name and face and you not being able to do anything in your life because no one wants to hire you.
We later discover that the people who were killed due to the hashtag were just collateral damage as those who participated in the game of consequences were the real targets. The person wanted to eliminate all those who had participated in the game and were spreading hate toward that person. This ended up killing thousands of people. I also thought it was interesting that robot bee were used to do the killing when something like those could be used in real life. The talk just a few years ago was that bees were possibly going to go extinct and if that does ever happen maybe robot bees are the solution to that problem. The way cancel culture has taken off I could see something like this happening in real life where someone creates a game like the game of consequences and a mass majority of people would participate. Then the person behind the game could use the robot bees to do the killing and then turn everything around just like in the Black Mirror episode.
We then read “How the Internet Created an Age of Rage” which talks about how with the internet the ability to either hide behind a computer or just an anonymous name has allowed people to just post hateful comments on or about anything they do not like. This article talks about stand up comedian Stewart Lee and just all the hateful tweets or post that people make about him and Lee said he would look at these and then try and make more jokes like the ones that were pissing people off. I think this goes for a lot of what comedians do where they talk about topics that people are sensitive about or do not really wanna talk about and then make jokes about them. I think comedy is suppose to do that its suppose to make things that are hard for people to talk about and do it in a jokingly manor to kind of ease the tension around the subject. Now with cancel culture I think there is some good about it where is someone is being openly racist toward anyone or doing things that are deemed completely wrong by all of society then they should be canceled. Context does also matter just like in anything like how old is whatever people are mad about because times change and people are allowed to change as well and that all has to be considered. A recent example would be with Jimmy Fallon when people were trying to get him canceled for a skit he did on Saturday Night live I believe in the early 2000s were he did black face. This was the 2000s where this did occasionally happen and it was on Saturday Nigh live where the script and everything of that nature is looked at and okay by higher ups in the show and it was allowed to happen. Now if that happened today where something like that is not socially expectable then I would be all for it. There is also a lot a negatives and they way I look at things is if it does not personally affect you or if you don’t like what someone is doing then do not pay attention to them and go watch someone or something else. Are you someone who just looks the other way or do you run with mob and become apart of cancel culture?
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
A significant understanding of human conduct from pre-web period investigations of correspondence is the inclination of individuals not to shout out about approach issues openly—or among their family, companions, and work partners—when they accept their perspective isn’t broadly shared. This propensity is known as the “spiral of silence.” The study revealed in this report looked for individuals’ sentiments about the Snowden releases, their eagerness to discuss the revelations in the different face to face and online settings, and their impression of the perspectives on everyone around them in a variety of on the web and off-line settings. This survey’s findings produced several major insights:
86% of Americans were willing to have an in-person conversation about the surveillance program, but just 42% of Facebook and Twitter users were willing to post about it on those platforms.
Of the 14% of Americans unwilling to discuss the Snowden-NSA story in person with others, only 0.3% were willing to post about it on social media.
For instance, at work, those who felt their coworkers agreed with their opinion were about three times more likely to say they would join a workplace conversation about the Snowden-NSA situation.
Previous ‘spiral of silence’ findings as to people’s willingness to speak up in various settings also apply to social media users. Those who use Facebook were more willing to share their views if they thought their followers agreed with them.
5.This was especially true if they did not feel that their Facebook friends or Twitter followers agreed with their point of view.
Black Mirror: Hated in the Nation
Hated in the Nation” is organized like a police procedural, as doubtful in any case kind authorities try to protect innocent residents from a private, disturbed villain. The scene spins around a progression of odd deaths brought about by little robot bumblebees, or Autonomous Drone Insects. The honey bees were made by a private tech organization to fill the environmental hole left by the death of genuine bumblebees, yet a security opening made by the organization in line with the UK government permits the honey bees to be hacked and redirected to attack and murder obvious individuals.
All alone, the idea of an enormous self-governing blossom pollinating drone fleet being co-picked by the administration for huge scope flying observation of private residents is most likely all that could be needed future-fear feed. Hated in the Nation” all the while handles another current innovative plague: cyberbullying. A viral Twitter game called “Round of Consequences” publicly supports demise by asking clients to pick the honey bees’ next casualty with the hashtag #DeathTo. While Black Mirror’s commitment to the specialty of the wind is splendid in the theoretical, it doesn’t generally work practically speaking. Black Mirror’s most frustrating quality is its inclination to seem like an as of late profound companion who appreciates persuading about the end times, yet is prepared to log off when the discussion gets excessively confusing.
References
Noelle-Neumann, E. (1974). “The Spiral of Silence A Theory of Public Opinion.”
The fifth week of Social Media & Society has introduced us to another fantastic episode of Black Mirror and The Outrage Machine. This week’s discussion in class (Zoom) advanced on these topics and their relevance to society today.
The artificial ADI Bee
Black Mirror: Hated in the Nation is the final episode of the third season. Directed by James Hawes in 2016, this episode tops the charts for my all time favorite Black Mirror viewings thus far. In this foresightful episode, it encapsulated drama, mystery and suspense. It also touches on current issues in 2020 that directly relate to the subject and storyline of this episode. I believe the Black Mirror production team did a remarkable job producing and perhaps even foreshadowing the future implications of media and technology.
It begins with the hearing of Detective Chief Inspector Karin Parke (Kelly Macdonald) as she seems very unsettled in an ominous courtroom. The following scene flashes back to May 15th of the previous year, “Day One”. Jo Powers publicly criticized disability rights in one of her publications and started receiving massive death threats. Wherever she went; social media threads or walking on the sidewalk, people were using slander to voice their outrage against Power’s article. Her story received mass media across Europe and she was found dead shortly after. Inspector Parke was head of the investigation with her shadow Blue Coulson (Faye Marsay). Power’s had taken her own life with a glass bottle and severely injured her husband. At this point in the episode, it is unclear to the two detectives direction on the case and most of their leads are dead-ends. The following day, a popular Hip-Hop artist (Tusk) received major backlash and media attention for his disrespectful comments regarding a young fan. He too felt terribly ill and started having effects similar to a seizure. He was transported to a hospital and died unexpectedly during a CAT scan. After the second suspicious death, the killers are identified as the artificial ADI bees. These robotic, solar powered bees were intended to pollinate flowers after the extinction of honeybees. The detectives also discovered the correlation between the “#DeathTo” hashtags and the current victims of the ADI bees. The investigative unit rushed to the next trending hate victim before the bees could terrorize their next target. That poor woman happened to be Clara Meades. She posted a picture on a media platform pretending to urinate on a memorial. Meades is moved to a safe house but a swarm of ADI bees prove to be too much and claim their third victim. However, it seemed someone had hacked their programming and used facial recognition to identify targets. A closer analysis of the ADI bee also revealed a manifesto belonging to Garrett Scholes. The gist of the manifesto stated people will be held accountable for their actions on media platforms. The team tracked down Scholes last known location and raided his complex. There is no trace of Scholes but they discovered a disk containing IMEI numbers of all the people that used the “#DeathTo” hashtag. They were attempting to shut down the active hives when the bees started targeting all the individuals that used the hashtag. Over 300,000 people were killed by the ADI bees as we returned to the courthouse with Inspector Parke. The closing scenes display a message between Parke and Blue stating she had located Scholes in a remote foreign country.
In class on Wednesday, September 23rd, Dr. Schlegel shared a viewing called The Outrage Machine. The video from RetroReport.org shared the story of Jennifer Connell and her lawsuit involving her then 8 year-old nephew. Media was quick to attack and judge Ms. Connell without understanding her true circumstances surrounding the class. The health insurance would not cover the $127,000 in medical coverages. She was required to sue an individual, rather than a third-party homeowner’s insurer who owed her no legal duty. According to the family there were no hard feelings whatsoever. However, their mainstream media was quick to crucify and labeled Ms. Connell as “The Worst Aunt Ever”.
The connection between the Black Mirror episode and The Outrage Machine video stood out to me immediately. In fact, instead of the “#DeathTo” hashtag like Black Mirror, the REAL angry online mob dubbed Ms. Connell as the “#AuntFromHell” to voice their displeasure. What I find most appalling is how quickly people believe information on certain media platforms. These individuals show little interest in factual information and rather join the bandwagon. It is important for us all to self-monitor our social media feeds and be considerate of everyone’s opinion! Do you believe Ms. Connell was treated unfairly? Why or Why not?
This Black Mirror episode, ‘Hated In The Nation’, was a scary and crazy episode, which wasn’t too surprising knowing Black Mirror’s futuristic climate. This episode exploited how the freedom speech of the internet can turn into bullying. People having “Twitter fingers” and not being able to actually have the guts to state the same statements aloud are astounding to me in real life and on this episode. People were able to make such an impact towards a journalist who wrote a controversial article and created the hashtag ‘#DeathToJo”. Jo saw all the tweets that she was being tagged in and from the hashtag and was quite amused because she wasn’t as phased as the internet’s rage wanted her to be. However, she was killed that night by an electronic bee in a very violent way. These bees were able to be hacked and used to attack and reroute their actions from doing the job they were created to do which was simply being a bee. Soon, the bees went on killing sprees mainly based on their hackers opinions on if the person deserved to live based on their actions. This goes closely to today’s nature of ‘Cancel Culture’ which people over social media believe they have the right to cancel someone’s existence and accomplishments based on the person’s past social media posts, videos or actions.
James Vincent states, “However, the report found that if individuals felt that their Facebook friends were more likely to agree with their position on a given issue they were 1.91 times more likely to join in a conversation about it, with this tendency increasing among those who held strong opinions – they were 2.4 times more likely to join in conversations online. The suggestion is that these mechanisms accumulate; snowballing to create an atmosphere online where the most fervently held opinions are the most likely to be aired, while individuals with moderate or dissenting views hang back on the sidelines. Although the report’s scope was limited, it’s easy to see how widely its findings apply … and how important they may be to democracy as a whole” (Independent). People seem to be more engaging and willing to express their opinions over social media without fear of being exiled, that is if they are commenting on other people’s lives. The more people comment, the more power commenters believe they have and it has shown that they can get the exposure they crave digitally. Some of these people who search for evidence to bring someone’s reputation down, especially for celebrities, can be seen as these killer bees from the Black Mirror episode. Also, the media has affected the way people view other people and their circumstances. The society has become a norm to criticize and nitpick everyone else’s life but their own publicly. It can be pretty frightening to even express yourself because it may be used against you in a month or even decades later. In a way it is positive when finding evidence against people who are truly unjust. But where does the limits of this expression of speech through social media come to a realization that you can’t actually cancel someone’s existence. Do you think there will be limits to social media hate posts and comments from various people and bots?
Justice For Breonna Taylor. Rest In Paradise Breonna.
“Hate in a Nation” is a Black Mirror episode that was full of suspense. I know that each episode is filled with advanced technology that affects the society that they live in. In this case, someone hacked bees that were programmed to do the job of actual bees that are extinct and made them killing machines. That just shows how easy it is for someone that is advanced with computers can hack a system like the government and do crazy and extreme things. In this case, someone hacked the bees and started to kill people with it. He created a consequence game that had people use a hashtag to troll people on the internet. The person that was trolled the most would get killed by the bees. The game had consequences that nobody knew about. What started off as a game ended up killing 350,000 people. People that participated in the game and used the hashtag #deathto were killed by a swarm of bees. It only took one bee to kill the person but a swarm of them would arrive at the destination to make sure that the job was completed. The part that interested me more was the fact the government was using the bee to spy on people even though they only told the public that the bees were in place to do the job of an actual bee, which in this society was extinct. Blue was my favorite character. She was determined to put an end to the killing and even faked her own death so that she could find the man that created the game which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of people. This just shows how powerful words are.
I’ve learned this generation has found love in drama. Social media has created a platform for people to put other people’s business on the internet and anyone can respond to it. People even go to the extreme to threaten people’s lives. In the article “The ‘spiral of silence’: How Social Media Encourages Self-Censorship online.” shows that even as someone that is commenting on a situation, people fear to say the wrong thing because they can get backlash from a large audience of people they don’t know or even friends. The youtube video “The outrage Machine” talks briefly about how people started to love “trash Television”. Trash television is basically drama that is going on in someone’s life and shows like Jerry Springer show and Maury show were known for that. I think Social media is a way for people to get into other people’s business instead of worrying about their own problems. People should mind their business and do what they have to do instead of being nosy and talking about things that have not affected them personally. But yes people have the right to say what they want but threats and backlash and hateful comments that make someone not want to use the internet anymore is a bit extreme but we have no way of controlling it and that is basically what is happening today in society.
This week we had to watch an episode of black mirror called “Be right back”. The episode started with a casual couple who’s names are Martha and Ash just hanging out a living good. Then Ash has to go out to work and when he’s out he gets killed in a car accident. Marsha Is home wondering where he is and cries to her sister, then eventually the police tell her that her husband has died in a car accident and she’s absolutely devastated.The wake was a couple weeks later and her friend at the wake told her about a way to deal with the pain of losing him and a way to move on. It’s an app on the phone the allows you to talk to an AI version of the person you lost and the AI will respond the same way that the person who dies would. Martha is also pregnant and finds this out shortly after he death of Ash. So Martha eventually uses this app and gets attached to it. she upgraded the app so that she can talk to he AI on the phone now and she was quite fond of using It and becomes extremely attached to the app. The episode starts to really speed up the intensity when Martha finds out that there is an upgrade where you can get an actual replica of th person that died with this very unique technology and she foolishly upgrades and gets “Ash” back. At first I thought it was actually very interesting and cool the way the technology can quite actually look like, sound like, and somewhat behave like the dead Ash, but as the episode went on it got really weird.As the episode went on, Martha slowly started to lose faith in the technology when she began noticing the little differences that the AI technology had with the real Ash and everything was downhill from there. They got in a huge fight at this hill and she told him to jump off it and you could see the conflict that she had with wanting him in her life and just moving on.So does she keep the AI? YES!!!! She stores him in the attic and years later her daughter and herself visit it.
Personally I would never use this technology if we had it in the world today. It can literally only lead to bad things. I can understand if you are a spiritual person and do the boards and stuff like that where you can speak to the dead, but this is just way too far.I think it will do more damage to you rather than help you get over your loss.
I feel like the black mirror episodes could be telling us what we could be In store for in our society and technology, and i’m terrified. I think the technology aspect is that it won’t stop getting better and more interesting as far as what you can do, but I feel like some of these thing should never be invented.
Do you think that there will be something invented from these shows?
SOCIAL MEDIA & SOCIETY 